Yee: Journalism has a racism problem

2019/05/27 Leave a comment

To a certain extent, understandable that j-schools are still overly older white men given historical demographics but that will continue to change over time.

I was unable to easily locate national statistics on the number of journalism graduates broken down by gender and visible minority to see if part of the issue is that visible minorities are less likely to select journalism than other programs, which may also reflect the financial difficulties facing the industry.

A more useful analysis would take a look at all j-schools in terms of their teaching staff and student body to assess the extent that Carleton is the norm or not (suspect it is with respect to teaching staff but perhaps less so with respect to the student body):

Arvin Joaquin, of Carleton University’s master of journalism program, graduated in 2018 and published a radio piece on the lack of diversity in j-schools. Just weeks ago, Atong Ater, another grad student, wrote for CBC about racism she faced as a black student in the program.

In the classroom, students are facing racism and microaggressions that impact their lives and studies, be it while pitching a story about a racialized community, or being tokenized amongst their peers. This not only affects training grounds for the industry, but also the quality and content of journalism we see in national publications.

Sunny Dhillon of the Globe and Mail wrote about leaving the paper last fall in his piece, Journalism While Brown and When to Walk Away. Dhillon was assigned a story about the aftermath of the Vancouver municipal election — nine white bodies out of 10 were elected to represent a city where Asians represent 45 per cent of the population. He left when he was told to focus on the eight white women elected instead.

Journalism is touted as uncovering the truth and giving a voice to those unheard. But those within the very institution say they feel stifled.

When journalism and journalism schools ignore the existence of racism, we get untold stories, bias and inaccurate information. Leaving racism unchallenged, wrote journalist Andray Domise for Maclean’s, is allowing the political climate of white nationalism to flourish.

From a glance at Carleton’s School of Journalism website, about seven of its 60 staff are visibly people of colour. But instructors carrying heavy seniority and leading major courses continue to be older white men.

Racism is in post-secondary institutions where education is even greater of a privilege — it was only recently that Carleton journalism student Temur Durrani wrote about black students on campus experiencing racial profiling.

The bylines of the Ottawa Citizen itself are mainly of white journalists, meaning stories in the city are still being shared from similar perspectives.

What stories are going unheard? Under the editor-in-chief leadership of a woman of colour at University of Ottawa’s student paper, The Fulcrum, journalists unearthed pieces about accessing mental health care as a racialized person, as well as an initiative offering courses on Punjabi and the Sikh diaspora.

The school of journalism is a microcosm of a larger issue that Carleton University, newsrooms and society needs to address as a whole. In the meantime? Create a task force. Hire an equity officer. Initiate ongoing anti-racism training for all instructors and journalists. Do more so that your racialized students, staff and sources aren’t left behind.

Source: Yee: Journalism has a racism problem

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Huawei Temporarily Suspends Israeli Employees With US Citizenship

2019/05/25 Leave a comment

More fall-out expected:

The US boycott of Huawei is creating shockwaves in Israel as well. On Sunday, one of the company’s Israeli employees was turned away from the company’s local research and development subsidiary, after being told he was temporarily being barred due to his American citizenship, according to one person familiar with the matter who spoke to Calcalist on condition of anonymity. The employee in question is one of several Israeli employees with US citizenship, and all were temporarily suspended with pay while the Chinese telecom giant consulted legal sources on whether they could continue their employment.

By Monday, all were back at work.

According to information obtained by Calcalist, the policy was not Israel-specific but was implemented by Huawei globally wherever it has employees of American nationality.

On Thursday, the US stepped up its campaign against Huawei when the US Department of Commerce added the company to a list of companies considered a threat to national security. The new classification means Huawei will now need permission to acquire any US-made technology. Soon after, Google and chipmakers Intel, Qualcomm, and Broadcom announced they would stop providing services and selling products to Huawei.

Amid a wave of hot and dry weather, nine fires were caused in southern Israel on Wednesday by incendiary devices launched…

The move will prevent Huawei from providing security updates for its Android devices, and from selling devices with access to Google’s app store in the future. It will also limit Huawei’s ability to purchase processors and chips for its devices.

The US boycott, however, will affect more than just the Chinese telecom. Huawei is one of the three largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, and the only one of the three seeing accelerated growth. Losing Huawei as a customer will mean losing revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. While it might be a temporary loss — as long as the American boycott lasts — it could turn permanent if Huawei manages to create alternative supply avenues.

Huawei has two separate operations in Israel. The first, under the name Toga Networks, is a research and development outpost operational since 2009. While the company has been reported to be a Huawei subsidiary since 2012, it ignored media reports and only admitted to its Chinese connections in 2016. Toga currently employs several dozen people, down from 200 at its peak, and develops telecom products such as switches and routers and also various applications for cloud-based databases.

Huawei also has a local marketing subsidiary under the name Huawei Israel, set up over the last year. The company previously operated via a local franchisee.

Source: Huawei Temporarily Suspends Israeli Employees With US Citizenship

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How The Fight For Religious Freedom Has Fallen Victim To The Culture Wars

2019/05/24 Leave a comment

Yet another effect of increased polarization, even if issues related to the balance of religious freedom and other rights is often not straighforward:

The promotion of religious freedom in America, a cause that not long ago had near unanimous support on Capitol Hill, has fallen victim to the culture wars.

A high point came in 1993, when Congress overwhelmingly passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, meant to overturn a Supreme Court decision that limited Americans’ right to exercise their religion freely.

Those days are gone. The consensus surrounding religious freedom issues has been weakened by deep disputes over whether Americans should be free to exercise a religious objection to same sex marriage or artificial contraception and whether the U.S. Constitution mandates strict church-state separation.

