Good example of communities working together even if the circumstances which compelled this cooperation are unfortunate:
From the outside, the mosque is an unremarkable, warehouse-like building in an industrial pocket of central Mississauga. Away from city lights, a few streets down from the highway, its doors are always open, the Islamic school brimming with women and children during the day, the echoes of Arabic prayer quietly streaming in its halls.
Jeffrey Brown, an Orthodox Jew from Thornhill, spent the last day of Hanukkah there meeting with three police officers, five Muslim men, and a Muslim woman. In December, the unlikely congregation had gathered in the teal-coloured carpeted prayer hall to talk about restoring a sense of security in their places of worship.
For more than 10 years, Brown has served as a community security volunteer at his synagogue. He has developed relationships with police, created a pool of volunteer patrols, and established a security infrastructure.
He’s clear-eyed about the need for security. “People in a house of worship have to be comfortable where they are,” Brown said. “They should be able to concentrate on prayers and know if something happens, plans are in place.”
Where a shocked nation saw the faces of the six Muslim men who were killed there, Brown saw an open and unguarded door.
“There was nothing there,” said Brown. “No one there.”
For months after the shooting, a single-shooter scenario played in Mohammed Hashim’s mind every time walked into a mosque. He imagined where a gunman would come in from, where the children would hide, where the exits were.
Hashim is a crisis manager for the Canadian Muslim community — stepping in to help whenever, and wherever, they need it. He went to Quebec City the day after the shooting to witness “everyone’s worst nightmare.”
In May, he attended a rare interfaith event for the first time. Held at Brown’s synagogue, Hashim walked through metal detectors, as people with walkie-talkies stood inside, and police cars stood outside.
“I thought it was overdone at first — whoa, it’s Thornhill, not a war zone,” said Hashim. “But then, as I started thinking about it, it felt like deterrence. There was a sense of prevention conveyed to those who seek to do harm.”
Brown said that there was chatter about protests in the lead-up to the interfaith event, so he told his police contacts and made the necessary arrangements.
“Critical to community security is knowing who to work with in the police department,” said Brown. “This requires proactive work before incidents happen. It’s a two-way street — you have to learn about the police while they learn about the community.”
At the interfaith dinner, Brown surprised Hashim by offering to share his experience with the Muslim community.
“I don’t think we could’ve gotten this level of help from anyone other than the Jewish community because I don’t think any other faith group has felt under siege as much as them,” said Hashim.
“They’re so advanced in their state of security that it’s only natural that it was someone like Jeffrey,” he said.
“It’s his job now: To teach Muslims how to do security.”
**
Until last year, Atif Malik had never spoken to an Orthodox Jew. When Hashim persuaded him to meet Brown, Malik hesitated. He didn’t know how to speak to someone from the Jewish community. He didn’t know how he’d react if the interaction didn’t go well, if one of them got offended.
Hashim, a big brother figure to Malik, 32, connected the two because of how similar they are. Both are members of the legal profession with a desire to help their respective communities, and to learn. Malik could be the Muslim counterpart to Brown, said Hashim.
Malik’s hometown of Mississauga has one of the largest Muslim populations in Ontario. He calls in “an incubator” that has largely insulated him from racism.
After 9/11, the mosques he attended made a conscious effort to open themselves, to ensure they remained part of the community and not boxes of seclusion. Even if there was only one person inside, the doors to his mosques were always unlocked.
The Quebec mosque shooting shattered his incubator. Imams and mosque volunteers began talking about cameras and protocols.
All of this feels like “a conversation that should’ve happened a long time ago,” said Malik, who feels guilty that he didn’t prompt them earlier. “I question now why I didn’t make the effort to reach out and make connections with other communities, regardless of faith group,” he said. “Could we help them? Could they help us?”
He found empathy in Brown, who spoke about the same fears and complicated emotions. The Jewish community “has gone through a learning curve that we haven’t gone through,” Malik said. “Now, they’re handing us the information — here’s how you do it, if you have any questions come back to us, our doors aren’t closed. It’s mind-blowing.”
Now, they are working together on common security practices to be shared with all mosques, beginning with three in Mississauga and one in Brampton.
Neither will specify the practices being discussed or prevented, for fear of compromising their efficacy. Security is dealt with as quietly as possible, said Brown, apparent only to the person who wants to cause harm.
In this way, both men have become crisis coordinators for their communities, someone who, in the event something happened, would have police on speed dial and a response at the ready.
