Against Literalism—’The Satanic Verses’ Fatwa at 30

2019/08/12 Leave a comment

Good commentary (was posted to Iran when published and the fatwa issued):

I have written elsewhere about the fatwa issued 30 years ago by a sinister religious cleric commanding the world’s Muslims to murder the writer and everyone involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses. But the best way to repudiate the authoritarian, constricted, literal mindset is by celebrating its opposite. And so, with as little mention as possible of the events the publication of The Satanic Verses engendered, what follows is simply an appreciative analysis of that extraordinarily epic, satirical, ironic, and multifaceted novel.

Salman Rushdie is one of the finest writers of recent times, whose work celebrates hybridity and intermingling of culture over narrow-minded puritanism.

This theme is at the heart of The Satanic Verses, as suggested by the questions posed near the beginning of the novel: “How does newness come into the world? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?” These questions are asked as the two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, fall from the sky above the English Channel after the hijacked plane they were travelling in is torn apart by explosives. Gibreel and Saladin are the only survivors but there is a price for this miracle. They both undergo a metamorphosis; Gibreel gains a halo while Saladin sprouts horns.

The story follows these two men as they grapple with these changes and explore themselves. In his memoir Joseph Anton, Rushdie states that his inspiration for the novel was the globalising world of modern times where migration and cultural rootlessness are norms rather than exceptions. The novel quotes Daniel Defoe on the plight of the devil, cast out of paradise and doomed to travel the world “without any certain abode.” This diabolic tragedy is treated by Rushdie with empathy as well as sympathy, for his own experiences inform the character of Saladin, whose transformation into a devil reflects his inauthenticity and rootlessness, his wearing of a mask to cover up the Indian heritage he is ashamed of and which he wishes to replace with an English identity. Rushdie says in his memoir that his sympathy is with the devil, as should be the case with all great poets, according to William Blake.

The novel’s protagonists are Indian-born Muslims. Saladin is a voiceover artist and an immigrant from Bombay to London whose shame about his Indian-ness and desire to be anglicised form the backdrop to a complex interrogation of what it means to be rootless and how migrants in a globalised world can find a sense of identity. Gibreel, meanwhile, is a legend of the Bombay movie scene whose recent health crisis has led him to lose his faith and travel to London to be with the woman he loves, Alleluia Cone. Famous for portraying Hindu gods on screen, Gibreel’s newfound archangelic nature sorely tests his mind—a newly godless man condemned to act as God’s (or is that Satan’s?) right hand on earth.

But both protagonists are hybrids who contain elements of the saintly and the diabolical. They both face challenges and crises of identity. Through them, Rushdie explores what it means to lose and then find one’s identity and what the true experience is of migrants whose rootlessness and existence in a foreign culture leads to a crisis of selfhood. The intermingling of elements—culture, language, religion—is celebrated, while the concept of purity in identity and culture is repudiated as too constricting.

Saladin reconciles with the father he thought he hated, accepts his Indian-ness, and begins to live authentically, while Gibreel’s end is much sadder. Rushdie celebrates the hybrid and the multifarious over the narrow-mindedness of those who wish to keep everyone in a straitjacket. Culture, civilisation, and identity mean, for Rushdie, open-mindedness and a rooted rootlessness; spiritual and intellectual strength arise from the hybrid while puritanism leads only to individual and collective suffering.

Rushdie himself has stated that these ideas are central to the book:

Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own … The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure … It is a love song to our mongrel selves.

The main narrative is interspersed with chapters devoted to parallel stories. Gibreel dreams of the prophet Mahound’s difficulties proselytizing for his new religion and his eventual triumph over those who laughed at him in Jahilia (Mecca?); he is drawn into the ambiguous recollections of a dying old woman whose past involves love and murder; a sinister imam, exiled in London, uses Gibreel’s power to revenge himself upon impurity and paganism; and Gibreel’s archangelic powers are used by a prophetess named Ayesha to convince an Indian village to go on a pilgrimage by foot to Mecca—and to part the Arabian Sea which stands in the way.

We are left to wonder if Gibreel was just insane, if the novel tells the sad story of a man’s mental decline. If so, did Saladin go mad, too? In which case, Gibreel, the archangel, was undone while the devil, Saladin, emerged triumphant and whole again to live authentically. When they fell from the sky the two men were physically and mentally intertwined, their bodies wrapped around each other. The hybrid nature of the two men is explored in great depth and with great beauty throughout the novel. Interconnection is explored with reference to contrasting concepts, such as love and hate, death and life, rebirth and reinvention, while Saladin’s experiences as an immigrant yearning to be accepted is an analysis of migration, change, and identity—and all the conflicts engendered thereby.

In the end, obsession with purity and rigidity give way to reconciliation and compromise; the colonial subject is freed from a mental oppression which says he is inferior; and hybridity is shown to be superior to purity, as epitomised by the sixteenth century Hamza-nama cloths which display, in the view of Saladin’s friend and lover Zeeny Vakil, “the eclectic, hybridized nature of the Indian artistic tradition…you could see the Persian miniature fusing with Kannada and Kerala painting styles, you could see Hindu and Muslim philosophy forming their characteristically late-Mughal synthesis.”