“It is more difficult to get a broad coalition on religious freedom efforts now,” says Holly Hollman, general counsel at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “People have a bad taste in their mouth about what they think the other side thinks of religious freedom.”

“It’s a divisive issue,” says Todd McFarland, associate general counsel at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, a denomination historically known for its advocacy of religious freedom. “For a long time in the country we kept it down to a dull roar. When that’s no longer possible, it’s a problem.”

The religious freedom question could arise again in the months ahead, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to take new cases that involve the limits on Americans’ religious rights.

In theory, the commitment to religious freedom is straightforward. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Most of the attention, especially in recent decades, has focused on the “free exercise” clause. An important case involved Adele Sherbet, a Seventh-day Adventist, who was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays and then denied unemployment benefits. In a 1963 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Sherbet’s free exercise right had been violated.

In a 1990 decision, however, the Court significantly narrowed the Sherbet precedent, ruling against a Native American man, Alfred Smith, who was dismissed from his job because he had illegally ingested peyote as part of a religious ritual.

The Court’s Smith ruling met with bipartisan outrage in the U.S. Congress and led to passage of the RFRA legislation. Among the sponsors was a first-term liberal Democrat from New York, Jerrold Nadler.

“Unless the Smith decision is overturned,” Nadler argued on the House floor, “the fundamental right of all Americans to keep the Sabbath, observe religious dietary laws, to worship as their consciences dictate, will remain threatened.” The bill passed the House unanimously and was approved in the Senate by a vote of 97-3.

Religious freedom politicized

In the years since, however, the religious freedom cause has been politicized, with conservatives claiming it for their purposes and liberals shying away from it for reasons of their own.

When liberals started pushing for expanded protections for the LGBT population, conservatives grew alarmed, arguing that practices such as same-sex weddings go against biblical teaching. They’ve argued that religious freedom should mean they can’t be forced to accommodate something they don’t believe in. Liberals portrayed that stance simply as discriminatory and argued it should be illegal.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, made the issue a major theme of his campaign when he ran for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

“We’re a nation that was founded on religious liberty,” Cruz told an interviewer, “and the liberal intolerance we see trying to persecute those who as a matter of faith follow a biblical definition of marriage is fundamentally wrong.”

When the conservative Heritage Foundation celebrated the 25th anniversary of the RFRA passage earlier this year, the organization’s president, Kay Cole James, blamed “the left” for the erosion of the original consensus.

“I wish we could get that kind of bipartisan support today,” she said. “The political left has actively worked to undercut our freedoms.”

Religious freedom and discrimination

As conservatives focused the religious freedom debate narrowly around issues of sexuality and marriage, progressives doubled down on the promotion of LGBT rights. The Democrat-controlled House this month approved the “Equality Act,” which would prohibit virtually all discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. One provision actually singles out the RFRA law, prohibiting its use as a defense against discrimination allegations.

Rep. Nadler, having originally been a RFRA backer, co-sponsored the new “Equality” legislation as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“Religion is no excuse for discrimination in the public sphere, as we have long recognized when it comes to race, color, sex, and national origin,” Nadler argued in a committee markup hearing, “and it should not be an excuse when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

When the bill came up on the House floor, another co-sponsor, Democrat Bobby Scott of Virginia, explained why it may seem that progressives have turned cool on the Religious Freedom act.

“RFRA was originally enacted to serve as a safeguard for religious freedom,” he said, “but recently it’s been used a sword, to cut down the civil rights of too many individuals.”

Some traditional advocates of religious freedom issues are dismayed by how the debate has evolved among both conservatives and liberals.

“When you [tell people] you work for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, they want to know, ‘What kind of religious liberty?'” says Hollman. She is evenhanded in her assessment of responsibility for the breakdown of bipartisan sentiment around the issue.

“It is unfortunate that some on the right will use religious freedom in order to advance a particular partisan issue,” she says. “I think it is problematic on the left to cede arguments about religious freedom, to just say, ‘Oh, people will use that now to advance an anti-LGBT perspective.’ These are tough issues to work on, and religious freedom should not take the fall.”

Fired for observing the Sabbath

One current religious freedom case, in fact, is similar to those that led to the court fights of the last century. In 2005, a Seventh-day Adventist named Darrell Patterson interviewed for a trainer job at Walgreens in Orlando, Fla.

“I was completely up front with them that I observed the Sabbath and that the Sabbath was important to me,” Patterson told NPR.

He got the job, and six years passed without a problem. But one Friday afternoon he was told to report to work the next morning.

“The Sabbath is a beautiful, beautiful day,” Patterson said, explaining why working Saturdays is for him unthinkable. “If you were to come to my house on the Sabbath, you would find that our house is in order. There is a peaceful, serene atmosphere. My wife and my family spend time in prayer. We sing hymns together.”

Patterson skipped work that Saturday. When he went in the following Monday, he was called into a supervisor’s office and told that he was fired.

He sued.

In a statement to NPR, Walgreens says it is “committed to respecting and accommodating the religious practices of its employees” and “reasonably accommodated” Patterson’s requested scheduling, but that doing more would have imposed “an undue hardship on our business.” The Eleventh Circuit court ruled in favor of Walgreens, but Patterson is appealing.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to hear the case and revisit, yet again, the question of what religious freedom means.

McFarland from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is tracking the case closely. He expects Patterson to be broadly supported, but he also recognizes that the politics around religious freedom issues have shifted in recent decades.

“One of the most unfortunate things is that religious liberty has become the issue of one party,” he says. “For Democrats, it’s viewed as a divisive issue, especially in a primary context. [They say] ‘how is this going to help me?’ They used to feel that being on the right side of religious liberty was an important value, and they don’t anymore.”