**
“Here in Canada, we have a complacency when it comes to houses of worship,” said Bernie Farber, executive director of the Mosaic Institute. “We just don’t believe something like [the Quebec mosque shooting] can happen here.”
Farber was one of the first to respond to the shooting, calling imams and volunteers like Hashim to offer his condolences and support. The former chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress oversaw security and safety for the Jewish community for 30 years, beginning in 1986.
In the 1980s and 1990s, having a security officer at large congregations of events was discomforting — an uncomfortable sign that the world had changed, and places of worship weren’t the sacrosanct sanctuaries that could be left unguarded.
Events like the Quebec mosque shooting change everything, said Farber. “The place no longer feels the way it should feel. Whether you ever regain that sense of safety, I don’t know.”
“People come to mosques to find peace, but that sanctuary was violated in the most horrific way,” said Hashim. “I think people saw that as a violation of one of our most basic provisions and rights, which is the right to practice freely and safely.”
Watching and facilitating the Muslim and Jewish community come together with police organisations to try and regain a sense of safety, however, has been a unique experience for Farber and Hashim. “I suppose between every bleak, dark avenue there is a pinpoint of light, said Farber. “This terrible tragedy brought together two communities that are united by hateful acts against them.”
Jeffrey Brown, left, who has served as the lead community security volunteer at his synangogue for 10 years, has been working with mosques and their members in Missisauga for the last six months. He’s training a counterpart, Atif Malik, and leading an interfaith conversation about security and safety. (RICHARD LAUTENS)
Such acts can be deadly, as the Quebec mosque shooting, or just a series of less threatening acts: Putting bacon on a mosque’s door handle. Carving swastikas onto a synagogue. Graffiti of hateful messages.
Rabbi John Moscowitz, who also reached out to imams in the wake of the shooting, believes that social bonds constitute a different type of security. “When you can trust people of different faiths from you and stand together in the wake of something like the mosque attack, it deepens relationships,” he said. “And that deepens the bonds of trust, commonality and brotherhood.”
“Sometimes security feels less secure because you’re aware of why security is there” said Moscowitz. Community bonds, he added, are an “antidote to loss of faith” that heal.
At that first conversation in Mississauga, the unlikely group of one Jew, six Muslims and three police officers shook hands and promised that the conversation would continue.
“Both our faiths and our country demand a sense of respect and friendship amongst peoples,” said Hashim, “and I don’t think I witnessed that so clearly as I did that night.”
“This is about new communities getting established and getting comfortable,” said Brown. “We too were once strangers in a strange land.”
“When we had that meeting, we felt God’s presence.”
Few issues more divide North American campuses than free expression. And conflict over it has further divided the right against the left.
More exceptionally, free speech is also pitting the left against the left.
How did North America get to this place, which has weakened progressive voices and allowed the right to make valid accusations that the left is excessively prone to censorship and coddling?
Many on the liberal-left join conservatives in being appalled by violent antifa (anti-fascist) protesters shutting down debates on free speech and conservative topics on North American campuses, including at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto.
The split in left-wing circles reflects a conflict between two ethical goods: The value of free expression is being pitted against the value of always expecting to be treated with dignity. Current debates over free speech shows they’re not as easily reconciled as we might like.
As faculty are discovering at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of B.C. and many campuses, it can sometimes be impossible to harmonize the right to say controversial things with everyone’s wish to be “respected,” which is proving to be a quality that is hard to define or measure.
At another level, the split among progressive people over free speech also reflects a deeper disagreement between social-justice advocates who stress identity politics (such as gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity) and those who emphasize the common good.
Here are five ways to protect free speech on campus, and everywhere:
University officials must face down the censors
Former B.C. Civil Liberties Association director Stan Persky, a long-time gay rights advocate, says there is no justification for activists using intimidation or violence to stop invited speakers from having a campus “platform.”
“Most of the controversial incidents about free speech on campus could be settled by the administration exercising its responsibility to prevent speakers from being silenced,” says Persky, echoing UBC law professor Emma Cunliffe’s criticism of UBC’s recent draft statement on free expression, which is being reworked.
Although Persky says it’s appropriate for faculty or students to call in the police to prevent invited speakers from being muzzled, the retired Capilano University philosophy professor emphasized free speech is not an absolute.
“Free speech, despite common misperceptions, does not mean that you can say anything you want. When speech turns into an act of direct threat … or is for false advertising, or to defame or libel people, we retain the right to limit and prevent it. In Canada we have even authorized explicit laws against ‘hate speech’. … But our bias is towards free speech.”