The Satanic Verses is critical of Islam, but not very. Mahound (Muhammad?) is presented as a secular leader who is slowly corrupted as his power grows (and whose supposed access to divinity is undermined by his companion, Salman the Persian, who notes the suspicious convenience of the archangel’s revelations to the prophet). But he is angelic in other ways—a freer of slaves and a man of principle willing to spare those who submit rather than just a warlord and temporizer. The book’s title relates to the historical episode in which Muhammad stated that some pagan goddesses could be brought into his new religion—an act which was quickly repudiated so as not to dilute the faith’s monotheism, and which Muhammad put down to being confounded by the devil masquerading as the archangel Gabriel.

In my reading, “the satanic verses” evoke human frailty rather than diabolical design. For Mahound they are a compromise, a way to ingratiate himself with the Jahilians and win new converts by accepting the existence of some lesser pagan goddesses; this is a secular, material tactic rather than an exercise in theology. For Gibreel, “the satanic verses” are the rhymes an embittered Saladin pours into his ears to turn him against Alleluia. Again: ambiguity, mixture, hybridity, and interconnectedness—good, evil, love, hate, death, life, compromise, and jealousy; all very human strengths and frailties.

“The satanic verses” is a phrase which also suggests hybridity because, as mentioned, they refer to Muhammad’s brief acceptance of pagan deities. The novel celebrates diversity and the multifaceted and so this mixing of paganism with Islam’s purity should be taken as the prime example of the beauty of hybridity. Why restrict oneself to narrow monotheism when there is so much colour and delight to be found in every tradition?

Ironically, life imitated art and Rushdie himself was transformed, like Saladin, into the devil; as he recounts in Joseph Anton (itself a remarkable and beautiful book and a cogent defence of freedom and literature), he was renamed “Satan Rushdy,” and his image was paraded by mobs to be scorned.

The greatest irony, though, is that a novel about the power of culture and literature and the superiority of expansiveness and mongrelisation to the narrow and the pure should itself become a focal point in the real-life battle between those things. As Christopher Hitchens put it at the time of the fatwa: “This is an all-out confrontation between the literal and the ironic mind.” This could describe the novel itself as well as the contest it aroused.

This is not a simple matter of West versus East (Rushdie would have much to say about such a simple demarcation), but a matter of civilisation versus barbarism, wherein the artists, secularists, writers, and reformers of all colours and creeds must make a united stand against the authoritarians and narrow-minded fundamentalists of all kinds and in all places, whether they be Islamists, righteous far-leftists for whom “dissent” means “impure,” windbag religious reactionaries, or white nationalists. On the latter group, recall Rushdie’s words, quoted above, on the strength and beauty of the hybrid compared to the weaknesses and fears of those who see change and mixing as a threat.

Baal the poet, an enemy of Mahound in the novel, sums up the writer’s task: “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” Once more, life imitates art—who better to epitomise this ideal than Rushdie himself? Who better than a great novelist with roots in multiple cultures to act as symbol of and warrior for freedom of expression, the power of literature, and the beauty of the multifaceted against the many enemies of those ideas?

Joseph Anton shows that Rushdie’s life and art are intimately jumbled up together—his was a family which encouraged rationalist criticism of the divine Qur’an and which venerated storytelling’s power to shape individuals and undermine tyrants. The family surname was changed to Rushdie by his father in honour of Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes, that ironic and rationalist philosopher of the Islamic medieval golden age who opposed religious literalism and narrow-mindedness. This is a fact of which Rushdie is proud—in his memoir he reflects that at least he was on the right side of the right war armed with the right name for the task. If there were such a thing as destiny, it seems that Salman Rushdie would have been chosen as liberty’s champion. But there is only the material universe populated with imperfect beings and Rushdie is one of them—no saint, but a dogged and humane defender of civilisation.

I said I would try not to focus on the external events surrounding Rushdie’s novel but the content and themes of the book are, in the end, inseparable from what happened after the book was published. Hybridity, irony, and interconnectedness once more, it seems—the fictional and the real intermingling and synthesising to form a powerful defence of openness and civility.

The Satanic Verses is therefore not only a work of astonishing beauty but also a foundational document in the fight for culture, openness, civilisation, and civility against those who wish to see those things stifled by narrow-minded faith-based puritanism. Salman Rushdie’s life and work remind us of the importance of this battle and the necessity of remaining staunch and unyielding in the task of defending civilisation against its enemies in whatever grotesque permutations they appear.

Source: Against Literalism—’The Satanic Verses’ Fatwa at 30

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People don’t see difference between multiculturalism, interculturalism: poll

2019/08/12 2 Comments

Largely, because the differences are small and nuanced. Both are policies that aim to facititate integration while recognizing identities, the major difference being that interculturalism makes explicit reference to integrating into Quebec francophone society whereas multiculturalism aims at integrating into either (or both) anglophone or francophone society:

Fully agree with Jack here. Debate is more semantics rather than substance:

Canadians, including Quebecers, do not see the difference between multiculturalism and interculturalism, a poll shows.

Even if Quebec’s Liberal youth wing this weekend will attempt to make interculturalism party policy, leading to an eventual provincial law should they take power, for most people it’s just semantics.

“People don’t understand this stuff and are not making the distinction,” said Jack Jedwab, president of Association for Canadian Studies, which commissioned the poll back in May.

“The Liberal youth will make no traction whatsoever on this. You are not going to distract people with academic rhetoric and lofty terminology to try and rebrand yourself.