Like the Baptist Joint Committee, however, the Seventh-day Adventists fault Republicans and Democrats alike for the politicization of religious freedom issues in recent years. The Adventists are bothered by the apparent reluctance of Republicans to embrace the “establishment’ clause in the First Amendment, barring government from endorsing a religion. Conservatives have pushed for prayer and Bible readings in public schools and government funding for some religious institutions. Some have even suggested the United States be identified as a Christian nation.

“We have a strong interest in having a vigorous establishment clause,” McFarland says. “That’s something evangelicals and other conservative churches historically have not been as interested in. We are not trying to see the U.S. government impose any type of ideology. We have concerns about that. We have long believed that government and church need to stay in their separate spheres.”

The Adventists’ support for the establishment clause has allied them on various occasions with the American Civil Liberties Union, an unlikely partnership for other conservative Christian denominations.

The two parts of the freedom of religion provision in the First Amendment are sometimes seen as conflicting: Is the government in favor of religion or against it? But traditional American religious freedom advocates say the two clauses can also be read as complementary: The free exercise of religion is guaranteed only if it applies to all faiths. That can happen only if government does not take sides.

In Orlando, Fla., Darrell Patterson went back to school after being fired from Walgreens. He is now working as a mental health therapist. His campaign for the right to rest on the Sabbath, now possibly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, no longer has to do with his own work situation.

“It’s about other people that are going to come after me,” Patterson says “that deserve to be able to practice their religious faith and conviction without putting their livelihoods in jeopardy.”

Source: How The Fight For Religious Freedom Has Fallen Victim To The Culture Wars

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

UN human rights observers warn Quebec about secularism bill

2019/05/24 Leave a comment

While I agree with the concerns, not sure how credible it will appear given the significant UN members who do not respect religious freedoms and have rigid dress codes that apply to women in particular:

High-ranking human rights monitors with the United Nations are concerned the Quebec government will violate fundamental freedoms if it moves ahead with legislation to limit where religious symbols can be worn.

Three UN legal experts, known as rapporteurs, signed and sent a letter written in French last week to the Canadian mission in Geneva. They asked the diplomats to share the letter with Quebec’s Legislature.

The letter says the province’s so-called secularism bill, which the Coalition Avenir Québec government is rushing to pass by next month, threatens freedoms protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“We are particularly concerned … about consequences for those people susceptible to being disadvantaged or excluded from a job or public position because of the potential effects of the proposed law,” the letter reads.

Tabled in March, Bill 21 will bar public teachers, government lawyers and police officers from wearing religious symbols at work. It will also require government services to be received without religious garments covering the face.)

The bill has already attracted widespread criticism from minority groups and anti-racism advocates in Quebec, who fear it will, among other things, significantly limit work opportunities for Muslim women.

The Quebec government maintains the legislation is moderate and represents the desires of a majority in the province.

But according to the UN observers, if passed, the bill could violate rights to freedom of conscience and religion, as well as a number of equality guarantees contained in the covenant.

‘Extremely inappropriate’

The letter also notes the bill doesn’t define what a religious symbol is, adding that it would be “extremely inappropriate” for a government to decide whether a symbol is religious or not.

Critics of the bill, including several teachers unions, highlighted this point repeatedly during the six days of legislative hearings that wrapped up last week.

It is unclear, for instance, whether the Star of David is a religious or political symbol.)

The letter goes on to take issue with the requirement that government services be received with an uncovered face, a measure that singles out Muslim women who wear the niqab.

“The bill constitutes a restriction, or limitation, of the freedom to express religion or belief,” the letter reads.

At multiple points, the letter reminds the Canadian government that it is bound by various human rights instruments, including the covenant on civil and political rights, which it signed in 1976. Quebec is also bound by these agreements.

The letter is signed by the rapporteur for minority relations, Fernand de Varennes; the rapporteur for racism, E. Tendayi Achiume; and the rapporteur for religious freedom, Ahmed Shaheed.

It closes with a series of questions about how minority rights will be protected once the legislation is passed. The rapporteur also wants to know how minority groups will be consulted in the legislative process.

Of the 36 groups and individuals who were invited by the Quebec government to take part in the legislative hearings for the bill, only two represented religious communities in the province.

Rules broken, lawyer says

Pearl Eliadis, a Montreal human rights lawyer with extensive experience working with the UN, said it is noteworthy the letter was written in French.

“The United Nations is signalling … that majority will is constrained or bound by or limited by rules about how you treat minorities,” she told CBC News after consulting the letter.

“And those rules have been broken in this case. They have manifestly been broken in this case.”)

Quebec Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, the bill’s sponsor, has received the letter and is “analyzing it in detail,” a spokesperson for the minister said in a brief written statement Tuesday.

“The government of Quebec is proud of Bill 21,” the statement said. “It is pragmatic, applicable and moderate. It reflects the consensus of the majority of Quebecers.”

But Hélène David, the provincial Liberal critic for secularism issues, says the UN letter “underscores once again the attack on fundamental rights and the lack of justification for such a measure.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism Minister Pablo Rodriguez did not comment on the UN letter but said the federal government’s position is clear: “It’s not up to politicians to tell people what to wear or what not to wear. Canada is a secular and neutral state, and that is reflected in our institutions.”

“The Quebec government’s bill has raised numerous questions. We will continue to follow it very closely.”

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has criticized the bill (as have the federal NDP and Conservatives), he hasn’t indicated whether the federal government will intervene if it is passed.

The letter itself carries no legal weight. But it could provide ammunition to groups who will seek to challenge the law before the UN’s Human Rights Committee, Eliadis said.

Such challenges can take several years before the committee offers a decision (known as a “view”). When they are delivered, though, the federal government comes under considerable pressure to comply.

But beyond its possible legal ramifications, the UN letter indicates that what is at stake with Bill 21 is Quebec’s reputation as a tolerant society, Eliadis said.