Question the concept of “safe space”
Some in higher education seem to want entire campuses to adopt the values of a psychotherapist’s office.
Efforts, for instance, to issue “trigger warnings” before raising certain subjects are leading to often-valid complaints that excessive coddling has created many campus “snowflakes,” which the Urban Dictionary defines as “extremist liberals that get offended by every statement and/or belief that doesn’t match their own.”
There’s nothing wrong with creating defined “safe spaces” — where women, ethnic minorities, males or people of the same sexual orientation, for instance — can share their vulnerable feelings. But the concept can’t be stretched to include an entire institution. It’s unrealistic. And it leads to unnecessary restrictions on free expression and on edgy ideas.
Recognize the value of a thicker skin
Everybody talks these days about the importance of building psychologically-resilient young people. But that goal is often contradicted by the over-protection of students and supposedly vulnerable others in the name of “diversity” and “inclusion.”
Exposure to difficult things is often what makes people grow psychologically. And a mutual commitment to responsible free expression can encourage that process.
UBC political scientist emeritus Phil Resnick, who tends to the liberal side of the spectrum, says it may not be wise, for instance, to protect students from examples of hate speech in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Nor would it be beneficial, says Resnick, to guard students with Asian origins from being offended by the harsh language used in texts about early 20th-century anti-Orientalism in B.C.
UBC philosophy professor Paul Russell says he’s guided on the limits of free speech by what he would allow in his classroom. He wouldn’t permit a student to call another a “faggot.” But he would accept a student honestly expressing her opposition to same-sex marriage. Students, he believes, should be expected to handle conflicting world views.
But maybe the hard-line Muslims in Europe mostly needed thicker skins, as most Christians have learned to develop, to accept the admittedly unpleasant reality that their religion is open to ridicule in a Western democratic society.
Clarify what higher education is for
Should a university or college be like a church? Should faculty be spreading certain ideologies to the world, like missionaries?
Russell, who considers himself of the liberal-left, says some secular people get involved in social-justice causes as “a replacement religion.” But he has trouble with the idea that professors should be proselytizers.
Unlike faculty in any number of university humanities departments that focus heavily on social-justice issues, Russell said he doesn’t believe faculty or students in higher education should be expected to adhere to, or spread, any particular world view.
There is widespread fear on some campuses today, with many faculty and students frightened to air opinions that challenge certain claims by advocates of social justice or identity politics.
The tragic reality is that it can be a “great career move” to conform to politically correct orthodoxy on North American campuses, says Russell, who teaches at both UBC and the University of Gothenburg, where he is director of the Gothenburg Responsibility Project.
People who question certain approaches to diversity, and who defend conservative or controversial speech, can easily be bypassed for research grants, positive peer assessment, tenure and other promotions because of their unpopular views.
Precious few at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, for instance, initially spoke up when media outlets rightly excoriated its officials for their harsh treatment of teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, who had simply tried to start a classroom discussion about transgender pronouns.
While almost all other faculty remained silent, the lone Wilfrid Laurier professor who risked leaping in early to defend Shepherd, a sociologist of religion named David Millar Haskell, put the case for free speech plainly when he said: “If we’re going to claim in the arts and humanities that we are teaching our students to critically think, the only way that happens is through presenting opposing views.”
Just because a municipal official saw men praying at a community hall doesn’t make that place a mosque, a Quebec judge has ruled, thwarting a bid by the city of Mascouche, a suburb outside Montreal, to shut down a Muslim centre.
The judgment is the latest twist in a series of disputes where municipal officials in Quebec have tried to curtail the operations of mosques and Islamic centres by citing zoning regulations.
Mascouche was trying to shut down the Essalam community centre, saying that the building, in a strip mall, had a zoning that forbids places of worship.
“This ruling will have a significant reach for all municipalities in Quebec that have to deal with this kind of situation,” Mascouche Mayor Guillaume Tremblay said in a statement sent to The Globe and Mail.
In his ruling, Quebec Superior Court Justice Pierre Labelle said that Mascouche had engaged in a fallacious form of reasoning – “a sophism,” he said – when it argued that since people pray in a place of worship, a community centre that allows prayers must be a place of worship.
“To that extent, any individual or collective prayer held in a residence, school or workplace would turn that location into a place of worship,” Justice Labelle said in his decision released Wednesday.