“This is nothing more than intellectual camouflage. It’s a lot of semantics.”

According to the poll, conducted by Léger, relatively few Quebecers and other Canadians see the difference between the two concepts.

If you ask Quebecers their views of the terms, a total of 66.2 per cent they have a “very or somewhat positive,” perception of the term interculturalism.

But a total of 72.3 per cent also have “very or somewhat positive,” view of multiculturalism.

On the other hand, people who don’t like muliculturalism don’t like interculturalism either, the data reveals.

And whether the person is for multiculturalism or interculturalism, the views on immigration or issues like the wearing of the hijab (the Muslim head covering) are the same.

The data arrives just as the Liberal youth wing enters its annual summer policy convention in Quebec City this weekend.

Up for debate is a plan to ditch the concept of multiculturalism and pledge support for a plan to enshrine interculturalism in a law should the Liberals take power.

Interculturalism would become the guiding principle the government would use to welcome and integrate new arrivals.

While multiculturalism refers to a society in which people of different cultural backgrounds live side by side without much interaction, the youth say interculturalism would specify the existence of a francophone majority in Quebec.

Critics of the plan — which the youth hope will improve the party’s nationalistic branding in the eyes of francophones — have complained it would create a hierarchy of citizens and condemn minorities to assimilation.

The Léger poll is based on a web survey of 1,212 Quebecers 18 years or older. It was conducted from May 3 to May 7, which was before the youth wing made public their vision.

While the focus of the convention has been about multiculturalism, the youth wing also wants to pass a motion saying Quebec should write up its own constitution.

Part of that document should specify Quebec’s economy is green, the youth wing says.

Source: People don’t see difference between multiculturalism, interculturalism: poll

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Senior officials in Ottawa advised to focus on the majority to counter populism, documents show

2019/08/10 Leave a comment

So the centre is moving back to social cohesion and away from social inclusion?

Social cohesion was the term preferred by the Conservative government and was reflected in their greater emphasis on integration in a variety of policy areas, including multiculturalism and citizenship.

IMO, the two are intimately related, cohesion without inclusion is at best a mirage:

Newly released documents show senior government officials were advised to “bring the focus back to the majority” — instead of on diversity values — in public communications to counter the threat of populism in Canada.

The task force deputy ministers heard this idea during meetings last year looking at what the government could do to guard against a possible rise in extremism and populism domestically.

The group was told to encourage more public conversations and debate focused on “us” rather than “us-versus-them” narratives to foster “social cohesion.”

A briefing note prepared for the senior civil servants warned that if only “marginalized populations are considered,” the result would be that “others feel as if they do not matter.”

“Social cohesion must become a new lens of policymaking. In order to achieve this, the government needs to build connections across difference, foster greater empathy and bring the focus back to the majority (i.e. the middle groups),” officials wrote in the documents.

The suggestions originated from an international expert invited to speak to the deputy minister task force on diversity and inclusiveness in October 2018.

The Canadian Press obtained a copy of the presentation and other documents to the task force under the Access to Information Act.

Polarization in Canada

Tim Dixon, co-founder of the U.K.-based think-tank More in Common, told the task force that Canada is facing the same disruptive forces playing out in other countries that can fuel polarization and division — although Canada may be more resilient to these forces due to past successes in building an inclusive national identity.

He said polarization of opinion can cause some to become resentful of minority groups perceived to be getting special benefits, such as housing or social assistance, at others’ expense. These sentiments are most common among a majority of people who fit into a “middle group” category, marked by moderate views between the extremes of “cosmopolitans with open values” and “nationalists with closed values.”

That’s why Canada was advised to “build social solidarity” by avoiding pitting the interests of one group against another in public communications. Rather, Canada should “elevate the ‘more in common’ message and demonstrate the falsehood of narratives of division,” according to Dixon’s presentation.

The documents show that after the meeting, officials discussed ways the government could incorporate the advice into federal policy. One idea put forward was possibly using Canada’s school system, with its “massive integration power,” to educate and connect people in order to build more empathy and social cohesion, according to a summary of the discussion among deputies.

Focus on ‘shared values’

When it comes to future communications, deputy ministers stressed the need to “focus on shared values rather than diversity values when framing the social cohesion narrative,” the meeting summary says.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to have taken this advice to heart in his political messaging leading up to the federal election this October.

During a Liberal fundraising event last month, asked about countering populist sentiment in the campaign, Trudeau stressed the need to seek common ground and compromise among Canadians.

“We’ve always learned to listen to each other, find common ground figure out a way to move forward that brings people along,” Trudeau said at the July 18 event in Victoria.

“The idea is that we are a country of diversity, a country of a broad range of views and the responsibility we have is to try to bring those views together in a forward path. We can find things that Canadians understand are that right balance — and that, for me, is the counter to populism.”

Gesturing toward a group of pipeline protesters outside the event, Trudeau quipped that none of them was carrying signs promoting messages of compromise — a point he used to highlight that many of the loudest voices are on the peripheries and do not reflect the opinions of a majority of Canadians.

Social media are amplifying some of those voices, Trudeau added — another point echoed from the discussions and research studied by the task force.

Dixon’s presentation warned government officials they need to be mindful of how social media may distort data.

“The majority of people are not involved in the debate and do not like division, but it is those on social media who are most vocal and it could give disproportionate weight to certain issues.”