“I think the average person should care,” she added.

“I think many people in Quebec do care because they understand that what the Quebec government is setting aside are our most fundamental values as a nation.”

Source: UN human rights observers warn Quebec about secularism bill

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Kenney will campaign in Ontario during federal election as Tories look to win back immigrant voters

2019/05/24 Leave a comment

As noted, these ridings can flip back and forth (and Doug Ford’s PCs largely won the same 905 ridings that the Liberals had won back federally).

I have considerable discomfort with such a partisan role for provincial premiers in a federal election and vice-versa whatever the party.

It will nevertheless be interesting to see how effective this strategy works with one premier who knows the issues and related limits, and one who appears largely oblivious. And obviously, Kenney will be capitalizing on the close relations he developed with many of the communities he actively courted in the past.

And the obvious question is why premiers are campaigning when they should be governing:

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney will campaign in Ontario during this fall’s general election in an effort to convince new Canadians living in suburban ridings that Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are a safe choice for their votes.

Mr. Kenney’s journey to the Ontario heartland is a remarkable intervention by a premier in a federal campaign, a move targeted at defeating Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Premiers have involved themselves in federal elections in the past. Danny Williams, when he was Progressive Conservative premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, waged an Anything But Conservative campaign against Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives during the 2008 election in a dispute over equalization formulas.

Liberal Kathleen Wynne, then-premier of Ontario, worked actively in 2015 to defeat Mr. Harper and to make Mr. Trudeau prime minister, going so far as to throw her party’s provincial machine into local fights to defeat both Conservative and New Democrat candidates.

But Mr. Kenney is taking a very different approach, according to a source close to the United Conservative Party Premier; The Globe and Mail granted them anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the Premier’s behalf. Mr. Kenney will be inserting himself into what is known as the 905: the large swath of seats outside Toronto, named after its area code, whose millions of voters often determine the outcome of federal elections.

In many of those ridings, immigrant Canadians make up a majority or a large minority of voters. As immigration minister in the Harper government from 2008 to 2013, Mr. Kenney worked tirelessly and successfully to convince immigrant voters, many of whom are socially and economically conservative in outlook, that the federal Conservative Party best reflected their values.

A swing by 905 voters away from the Liberals delivered a strong minority government for the Conservatives in the 2008 election and a majority in 2011. But many of those same voters abandoned Mr. Harper for Mr. Trudeau in 2015, helping to deliver a majority government for the Liberals.

In a statement to The Globe on Wednesday, Mr. Kenney reiterated his hope that the Liberals would modify their positions on pipeline approvals and carbon taxes. However, if the Liberals do not reverse these policies, he said, “I will openly and vocally campaign here in Alberta and wherever I can make a difference across Canada to elect a Conservative government that will stand up for Alberta and for Canada.

“As I said many times during the recent [provincial] election campaign, if the Trudeau government continues with the destructive policies that undermine Alberta’s vital economic interests and put Albertans out of work, the impact on our province will be disastrous,” he said. “If Trudeau’s policies don’t change, then the federal government needs to.”

The new Alberta Premier has many bones to pick with Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals. In the Throne Speech delivered by Lieutenant-Governor Lois Mitchell Wednesday, the new government vowed to immediately scrap the carbon tax enacted by the previous NDP government of Rachel Notley. The Liberals have imposed a federal tax on any province that does not put a price on carbon. The tax is one reason Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford will also be campaigning to unseat Liberals in the next general election.

Mr. Kenney is also incensed by Bill C-69, which would impose stricter environmental conditions on proposed infrastructure-projects, including new pipelines, and Bill C-48, which would ban tanker traffic along British Columbia’s north coast. Both bills have been passed by the House of Commons and are currently before the Senate.

The federal Liberals have accused the federal Conservatives of catering to nativist voters, pointing to a pro-pipeline rally that Mr. Scheer attended at which far-right-wing activist Faith Goldy was also present, along with “yellow vest” protesters, many of whom oppose Canada’s open-door immigration policies.

The Conservatives have fought back against these accusations. “There is no home in the Conservative Party of Canada for anti-immigrant or racist sentiment,” Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said earlier this month. “Anyone who harbours those beliefs does not have a political home in our movement.”

But Mr. Kenney’s appeal to immigrant voters may carry special weight. As immigration minister, he was indefatigable in his efforts to woo visible-minority voters, earning the nickname “minister for curry in a hurry.”

The source close to Mr. Kenney said the Premier will only campaign in Ontario if his participation is welcomed by the federal Conservatives. Some observers might speculate that looking to Mr. Ford and Mr. Kenney for help only illustrates the weakness of Mr. Scheer in the key battleground of Ontario.

But Mr. Kenney’s supporters will say that the more allies Mr. Scheer has during the campaign, the better.

At press time, Mr. Scheer’s office had not responded to a request for comment.

Liberal supporters will assert that having Mr. Kenney and Mr. Ford campaign in support of the federal Conservatives will strengthen Mr. Trudeau’s claim that only he can be counted on to fight global warming, which threatens the environment and human habitations.

But Conservatives at all levels believe that voters will join them in opposing carbon taxes as a tool to fight climate change. The outcome of the next election could hinge on which side suburban voters in Ontario choose.

Source: John Ibbitson writes

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Backlash over the Women’s Mosque of Canada is predictable – and misplaced

2019/05/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

Across the country, makeshift mosques are popping up in various towns and cities. Many Canadian Muslims are observing Ramadan and renting out community centres, or taking up space in each other’s living rooms, basements and local dining halls to join in congregational prayers before breaking fast or to perform extra evening prayers.