Similar stories have been public controversies for years in Quebec.
A year ago for example, Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Yves Lalonde decided in favour of the Badr Islamic Centre in its dispute against the city of Montreal. The city had told the Badr centre that it could no longer hold religious activities after a zoning amendment in the Saint-Léonard borough. However, the judge found that city employees had acted in bad faith and he ruled that the centre had an acquired right.
Justice Lalonde noted that the new locations where Montreal allowed places of worship tended to be in industrial areas, which was inconvenient to Muslims. “The move by the city … creates ghettoization, access problems and is a form of discrimination compared to traditional Catholic churches, which are generally in residential areas,” the judge wrote.
In the Mascouche case, Justice Labelle said the city had not acted in bad faith but held a rudimentary, ill-informed grasp of religious rights.
The problem began in the spring of 2015, when Mascouche Muslims sought a permit to use a hall for community events that included prayers and religious conferences. At the time, several Quebec municipalities were dealing with mosque controversies.
In Montreal, then-mayor Denis Coderre used a zoning change to block the polarizing imam Hamza Chaoui from opening an Islamic community hall in the city’s east end.
In Shawinigan, a Muslim cultural centre relocated after town council initially allowed a zoning change, then rescinded its decision after a public backlash.
By the end of the year, the Mascouche Muslims amended their application, removing mentions of religious activities. They were granted a permit in March of 2016.
Some residents then complained that the hall was being used like a mosque, alleging that more than a 100 people gathered in the evening to pray, Justice Labelle said in his ruling.
The city took action the night of June 29, 2016. It was during the month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast during the day and gather for communal meals and prayers after sunset.
Around 11:30 p.m., a city bureaucrat and two police officers showed up. They reported finding about 30 men praying in a room. Others who were in the room and outside were not praying. A week later, the city rescinded Essalam’s permit, saying that the hall’s use for religious activities contravened zoning. Essalam hired the high-profile constitutional lawyer Julius Grey and challenged the decision.
Justice Labelle noted that the zoning bylaw only talked about prohibiting places of worship but other city documents talked about a ban on religious activities. “The court is of the opinion that city cannot extend its ban beyond the very words of its bylaw,” he wrote.
He also said Mascouche engaged in sophism when it equated holding prayers with the presence of a place of worship. “The initial premise is not universal because prayers can be uttered in all places and not exclusively in a place of worship.”
While he chided Essalam for being disingenuous about holding prayers in its hall, Justice Labelle said the city was obstructing religious freedom.
Mascouche has 30 days to appeal Justice Labelle’s decision.
Le directeur général des élections du Québec (DGEQ) a reçu une demande d’accommodement raisonnable pour contourner un règlement jugé discriminatoire par certains partis politiques, a appris Le Devoir. Il s’agit d’une femme portant le hijab qui, souhaitant se présenter aux prochaines élections provinciales, a demandé une dérogation lui permettant de joindre à son dossier de candidature une photo d’elle avec son voile, ce qui est actuellement interdit par le DGEQ.
« C’est la première demande d’accommodement raisonnable qu’on a eue à ce sujet », a confirmé Stéphanie Isabelle, porte-parole du DGEQ. Elle reconnaît toutefois avoir déjà reçu des commentaires et critiques incitant à modifier le règlement.
L’article 6 du Règlement sur la déclaration de candidature mentionne en effet que la photographie jointe au dossier doit donner « une vue de face complète du candidat à partir des épaules, tête découverte », ce qui empêche toute personne portant un turban, un voile ou même un bandana, de se présenter. Cet article a été vivement contesté auprès du DGEQ par divers partis politiques, dont Québec solidaire et le Parti vert, qui souhaiteraient présenter les candidats de leur choix, sans entrave pour une question de couvre-chef.
Le Devoir avait révélé il y a deux semaines qu’en 2014, le DGEQ avait refusé la candidature de Fatimata Sow, qui se présentait pour le Parti vert dans La Pinière, parce qu’elle avait fourni une photo d’elle coiffée d’un hijab. Craignant les répercussions négatives sur sa candidature, l’aspirante candidate n’avait pas voulu rendre son histoire publique à l’époque et avait renoncé à se présenter.