Source: Senior officials in Ottawa advised to focus on the majority to counter populism, documents show

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When Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin share billing with radical far-right figures, we should be concerned

2019/08/10 Leave a comment

May be some lessons here as well for CPC and PPC:

The Australian version of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicks off on Friday, continuing the long tradition here of conservative groups importing ideas, rather than generating them.

This weekend’s event is a branch-office version of the reliably wacky, but troublingly influential annual US conference. Among other things, CPAC is generally credited with launching Donald Trump’s career as a Republican political contender, after he was invited to speak there in 2011.

In the US, the conference offers a forum for hardline rightwing Republicans. Trump headlined again this year, but he was joined by YouTubers Diamond and Silk; former VP candidate Sarah Palin; anti-immigration Fox News host Laura Ingraham; high-profile evangelist Franklin Graham; and Turning Point USA honcho, Charlie Kirk.

But CPAC has sometimes had trouble in deciding which speakers and which ideas cross the line, as conservatives become more open to radical right ideas on race, multiculturalism and immigration. In recent years it has invited, then disinvited, groups like the conspiracist John Birch Society, and individuals like Milo Yiannopoulos.

The Australian version should make us wonder whether conservatives here, too, have trouble drawing a line around mainstream conservatism, and keeping more malevolent political currents at bay.

The problem is not that all of the speakers at CPAC are beyond the pale. Clearly, whatever leftwing people may think of him, former prime minister Tony Abbott could legitimately be expected to be on the platform at a conservative event. Same for former deputy prime minster, and current podcaster, John Anderson. Abbott’s closest adviser, Peta Credlin, now a conservative media star, is someone we would ordinarily expect also.

Australian conservatives are having trouble drawing a line between the mainstream and more malevolent politics?

Source: When Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin share billing with radical far-right figures, we should be concerned

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Trending in Politics Is California’s ethnic studies plan too politically correct even for California?

2019/08/10 Leave a comment

Would appear so on substantive grounds, by any objective manner:

As Americans grapple with shifts in culture and demographics, majority-minority California is developing a high school curriculum in ethnic studies, one of the first nationally. Not long ago — while managing his extracurriculars and winnowing his college choices — Eli Safaie-Kia, 17, found time to discover a draft of it.

Its contents were, in some ways, standard-issue: readings and projects aimed at fostering tolerance, offering non-traditional perspectives and helping a massive, multicultural populace better understand one another. But in other ways, the draft was confusing even to a Generation Z kid from a blue-state. For one, it presented Israel in a way that went heavy on Palestinian oppression and scarcely mentioned the Holocaust.

So unsettled was the Israeli-American teen by the California Department of Education’s proposed model curriculum, required by a 2016 law, that the Los Angeles high school senior fired off a comment to the department.  “I kinda came across the document,” he said, “and once I began reading through it, it was a little bit disturbing to see how one-sided some parts of the ethnic studies proposal was.”

Now, as the comment period for the draft approaches its Aug. 15 deadline, hundreds of complaints, suggestions and op-eds have posted, from conservatives who don’t like its depiction of capitalism as a “form of power and oppression,” to parents stumped by its academic jargon to no small number of Californians who, like Safaie-Kia, wonder why it says so little about anti-Semitism. A bill winding its way toward the governor’s desk (Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed an earlier version) would make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement.

The model curriculum is intended to serve as a guide for high schools in a state in which non-Hispanic whites represent only 42% of the population, and its proponents say it’s the logical next step for a state that has already adapted, more than most, to an increasingly diverse culture.

But as anti-immigrant rhetoric, violent white nationalism and rising hate crime roil the nation, the furor around it, even here, underscores how far even California has to go.

For example, some commenters have complained that the curriculum’s language, examples and tone are so left-leaning that they won’t work effectively in more conservative parts of California. “After reading this latest school curriculum twist to the left, it makes the decision much easier to go with charter schools and private education,” one critic commented this month.

Supporters of the draft say it’s time for students to learn about the U.S. through a lens often ignored by those in power.

“Sometimes people want to approach ethnic studies as just a superficial diversity class and that’s it,” said R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, a member of the advisory committeethat worked on the draft. “Ethnic studies is an academic field of over 50 years that has its own frameworks, its own academic language, its own understandings of how it approaches subjects and our world.”

He pointed to criticism of the draft that questions the curriculum’s repetition of academic jargon — words like misogynoir, cisheteropatriarchy and hxrstory.

“It seems to be fine for other academic disciplines to have their own academic language,” he said. “AP Chemistry for example has some very complex academic terms, difficult to pronounce, but it’s expected because it’s AP Chemistry.”

Colloquial language, Cuauhtin said, doesn’t always sufficiently express the nuances of race, ethnicity and society, and academic terminology can bridge that gap.

Also controversial, including among state lawmakers, is what the draft appears to have left out. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus submitted a letter to the department expressing its concerns:

“While the [model curriculum] specifies the importance of studying hate crimes, white supremacy, bias, prejudice and discrimination, and specifically discusses bias against other communities, it omits any meaningful discussion of antisemitism,” wrote the caucus.

Democratic Assemblyman Jose Medina of Riverside, the author of the bill making ethnic studies a graduation requirement, also signed the letter and is a member of the Jewish caucus. Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley and vice chair of the caucus, said he supports teaching ethnic studies in schools, but found the draft offensive.