There isn’t anything controversial about these gatherings. As meals are set out on tables, patterned prayer rugs, large colourful linens or simple mats are laid out nearby. Men, women and children eventually line up together in prayer.

Yet, one such pop-up gathering has received particular attention – and not all of it positive. A few weeks before Ramadan, a group of women launched the Women’s Mosque of Canada. The inaugural Friday prayers were held inside Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church in Toronto. Roughly 40 Muslim women and allies from various faith traditions listened to co-founder Farheen Khan give the sermon.

While the prayers proceeded in tranquility, reaction to the event was less calm. The debate that emerged once again symbolizes the divide that continues to exist in our communities when it comes to the place of women in traditional sacred spaces.

Why do we need this, wondered people writing in an online discussion group of more than 300 Toronto Muslim activists, leaders and scholars and posting to the Women’s Mosque’s Facebook page. One community leader admonished the effort, saying there was nothing in Islamic tradition to support the notion of a women-only mosque. Others suggested the effort would only divide people and would reinforce harmful stereotypes about the oppression of women.

Then there were the supporters, including several men who have themselves witnessed the unequal treatment of women and girls. They are sometimes banished to cramped rooms and poorly maintained areas, or made invisible behind barriers – physically and spiritually separated from a wider community in which they expect to belong.

“It’s been 30 years. How long should I tell my daughters to wait before they get taken as equal partners where they worship?” asked Naeem Siddiqui, a long-time community advocate.

Many women have decided they’ve already waited long enough.

Ms. Khan, herself deeply tied to the traditional mosque environment, was hoping to avoid any backlash. She simply aims to provide an opportunity for women and girls to regularly gather for Friday prayers and together reclaim their religious inheritance.

“Like many women, I grew up in a religious family and attended mosque. In fact, my father was one of the founders of the first mosque in Mississauga, so faith is an essential part of my life,” she wrote in a recent essay for NOW Magazine. “But as I got older I felt less connected to the experience. I didn’t see myself reflected in the scholarship, in the language and in the programming offered to women. Women’s Mosque of Canada is an attempt to engage women, like myself, to reconnect with their religion in a space with other women.”

That Muslim women, often facing the brunt of Islamophobia, need a place to heal is not lost on many. “Sadly, the reality today is that many women feel welcome everywhere except in what we believe are the best places on Earth, the mosques,” Ottawa Imam Sikander Hashemi acknowledged in an e-mail.

Indeed, a 2016 Environics survey of Muslims in Canada confirmed that women were much less likely to attend places of worship than their male counterparts.

Canadian filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz chronicled the growing alienation she felt in her own local community in a 2005 National Film Board documentary, Me and the Mosque. Little has changed since then, although many continue to push for better representation of all levels of mosque governance and participation.

Following in-depth studies of American mosques titled Re-Imagining Muslim Spaces, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding launched a toolkit in 2017 to encourage religious leaders to nurture more welcoming spaces. Other American national institutions have similarly called for more inclusion and provided advice on how to achieve it. Last year, the Muslim Council of Britain launched a six-month program to train women to become mosque leaders.

“Muslim women, Muslim male allies and non-Muslim supporters of mosque reform are participating in one of the most significant struggles presently happening in our global Islamic communities,” Canadian researcher Fatimah Jackson-Best wrote in 2014 for the magazine Aquila Style. “Mosque reform is not some fringe movement or a bunch of troublemakers trying to jeopardize the image of Islam. This is about spiritual equality and destroying archaic notions that are based in culture and custom and have little to do with the religion.”

Growing alienation has sparked the UnMosqued movement in which women, young people and converts eschew traditional institutions, including multimillion-dollar mosques, in search for alternatives or third spaces. These are formal and informal gatherings outside of traditional religious centres and homes, where there is often less rigidity and an authentic embrace of diversity.

Those anxious about the Women’s Mosque of Canada should be less concerned with the thought of women reconnecting with their faith and instead commit to addressing the schism that drove them out of the mosques in the first place.

Source: Backlash over the Women’s Mosque of Canada is predictable – and misplaced Amira Elghawaby

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Australia’s new parliament is no more multicultural than the last one

2019/05/23 Leave a comment

Dramatic contrast with Canadian numbers: 56 foreign-born (44 MPs, 12 Senators, 2017), and currently 48 MPs who are visible minority:

Politicians often say Australia is the most successful multicultural country in the world – but it would seem the country’s growing diversity is failing to make its mark in the corridors of power.

The newly elected 46th parliament will likely have little more cultural diversity than the previous one, according to figures compiled by the Parliamentary Library and SBS News.

The number of MPs born overseas in the new parliament is down from 23 in the previous parliament, to 22, across the House of Representatives and Senate. While the number of MPs with one or more parent from a non-European background rose slightly, from eight in the previous parliament to nine in the new one.

45th Parliament versus the 46th Parliament

SBS News (source Parliamentary Library and SBS News)

Some of the notable exiting MPs include the Liberal’s Tony Abbott, born in England and Lucy Gichuhi, born in Kenya. As well as Labor’s Lisa Singh whose parents were born in Fiji.

Some of the newly elected MPs from diverse backgrounds include Liberal’s Dave Sharma, born in Canada to an Indian father; the Green’s Mehreen Faruqi, born in Pakistan; and the Liberal’s Gladys Liu, born in Hong Kong, who as of Tuesday was on track to pick up the closely fought Victorian seat of Chisholm.

According to the 2016 census 28.5 per cent of Australians were born overseas. While the United Kingdom remains the largest country of origin within that, China and India are in second and third place respectively.

UTS sociology professor Andrew Jakubowicz said he wasn’t surprised parliamentary diversity hasn’t grown in the new parliament.

“Parliament is essentially a white club, it is essentially a white boys club … The dynamic of change which is sweeping through the Australian community more widely is very apparent at the state level, but the federal level it seems to have been squeezed out,” he told SBS News.