Modification possible
N’hésitant pas à parler de « discrimination systémique », le chef du Parti vert, Alex Tyrrell, a multiplié les démarches, notamment auprès de la ministre Kathleen Weil, anciennement à l’Immigration et récemment aux Institutions démocratiques. Celle-ci a récemment déclaré que le pouvoir de modifier le règlement appartenait au DGEQ actuel, Pierre Reid, qui a confirmé qu’il était en train de revoir ce règlement dans son ensemble. « Depuis l’automne, en prévision des prochaines élections, on est en révision de notre matériel électoral et ça inclut le formulaire de déclaration de candidature », a réitéré au Devoir Stéphanie Isabelle.
Seul le Québec possède une telle obligation. L’exigence de fournir une photo « tête découverte » n’existe pas aux niveaux fédéral et municipal, une preuve étant l’élection du député et chef du Nouveau Parti démocratique, Jagmeet Singh. Elle n’existe pas non plus pour obtenir une carte d’assurance maladie du Québec, un permis de conduire ou un passeport, où la loi interdit d’être photographié avec un couvre-chef, sauf si celui-ci est porté tous les jours pour des raisons religieuses ou médicales.
Des partis peu bavards
C’est d’ailleurs ce qu’a fait valoir la future candidate en soumettant sa demande d’accommodement au DGEQ au début du mois de décembre. Elle préférerait toutefois que le règlement soit modifié au lieu de bénéficier d’un accommodement, qui n’a généralement pas bonne presse.
Interrogé sur la procédure à suivre lorsqu’une demande d’accommodement est soumise, le DGEQ a dit qu’il n’y a pas de « procédure prévue pour le moment dans la loi électorale ». Une modification au règlement servirait à régler le problème, mais elle devra être approuvée par l’Assemblée nationale et suivre les étapes, jusqu’à la publication dans la Gazette officielle.
Après plusieurs jours de sollicitation, les principaux partis politiques se sont montrés très avares de commentaires. Le Parti québécois a dit qu’il discutera peut-être de la question à son prochain caucus à la fin de janvier, tandis que le Parti libéral du Québec s’est contenté de dire qu’il se conformera à la Loi électorale et aux règlements du DGEQ. La Coalition avenir Québec n’a pas souhaité faire de commentaires.
While written from an evangelical perspective, and thus I find some of the relative rankings questionable, nevertheless the report captures worrisome trends in some countries:
Doors USA released its annual list of the most dangerous countries for Christians. Among those where anti-Christian hostility has grown are India and Turkey, two important U.S. allies.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
To be a Christian in certain countries can be dangerous. That’s the conclusion from a group that tracks Christian persecution around the world. NPR’s Tom Gjelten says some of these countries are close allies of the U.S.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Among the 50 countries on this watch list are ones you’d expect. North Korea is the worst place to be a Christian. Afghanistan is a close second. Most are countries where Islamist radicals target non-Muslims. The list was prepared by Open Doors, a faith-based group that serves beleaguered Christians abroad. David Curry, the group’s CEO, says persecution in Muslim countries has gotten worse over the past year.
DAVID CURRY: Nine of the top 10 on the World Watch List this year and the massive majority on the top 50 have the driver of Islamic extremism. This isn’t to taint all of Islam, but we have to be clear that there is an Islamic extremist element which must be addressed.
GJELTEN: What’s notable is where extremism is growing. Turkey, whose autocratic leader President Trump has cheered, is among the half-dozen countries where Christian persecution has increased the most. Egypt and India are two more U.S. allies where conditions have rapidly deteriorated. In India, it’s not Islamist extremism but Hindu nationalism that’s a problem. Curry opened his presentation this week with the story of a nun in India who was raped by Hindu extremists only to have evidence of the attack destroyed and the attackers acquitted.
CURRY: That’s what justice is like in India today.
GJELTEN: Trump counts Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a friend, but Curry holds Modi personally responsible for the growing anti-Christian sentiment in India. He suggests the United States could use economic leverage to support Christians in India, a country, he points out, with which the United States has massive commerce
CURRY: And yet they’re number 11 on the World Watch List. Twenty-two languages, 720 dialects in India, yet Modi wants to have one religion.
GJELTEN: It’s not only Christians who are targeted in India of course. Hindu nationalists there have repeatedly attacked the Muslim minority. Curry says his organization’s country report card offers a to-do list for where governments should focus their human rights interventions. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.
The best analysis and description I have seen regarding the concerns (non-issue in Canadian Census):
Many census experts say adding a citizenship question could throw a wrench into an already-complicated project.
“It certainly raises the level of risk of getting a bad count or a count that doesn’t that fairly represent everyone,” says John Thompson, a former Census Bureau director who left the agency last year.