“SOMETIMES PEOPLE WANT TO APPROACH ETHNIC STUDIES AS JUST A SUPERFICIAL DIVERSITY CLASS AND THAT’S IT. ETHNIC STUDIES IS AN ACADEMIC FIELD OF OVER 50 YEARS THAT HAS ITS OWN FRAMEWORKS.”

“Our caucus meetings tend to be relatively low-key but really across the board people were really really upset, really disturbed by the model curriculum and by the way it treats the Jewish community,” he said. “It really reflects an anti-Jewish bias. It’s pretty outrageous that it omits anti-Semitism.”

The draft’s glossary lists other forms of bigotry like islamophobia and xenophobia. “It’s really hard to understand how that could possibly happen given everything that’s going on in the world given the statistics about the dramatic increase in anti-Semitic violence,” Gabriel said.

Earlier this year a report released by the Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center found that anti-Semitic violence has increased around the world. In April, a gunman opened fire in the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. One woman was killed and three others were injured.

Critics also say the draft takes a one-sided approach to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which calls for countries to sever ties with Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The draft’s glossary defines BDS as a “global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.” Gabriel, the Democratic assemblyman, called the definition  “one-sided propaganda” and said the draft appeared to bend over backwards to include BDS.

“If you’re going to get into issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — I don’t know why that would be something you’d do in an American Ethnic Studies course — then do it in a way … that’s inclusive and presents perspectives that young people could do critical thinking about these issues,” said Gabriel, adding that he understands the draft will go through multiple revisions. But he said the caucus was also concerned with the draft’s inclusion of a song stating that Israelis “use the press so they can manufacture,” perpetuating an anti-Semitic trope.

The portrayal of Israel was what prompted Safaie-Kia, the Los Angeles teenager, to share a public comment.

“Being a proud Californian and Israeli-American, I would never want to feel hated or discriminated against at my public school, and the inclusion of anti-Israel bias in curriculum would threaten my safety as a minority student,” he wrote.

Stephanie Gregson, the Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction said the draft currently posted will look very different after review by the Instructional Quality Commission in September. The department is recommending edits and the commission will consider those edits at the meeting.

She said while public comment is posted as open until August 15, people can send comments to ethnicstudies@cde.ca.gov anytime throughout the process, which will continue until January or March of next year. She added that the department is aware of concerns.

Cuauhtin, a committee member who helped create the draft, said the draft is a work in progress, and he agrees that it should say more about anti-Semitism as a form of oppression.

“Given our time constraints, the limited parameters we were given to work with and the public comments we received at the time, I’m proud of our work,” he said in an interview with CalMatters. “If we were still meeting today with the public comments that have been received since, I’m confident there would be some changes made.”

Incoming 12th-grader Safaie-Kia said he has confidence in California to come up with a lesson plan for the diverse demographics that are spreading to the rest of the country. The U.S. Census has determined that, by 2060, America will, like California, be majority-minority.

“As a state I think that we really excel in trying to promote a sense of large community and we are a humongous state and it is difficult,” he said.

“But I think pieces like this curriculum, if done correctly, can really help make such a big state feel like a big community instead of such a place where people aren’t friends with their neighbors or people aren’t connected to someone who may live 300 miles away from them.”

Source: Trending in Politics Is California’s ethnic studies plan too politically correct even for California?

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Move to introduce Arabic script in Malaysian schools upsets non-Malay groups

2019/08/09 Leave a comment

Of interest:
Malaysia’s move to introduce Arabic script in the Malay language syllabus for primary school has upset non-Malay groups and stirred fears of creeping Islamisation in the racially diverse country.

Tamil and Chinese educationist groups on Monday (Aug 5) said they would meet Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching on the plan to teach Malay-Arabic calligraphy, also known as Jawi or “khat” writing, as part of the Bahasa Melayu subject. The language is currently taught and written using Roman script, but was in the past commonly written in Jawi.

“We are not against the multicultural elements in the country nor are we against Jawi script or the Malay language. We feel with the new syllabus, the teachers and the students will carry a huge burden on their back,” the groups said after meeting at the headquarters of Chinese educationist group Dong Zong.

The Education Ministry’s announcement last week that it would include “khat” in the Year 4 syllabus for 10-year-olds next year has led to a barrage of criticism, with some lamenting that children are being overburdened, and other saying it is a way of Islamising young minds.

A total of 138 officials and assemblymen from the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP), which is part of the ruling Pakatan Harapan coalition, have publicly opposed the plan and urged ministers from the party to do the same.

But DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang warned Malaysians on Monday that the divisive discourse was a political ploy.

“We must be careful not to fall into the trap of conspirators who want to pit race against race, religion against religion to arouse suspicion, distrust and hatred in our plural society to regain political power,” he said in a statement.

Over the weekend, he defended the proposal, saying that he had taught himself Jawi while detained in prison under the Internal Security Act in 1969.

“It did not make me any less of a Chinese, and may have helped in making me more of a Malaysian,” he said.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said last Saturday that the plan would go ahead, noting that the government has never objected to other forms of writing including in Chinese.

The move to add six pages on khat and Jawi in textbooks for all students, including in vernacular schools, had been planned since 2014 as part of a revamp of the syllabus and was meant to “inculcate the values of the legacy of the Malay language and national identity”, the Education Ministry said.