The figures on multiculturalism for the 45th Parliament come from the Parliamentary Library and were accurate as of April 2019.

Data for the new parliament is compared with the previous figures and available public biography information of all new incoming MPs on their official websites.

Parliament is essentially a white boys club.

– ANDREW JAKUBOWICZ, ACADEMIC

SBS News has reached out to both the Labor and Liberal parties to confirm the birthplace of several new members who haven’t mention their place of birth on their official websites.

The analysis is also based on the likely results, with some Senate and Lower House results still not finalised on Tuesday, following Saturday’s election win for the Coalition.

Where there has been change, is in the number of women who will take their place in parliament, with at least 81 women having confirmed to have won seats in the Senate or the House of Representatives.

This is compared to 73 female MPs in the previous parliament. There are 227 seats across both houses of parliament.

The number of Indigenous Australians in parliament will also likely increase from four to five with the return of Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie.

During her first stint in Parliament, Ms Lambie used her maiden speech in 2014 to reveal her family connection to Tasmania’s Indigenous population.

According to an Essential Research poll commissioned for SBS News prior to the election, 71 per cent of Australians believed the country would benefit from a greater representation of under-represented groups in parliament.

Of those who agreed with the sentiment, 46 per cent said they would like to see more women in parliament, 32 per cent said more Indigenous Australians and 17 per cent said more Australians born overseas should be in parliament.

Professor Jakubowicz said he believed the Section 44 controversies and dual-citizenship concerns may be a barrier for multicultural Australians who are thinking about getting into politics.

“I think people from ethnically diverse communities who might want to make a run might be fairly intimidated by the sorts of hoops needed to jump through,” he said.

He also added that until the major parties change their internal processes and begin pre-selecting diverse candidates in winnable seats, little would change.

“The idea is that the parliament represents the range of the Australian people … that isn’t happening,” he said.

Source: Australia’s new parliament is no more multicultural than the last one

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The dangers of ‘one of us’: The NZ Chief Human Rights Commissioner on othering

2019/05/22 Leave a comment

Well stated:

A recent Dominion Post column attacked British-born Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt as not ‘one of us’. It’s a phrase we should all feel uncomfortable with, writes Hunt, wherever we come from.

Not long after I took up office as Chief Human Rights Commissioner, a newspaper columnist complained that I am not “one of us”.

This charge raises important questions.

In super-diverse Aotearoa New Zealand with its more than 200 ethnicities and 160 spoken languages, who is “us”?

And who defines “us”?

However defined, it is dangerous to view society as some people who are ‘us’ and, by implication, ‘others’ who are separate and alien.

This vision of society is inconsistent with equality, non-discrimination, respect for diversity and a multiculturalism which is grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It undermines inclusion and promotes exclusion.

‘Others’ tend to include new immigrants, residents and citizens. They are often ethnic and religious minorities. They may also include tangata whenua and Pacific peoples. There are exceptions, but these ‘others’ consistently fall behind in a range of socio-economic outcomes. Some of them are regularly subjected to discrimination and abuse. Among them, there are additional layers of disadvantage for women, disabled people and sexual minorities. The two most common areas of complaint received by the Human Rights Commission are race-related and disability discrimination. Many discriminatory incidents are unreported.

‘Othering’ me – that is, complaining that I am not “one of us” – is of no consequence because I enjoy numerous advantages, such as ethnicity and gender. But ‘othering’ disadvantaged individuals and communities is dangerous because it reinforces their vulnerability, makes them feel unsafe, and exposes them to more abuse.

Moreover, ‘othering’ can lead to demonising.

And demonising can lead to the mass murder of peaceful people at prayer.

For the record, I married a New Zealander over 30 years ago. We settled in Hamilton in 1992. Our son was born in Hamilton. I completed a degree at Waikato University and lectured at the university for eight years. Our children were schooled in Hamilton. I have been a New Zealand citizen for decades.

In 2000, the government commissioned me and three colleagues to undertake a review of New Zealand’s human rights institutions. In 1998, the National-led government nominated me to an independent UN human rights position. In 2002, the Labour-led government supported my candidacy for a similar position. Both posts were voluntary.

Lured back to Europe by an employment opportunity in 2000, I have visited New Zealand every year, for weeks or months, to write, give talks and spend time with whanau. Last year, my wife and I relocated back to New Zealand.

Does all this make me “one of us”? It should not be necessary to ask.

But if someone declares I am not “one of us” it means that, in their worldview, many thousands of New Zealand immigrants, residents and citizens are also not “one of us”.

‘Othering’ on that scale diminishes and threatens our multiculturalism.

As someone who is new to the Chief Commissioner role, I have taken as many opportunities as possible to listen. I’ve heard that poverty is a recurrent concern; it’s also a crucial human rights issue.

I want to hear from those with lived experience of poverty and widening social and economic inequalities. So, colleagues and I visited the Corstorphine Community Hub in Dunedin, Tuwharetoa Health, Education & Social Services in Kawerau, and Habitat for Humanity in Rotorua.

During the Rotorua visit, we met a widow whose children suffered from serious health issues made worse by their damp cold home. (She now owns a new home thanks to Habitat for Humanity and her own toil and investment.) In Kawerau, we met a reformed dad who is not allowed to see his children and is made to feel like a criminal when he deals with the authorities. We also learnt about a flax-roots initiative which has dramatically reduced the suicide rate in the community.

The overall impression was of proud individuals and communities, precarious and raw, living on the edge.

Our ‘listening visits’, as well as other consultations, will enrich the planning process for the Human Rights Commission’s future work. In this process, we are asking difficult questions like: how can we convey that human rights are based on shared values like fairness, decency, dignity and equality?