Jawi script can be seen across the country on road signs, state emblems and ringgit notes, and was once taught in schools. Malay students currently learn it as part of Islamic studies.

Education Minister Maszlee Malik has denied that the move is aimed at Islamisation of vernacular schools, where the medium of instruction is Mandarin or Tamil. These schools are largely attended by non-Malays, whereas the Malay-Muslim community mainly attend national type schools where the medium of instruction is Malay.

Deputy Minister Teo has received some 36,000 comments to her Facebook post on the issue, many of which expressed unhappiness. One parent, upset that the DAP has not taken a stronger stance against the move, threw eggs at the party’s office in Perak.

The backlash has also caused tensions to rise among the Malays. On Monday, Mr Ismail Sabri Yaakob, vice-president of opposition party Umno said: “Don’t make Malays question the rights given to the Chinese such as Chinese schools… I am warning Dong Zong, Jiao Zong and DAP, enough is enough!” Jiao Zong is another Chinese educationist group.

Professor James Chin, director of the Asia Institute Tasmania, University of Tasmania, said that there is already a section on Jawi, Chinese and Tamil calligraphy in Year 4 Bahasa Melayu textbooks for vernacular schools.

The uproar shows that “there is a lot of suspicion over Maszlee and the Education Ministry trying to Islamise the schoolchildren,” he said, adding that the issue had become “so politicised”.

Source:  Move to introduce Arabic script in Malaysian schools upsets non-Malay groups

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Time to shake things up in battered Liberal Party, says youth wing

2019/08/09 Leave a comment

Kind of ironic when most polls indicate, certainly in Montreal, a decline in the importance of the identity issue.

Along with the typical or deliberate misunderstanding of multiculturalism; which I repeat and continually will do so, is about integration: linguistic, social and economic while recognizing identities, all in the context of Canadian laws and regulations:

Quebec’s Liberal youth wing is proposing the party ditch the concept of multiculturalism in its vision of society as a way of reconnecting with the francophone majority.

Releasing a package of resolutions they say should orient the party in its rebuilding process, youth wing president Stéphane Stril said the Liberal party needs a major political shakeup.

The party needs to draw conclusions from its stinging electoral defeat in 2018 and emerge more progressive, more nationalistic and more active in asserting Quebec’s place in the federation, Stril told reporters at a Quebec City news conference Wednesday.

It should hop on the environmental bandwagon and make fighting climate change priority one should it take power in 2022.

And it should not shy away from the identity issue, which the Coalition Avenir Québec milked with great success in the 2018 election campaign and brought it to power.

“We want the Liberal party to incarnate civic nationalism which would not be based on belonging to an ethnic group but would be a political project, a culture, a language,” Stril said, adding a new Quebec constitution could incarnate the vision.

The Liberals say while the CAQ’s approach to the question amounted to a debate on religious symbols and stirring up fear of others, they believe there are better ways to ensure that Quebec’s identity and culture flourish in the North American context.

If the Liberals form the next Quebec government, they should adopt a law enshrining the concept of interculturalism as its model of choice for integrating new arrivals.

While multiculturalism is often used to refer to a society where people of different cultural backgrounds live side by side without necessarily much real interaction, the youth wing defines interculturalism as recognizing the existence of a francophone majority in Quebec along with the right to individual freedoms.

It would state the best path for immigrants is to learn French and actively interact and exchange with the majority.

“This common culture must serve as a pedestal for the integration of new arrivals,” the youth say in a document released at the news conference.

Although the federal Liberals see the concept of multiculturalism as central to their vision of Canada, Quebec’s Liberals and other provincial political parties have never been hot on the idea.

The Liberal youth wing notes former Liberal leader Robert Bourassa distanced himself from the concept while he was in charge, arguing that such a passive approach was not the best way to protect Quebec’s language and culture in North America.

The youth plan — if adopted at the annual convention this weekend in Quebec City — will become part of a wider debate as the Liberals attempt to reboot after suffering their worst electoral defeat in their 152-year history.

The Liberals want to dip into the identity issue as a way to woo francophone voters living outside the Montreal region. In the last election, nearly all the seats the Liberals won were in Montreal.

But hovering in the background all weekend will be questions about who will actually lead the party. The Liberals currently have no leader since Philippe Couillard resigned after the electoral defeat.

The only declared candidate so far is St-Henri—Ste-Anne MNA Dominique Anglade, who announced plans in June to seek the top job

Her potential opponents Marwah Rizqy (St-Laurent), Marie Montpetit (Maurice-Richard) and Gaétan Barrette (La-Pinière) are considering running for the top job but have yet to announce.

In May, the Liberals decided to elect their new leader in the spring of 2020, in time for the next provincial election.

All the potential candidates are expected to turn up for the Liberal youth wing event being held on the campus of Université Laval Saturday and Sunday. The event will wind up with a speech by interim Liberal party leader Pierre Arcand.

Source: Time to shake things up in battered Liberal Party, says youth wing

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Newcomers can ‘no longer find products’ previously available at the Real Canadian Superstore

2019/08/09 Leave a comment

On the scale of challenges and problems faced by newcomers, this is pretty low.

In our experience in Ottawa 20 years ago, when ethnic foodstuff selection was much more limited then now, ethnic grocery stores were the place to go to get the foods we liked.

More expensive, yes, but also supporting a local shopkeeper:

It’s been a few months since the international aisle at the Real Canadian Superstore in Thunder Bay, Ont., made some noticeable changes  — ones that have had “negative effects” on some newcomers to Canada, according to a teacher at the Thunder Bay Multicultural Association.

The retail giant has stopped carrying a number of international products that were previously available; for example, red pepper paste.

“The students have mentioned that they can no longer find products that they were previously able to find in the Superstore and they do try to go elsewhere to look for the product, but aren’t always successful,” said KaeDee Stein, a teacher in the multicultural association’s Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada school.

Stein teaches English to newcomers, immigrants and refugees who come to Canada with “no English language knowledge,” and know very little about their new home. She added that it’s “unfortunate” that the Superstore, a division of Loblaw Companies Limited, no longer carries a lot of the products that the newcomers she teaches were previously able to find.

“For the English language learners who don’t know how to speak English, how to communicate what they want and are essentially alien to another country and are already feeling helpless … they don’t feel as independent as they used to,” Stein said.

She said it’s “upsetting and confusing” to them and, with language barriers and the other challenges of living in a foreign country, not being able to cook some of the dishes they are accustomed to has made “life even more difficult.”

“A lot of cultures take so much pride in their food,” she added. “So when they don’t know how to do that anymore, their confidence goes down and their level of independence goes down.”

A ‘bad problem’ for newcomers and refugees

Khalil Ali has called Canada, specifically Thunder Bay, his home for the past three years. Fleeing from Syria in September 2016, Ali said not being able to buy the products previously available at the Superstore has become a “bad problem for newcomers.”

He said the last time he shopped at the Superstore he asked the manager if they could bring back some of the items that had been removed, but he was told that many of the international products that the retailer carried were “[left on the] shelf for a long time,” and “nobody bought them.”

Ali said he used to purchase a specific type of rice and sauce at the Superstore — a product he has trouble describing in English — which makes it harder for him, and others, to search for it at other stores.

He said he’s found some items at Bulk Barn, but at a higher cost.

“Everywhere it’s more expensive than Superstore,” he added, saying that the same product he used to buy at the retail giant for $5 now costs him almost $7 at other retailers.

“It is making problems for me,” he said.

CBC News contacted Thunder Bay Superstore management and subsequently received an emailed response from the Loblaw public relations department, saying that its stores base the items available in their multicultural sections “on the demographics of the community around a particular store,” in order to “reflect the needs of that specific community.”

“As an example, at the Real Canadian Superstore in Thunder Bay, where there is a significant East Asian and South Asian population, we place a greater emphasis on authentic South Asian and East Asian items in the international aisle.”

Company officials added they “value our customers’ feedback and are always looking to improve, to meet our customers’ needs.”

“If there’s something we’re missing, we encourage customers to let us know so that we can look into sourcing the product, to the best of our ability. “

Source: Newcomers can ‘no longer find products’ previously available at the Real Canadian Superstore

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Imam banned from preaching at Edmonton community centre

2019/08/08 2 Comments

Of note, both the initial offence and the Muslim community response:

A community centre in Edmonton has banned a local imam from holding services there because he allegedly used anti-Semitic tropes in his services and online.

The Killarney Community League Hall banned Sheikh Shaban Sherif Mady from using their space to hold services after B’nai Brith alerted the community centre to Imam Mady’s rhetoric, including claims that international Zionism is behind all global terrorism, including ISIS and the New Zealand shooter, and that the Muslims will kill the Jews on Judgment Day.

Aidan Fishman of B’nai Brith said the police are “dutifully investigating” the matter. He also said B’nai Brith has been in contact with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council (AMPAC).

“They’re aware of this and they, like I’m sure the vast majority of Muslims in Alberta and in Edmonton, have communicated to us that they totally disagree with what this guy said and they condemn it as well,” he said.

Faisal Suri of AMPAC confirmed that AMPAC condemned Shekih Mady’s speeches and online posts. He said AMPAC recognizes both anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia, as they affect two of the biggest communities most harmed by hatred and discrimination.

“We definitely condemn the words of this one individual. One individual’s actions and words do not reflect upon the Muslim community,” Suri said.

He also added that AMPAC is investigating Sheikh Mady, and whether other individuals hold similar views. He said the counci is working to prevent the imam from having any public platforms to advance his views.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

White Terrorism Shows ‘Stunning’ Parallels to Islamic State’s Rise

2019/08/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Many scholars of terrorism see worrying similarities between the rise of the Islamic State and that of white nationalist terrorism, seen most recently in the carnage in El Paso, Tex.

“The parallels are stunning,” said Will McCants, a prominent expert in the field.

And they are growing more notable with each new attack.

Experts say that the similarities are far from a coincidence. White nationalist terrorism is following a progression eerily similar to that of jihadism under the leadership of the Islamic State, in ways that do much to explain why the attacks have suddenly grown so frequent and deadly.

In both, there is the apocalyptic ideology that predicts — and promises to hasten — a civilizational conflict that will consume the world. There is theatrical, indiscriminate violence that will supposedly bring about this final battle, but often does little more than grant the killer a brief flash of empowerment and win attention for the cause.

There are self-starter recruits who, gathering in social media’s dark corners, drive their own radicalization. And for these recruits, the official ideology may serve simply as an outlet for existing tendencies toward hatred and violence.

Differences between white nationalists and the Islamic State remain vast. While Islamic State leaders leveraged their followers’ zeal into a short-lived government, the new white nationalism has no formal leadership at all.