How can we make human rights relevant to the practical realities of everyday lives throughout New Zealand?

How do we convey to national and local officials that human rights can make a practical contribution towards the effective delivery of policies which aim to enhance wellbeing?

Consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the commission will not only focus on vital civil and political rights such as freedom of expression, but also on important social rights, such as the rights to a decent home and accessible education. The commission has tried this before and we need to build on those foundations. Should we also work on the right to a healthy environment?

Our overarching question is this: how do we refresh human rights for modern times?

No ‘othering’, no barriers

Across all my human rights work, I have always sought to be non-party political and non-sectarian. This might be the influence of Quakerism and its call for dialogue and peaceful reconciliation. In the 1980s, I worked for Quaker Peace and Service on its Israel/Palestine programme, and Quakerism continues to inform my thinking.

Later I worked for a London-based civil liberties organisation which had an all-party parliamentary group encompassing libertarians and social democrats.

In Belfast, long before the Good Friday Agreement, I would discuss prisoners’ rights with unionist organisations in the morning, then walk across the city, and discuss prisoners’ rights with nationalist organisations in the afternoon, to the bemusement of my Irish friends.

Perhaps this explains why I am alert to ‘othering’.

Talking about some people as being “one of us”, and implying that ‘others’ are alien, places a barrier between communities.

What is needed is support, dialogue, friendship, respect, acceptance of diversity and recognition of human rights for everyone.

The ‘other’ road is fraught with danger.

Source: The dangers of ‘one of us’: The Chief Human Rights Commissioner on othering

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The New German Anti-Semitism

2019/05/22 Leave a comment

Good long and disturbing read:

One of Wenzel Michalski’s early recollections of growing up in southern Germany in the 1970s was of his father, Franz, giving him some advice: “Don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish.” Franz and his mother and his little brother had survived the Holocaust by traveling across swaths of Eastern and Central Europe to hide from the Gestapo, and after the war, his experiences back in Germany suggested that, though the Nazis had been defeated, the anti-Semitism that was intrinsic to their ideology had not. This became clear to Franz when his teachers in Berlin cast stealthily malicious glances at him when Jewish characters — such as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” — came up in literature. “Eh, Michalski, this exactly pertains to you,” he recalls one teacher telling him through a clenched smile. Many years later, when he worked as an animal-feed trader in Hamburg, he didn’t tell friends that he was Jewish and held his tongue when he heard them make anti-Semitic comments. And so Franz told his son Wenzel that things would go easier for him if he remained quiet about being Jewish. “The moment you say it, things will become very awkward.”

As a teenager, Wenzel defied his father’s advice and told a close friend. That friend quickly told his mother, and the next time Wenzel saw her, she reacted quite strongly, hugging him and kissing his face: “Wenzel! Oh, my Wenzel!” Now a stocky, bearded 56-year-old, Wenzel recalled the moment to me on a recent Saturday afternoon. He raised the pitch of his voice as he continued to mimic her: “You people! You are the most intelligent! The most sensitive! You are the best pianists in the world! And the best poets!” In his normal voice again, he added, “Then I understood what my father meant.”

Wenzel Michalski is now the director of Human Rights Watch for Germany. He and his wife, Gemma, an outgoing British expat, live in a cavernous apartment building in the west of Berlin. In their kitchen, Gemma told me that after arriving in Germany in 1989, she often got a strangely defensive reaction when she told people she was Jewish; they would tell her they didn’t feel responsible for the Holocaust or would defend their grandparents as not having perpetrated it. And so, to avoid conversations like these, she, too, stayed quiet about being Jewish.

Recently, the Michalskis’ youngest son became the third generation of the family to learn that telling people he is Jewish could cause problems. The boy — whose parents asked that he be called by one of his middle names, Solomon, to protect his privacy — had attended a Jewish primary school in Berlin. But he didn’t want to stay in such a homogeneous school for good, so just before he turned 14, he transferred to a public school that was representative of Germany’s new diversity — a place, as Gemma described it, where he “could have friends with names like Hassan and Ahmed.”

The first few days there seemed to go well. Solomon, an affable kid with an easy smile, bonded with one classmate over their common affection for rap music. That classmate introduced him to a German-Turkish rapper who would rap about “Allah and stuff,” Solomon told me. In return, he introduced the classmate to American and British rap. Solomon had a feeling they would end up being best friends. On the fourth day, when Solomon was in ethics class, the teachers asked the students what houses of worship they had been to. One student mentioned a mosque. Another mentioned a church. Solomon raised his hand and said he’d been to a synagogue. There was a strange silence, Solomon later recalled. One teacher asked how he had encountered a synagogue.

“I’m Jewish,” Solomon said.

“Everyone was shocked, especially the teachers,” Solomon later told me about this moment. After class, a teacher told Solomon that he was “very brave.” Solomon was perplexed. As Gemma explained: “He didn’t know that you’re not meant to tell anyone.”

The following day, Solomon brought brownies to school for his birthday. He was giving them out during lunch when the boy he had hoped would be his best friend informed him that there were a lot of Muslim students at the school who used the word “Jew” as an insult. Solomon wondered whether his friend included himself in this category, and so after school, he asked for clarification. The boy put his arm around Solomon’s shoulders and told him that, though he was a “real babo” — Kurdish slang for “boss” — they couldn’t be friends, because Jews and Muslims could not be friends. The classmate then rattled off a series of anti-Semitic comments, according to Solomon: that Jews were murderers, only interested in money.

Over the next few months, Solomon was bullied in an increasingly aggressive fashion. One day, he returned home with a large bruise from a punch on the back. On another occasion, Solomon was walking home and stopped into a bakery. When he emerged, he found one of his tormentors pointing what looked like a handgun at him. Solomon’s heart raced. The boy pulled the trigger. Click. The gun turned out to be a fake. But it gave Solomon the scare of his life.