“I think a lot of people working on online extremism saw this coming,” said J.M. Berger, author of the book “Extremism,” and a fellow with VOX-Pol, a group that studies online extremism, referring to the similarities between white nationalism and the Islamic State.

In retrospect, it is not hard to see why.

The world-shaking infamy of the Islamic State has made it a natural model even — perhaps especially — for extremists who see Muslims as enemies.

A set of global changes, particularly the rise of social media, has made it easy for any decentralized terrorist cause to drift toward ever-grander, and evermore nonsensical, violence.

“Structurally, it didn’t matter whether those extremists were jihadists or white nationalists,” Mr. Berger said.

White nationalism in all forms has been on the rise for some years. Its violent fringe was all but certain to rise as well.

The feedback loop of radicalization and violence, once triggered, can take on a terrible momentum all its own, with each attack boosting the online radicalization and doomsday ideology that, in turn, drive more attacks.

The lessons are concerning. It is nearly impossible to eradicate a movement animated by ideas and decentralized social networks. Nor is it easy to prevent attacks when the perpetrators’ ideology makes nearly any target as good as the next, and requires little more training or guidance than opening a web forum.

And global changes that played a role in allowing the rise of the Islamic State are only accelerating, Mr. Berger warned — changes like the proliferation of social networks.

“When you open up a vast new arena for communication, it’s a vector for contagion,” he said.

The nihilism that increasingly defines global terrorism first emerged in the sectarian caldron of American-occupied Iraq.

A washed-up criminal from Jordan, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, exploited the chaos brought by the American-led invasion to slaughter occupiers and Iraqi Muslims alike, circulating videos of his deeds.

Al Qaeda, for all its religious claims, had, like most terrorist groups, killed civilians in pursuit of worldly goals like an American withdrawal from the Middle East.

But Mr. Zarqawi seemed driven by sadism, a thirst for fame and an apocalyptic ideology that he is thought to have only vaguely grasped.

Al Qaeda objected, fearing he would alienate the Muslim world and distract from jihadism’s more concrete goals.

Mr. Zarqawi instead proved so popular among jihadist recruits that Al Qaeda let him fight under its name. After his death, his group re-emerged as the Islamic State.

His group’s unlikely rise hinted at a new approach to terrorism — and sheds light on why white nationalist terrorism is converging on similar beliefs and practices.

Most terrorists are not born wishing to kill. They have to be groomed. Where past terrorist groups had appealed to the political aspirations and hatreds of its recruits, Mr. Zarqawi’s found ways to activate a desire for bloodshed itself.

The American-led invasion of Iraq had seemed, for many Middle Easterners, to turn the world upside down. Mr. Zarqawi and later the Islamic State, instead of promising to turn it right side up, offered an explanation: The world was rushing toward an end-of-days battle between Muslims and infidels.

In that world, Mr. McCants wrote in 2015, “the apocalyptic recruiting pitch makes more sense.”

This gave the group justification for attacks that otherwise made little strategic sense, like killing dozens of fellow Muslims out shopping, which it said would help usher in the apocalypse foretold in ancient prophecy.

Because the attacks were easier to carry out, almost anyone could execute their own and feel like a true soldier in the glorious cause.

Jihadism retained its core political agenda. But the things that made the Islamic State’s form of terrorism so infectious also made it less strategically rational.

With an ideology that said anyone could kill for the movement and that killing was its own reward, much of the violence took on a momentum of its own.

That, some scholars say, is what appears to be happening now with the extreme wings of the white nationalist movement rising globally.

Seeing a Global Race War

The ideological tracts, recruiting pitches and radicalization tales of the Islamic State during its rise echo, almost word-for-word, those of the white nationalist terrorists of today.

For the latter, the world is said to be careening toward a global race war between whites and nonwhites.

“The Camp of the Saints,” a bizarre 1973 French novel that has since become an unofficial book of prophecy for many white nationalists, describes a concerted effort by nonwhite foreigners to overwhelm and subjugate Europeans, who fight back in a genocidal race war.

So-called manifestoes left by the terrorist attackers at Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex., have warned of this coming war too. They also say their attacks were intended to provoke more racial violence, hastening the fight’s arrival.

Radicalization requires little more than a community with like-minded beliefs, said Maura Conway, a terrorism scholar at Dublin City University. While white backlash to social and demographic change is nothing new, social media has allowed whites receptive to the most extreme version to find one another.

Mr. Berger, in his research, found that these deadly messages, which have had mixed success in traditional propaganda channels in all but the most dire historical moments, can spread like wildfire on social media.

He termed the message one of “temporal acceleration” — the promise that an adherent could speed up time toward some inevitable endpoint by committing violence. And the “apocalyptic narratives,” he found, exploit social media’s tendency to amplify whatever content is most extreme.

As with the Islamic State’s calls for mass murder, this worldview has resonated among young men, mostly loners, who might have previously expressed little ideological fervor or experienced much hardship. It offered them a way to belong and a cause to participate in.

And, much like the Islamic State had found, social media gave white extremists a venue on which to post videos of their exploits, where they would go viral, setting off the cycle again.

In 2015, Mr. Berger wrote that the Islamic State had been “the first group to employ these amplifying tactics on social media.” But, he added, “it will not be the last.”

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , ,

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