….

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Le français décline comme langue seconde de préférence

2019/05/22 Leave a comment

While the overall support for bilingualism is strong, the growing lack of interest in learning a second language, whether French or another language, is worrisome in an era of greater mobility and globalization:

Si le bilinguisme officiel continue à bénéficier d’un très fort appui au pays, la préférence pour l’apprentissage du français comme langue seconde a décliné, surtout chez les jeunes. En fait, la simple idée qu’il importe de maîtriser une deuxième langue, peu importe laquelle, chute en popularité, au grand étonnement de certains experts.

Ce sont là quelques-unes des conclusions d’un sondage réalisé par six instituts de recherche, qui ont voulu tâter le pouls des Canadiens sur le concept de dualité linguistique, alors que l’on souligne en 2019 le 50e anniversaire de l’adoption de la première Loi sur les langues officielles.

La nouvelle encourageante, selon l’auteur du rapport, c’est que 82 % des répondants se disent en faveur de la politique du bilinguisme officiel au pays – un pourcentage qui se maintient depuis le début des années 2000, au fil des diverses enquêtes menées sur la question.

« L’opposition n’est pas en croissance. J’étais un peu trop jeune pour sonder en 1969, mais j’imagine que l’opposition aurait été supérieure. Et il y a plein de partis politiques qui aimeraient avoir l’appui de quatre personnes sur cinq », relève Andrew Parkin, du Mowat Center, en entrevue avec La Presse.

L’enthousiasme face à la dualité linguistique et à son enchâssement dans la législation fédérale, sous le gouvernement de Pierre Elliott Trudeau, est nettement moins présent en Alberta, où 3 personnes sur 10 ont affirmé désapprouver le fait que le Canada ait deux langues officielles.

Il n’y a là rien de « surprenant », souligne Stéphanie Chouinard, professeure adjointe au département de science politique du Collège militaire royal du Canada, à Kingston. « On sait qu’historiquement, l’Alberta, ç’a été un terreau fertile pour des partis qui avaient des positions assez fortes contre le bilinguisme, dont le Parti réformiste », explique-t-elle dans un entretien téléphonique.

UN AUTRE BILINGUISME

Pas de quoi tirer la sonnette d’alarme, donc. En revanche, un aspect du sondage fait allumer un voyant rouge au tableau de cette spécialiste en langues officielles : le déclin de la préférence pour le français comme langue seconde.

« On voit que les Canadiens croient encore au bilinguisme, mais que ce bilinguisme-là, ce n’est pas nécessairement le bilinguisme français-anglais. »

– Stéphanie Chouinard, professeure adjointe au département de science politique du Collège militaire royal du Canada

La tendance est plus particulièrement marquée chez les 18 à 34 ans, d’après l’enquête que les instituts de recherche rendront publique aujourd’hui. En 2001, parmi les anglophones hors Québec de cette tranche d’âge qui disaient juger important que leurs enfants apprennent une autre langue, 75 % déclaraient que ce devait être la langue de Molière. En 2019, cette proportion est passée à 61 %.

L’apprentissage de l’une ou l’autre des deux langues officielles – l’anglais pour les francophones (88 %) et le français pour les anglophones (67 %) – reste le choix de prédilection des répondants. Mais des langues autres que les officielles ont maintenant la cote. Chez les allophones, 18 % préconisent l’apprentissage de langues chinoises pour leurs enfants. Chez les anglophones, 6 % miseraient sur l’espagnol.

UNE LANGUE SUFFIT

Mais la trouvaille la plus étonnante du sondage est ailleurs, soit dans la réponse à la question : « Dans quelle mesure est-il important pour vous que vos enfants (si vous en avez) apprennent à parler une deuxième langue ? » Dans toutes les tranches d’âge, partout au pays, on a constaté un déclin – plus ou moins marqué selon la province – du nombre de personnes qui jugeaient l’aptitude très ou assez importante.

« On aurait pensé [dans un contexte de mondialisation] que les Canadiens jugeraient encore plus pertinent d’apprendre une autre langue. Il faut faire attention en interprétant les résultats : une majorité le pense toujours, mais la tendance est à l’inverse de ce que l’on prévoyait », fait remarquer Andrew Parkin.

Le politologue Rémi Léger ne peut malgré tout s’empêcher d’y voir quelque chose de préoccupant. « Sur la durée, sur 20, 30, 40 ans, est-ce que cette tendance va se maintenir ? », soulève en entrevue celui qui enseigne la science politique à l’Université Simon Fraser, en Colombie-Britannique.

D’autant plus que la tendance s’est inversée chez les répondants de 18 à 34 ans. « Alors que les Canadiens plus jeunes étaient auparavant plus susceptibles que les plus âgés à dire qu’il était important que leurs enfants apprennent une autre langue, ce n’est plus le cas », note-t-on dans le rapport. Ils étaient 86 % d’anglophones hors Québec à le penser en 2001, et voici qu’en 2019, ils ne sont plus que 69 %.

C’est un mystère qu’espère élucider Andrew Parkin dans une prochaine enquête.

Méthodologie et crédit

Le sondage a été réalisé en ligne dans les provinces et par téléphone dans les territoires auprès d’un échantillon représentatif de 5732 Canadiens âgés de 18 ans et plus entre le 14 décembre 2018 et le 16 janvier 2019. Le projet est une collaboration du Centre Mowat, de la Canada West Foundation, du Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme, de l’Institut de recherche en politiques publiques, de l’Environics Institute for Survey Research et du Brian Mulroney Institute of Government.

Source: Le français décline comme langue seconde de préférence

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