Asking about citizenship is not new to the census. Census takers first asked about it in 1820 to tally up the number of “foreigners not naturalized.” While the topic has been included in questionnaires for smaller Census Bureau surveys, the last time all U.S. households were asked about it was in 1950, when the questionnaire included “If foreign born, is the person naturalized?”
Over the years, Republican lawmakers in Congress have introduced proposals calling for citizenship questions to reappear on census questionnaires, including former Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Rep. Steve King of Iowa.
Some experts fear, however, that reintroducing a citizenship question to all census participants in 2020 could discourage people from participating at a time of growing distrust in sharing personal information with the government.
In a recent memo written by Census Bureau staffers, researchers said that survey takers conducting field tests last year noticed a “new phenomenon” of increased fear among immigrant participants, many of whom referenced concerns about the “Muslim ban” and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Respondents reported being told by community leaders not to open the door without a warrant signed by a judge,” the researchers wrote in the memo, adding that they saw “respondents falsifying names, dates of birth, and other information on household rosters.”
A ‘chilling effect’?
Democratic lawmakers say they’re worried that a citizenship question would dampen census participation among not only non-citizen immigrants but also U.S. citizens from mixed-status families, who may worry about putting immigrant relatives without legal status at risk if they answer the government’s questions.
The Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, has received a letter from a group of Democratic senators calling the Justice Department’s request “deeply troubling.” The signers include Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and two members of the Senate committee with oversight of the Census Bureau — Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware and Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
“This chilling effect could lead to broad inaccuracies across the board, from how congressional districts are drawn to how government funds are distributed,” the lawmakers wrote.
The Commerce Department declined to comment on the letter.
Federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing any data identifying an individual. But federal agencies and researchers can request census data on specific population groups.
“As we learn more and more about the ability to combine data from diverse sources, assuring protection of identities is known to be a very difficult task,” says Robert Groves, who served as the Census Bureau’s director under President Barack Obama until 2012.
These privacy concerns could raise costs for the Census Bureau, which sends census takers to visit households that do not initially respond to questionnaires. The Government Accountability Office has described this follow-up work the bureau’s “largest and most costly field operation.” For the 2010 census, it cost more than $2 billion in today’s dollars to visit around 50 million addresses, according to a recent GAO report.
A case for better data?
Many civil rights advocates are questioning the Justice Department’s reasoning for requesting a citizenship question.
Since the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, the federal government has enforced the law’s Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in voting using estimates of the number of voting-age citizens in the U.S. Those estimates have been based on data from either a small sample group of census participants who completed the so-called “long-form” questionnaire or, as in recent years, from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which is sent every year to about one in 38 households.
“As I know from my prior experience as the chief government enforcer of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has never needed to add this new question to the decennial census to enforce the Voting Rights Act before,” Vanita Gupta, who served in the Justice Department under President Obama and is now the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, writes in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Michael Li, a voting rights attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, adds: “None of the civil rights groups that routinely bring Section 2 claims around the country have been hankering for this change.”
Still, in its letter to the Census Bureau, the Justice Department argues that citizenship data collected through the census, which is conducted with every household in the U.S., would be more comprehensive than the data from the American Community Survey’s smaller sample of participants.
“I think the Justice Department is right in saying that they need accurate small-area statistics for certain voting rights cases, especially on citizenship,” says Thompson, a former Census Bureau director.
But he adds that he finds it “strange” that the Justice Department’s request did not acknowledge the potential risks from adding a citizenship question.
“It could very well introduce a large undercount of the non-citizen population, but I don’t think anyone knows that,” Thompson says. “But if I were making decisions, before I would put it on the census, I would want to know that.”
Asked if there’s any opportunity to know that at this point through research, he replied: “I don’t think so.”
There are more than two years until the next Census Day, which is scheduled for April 1, 2020. But the bureau faces a strict timeline until then to prepare for the count. It must submit all of the 2020 census questions to Congress by the end of March, the same month it is set to collect responses in Rhode Island’s Providence County in the last scheduled field test of how the 2020 census will be conducted.
If the Census Bureau does not include a citizenship question in its upcoming report to Congress, federal law does give Secretary Ross some wiggle room. Before the upcoming headcount begins, he can submit a separate report to add the question if he “finds new circumstances exist which necessitate” the change.
Not terribly surprising given the nature of the brand, despite its efforts to attract more international and diverse audiences:
Disney has been accused of “browning up” dozens of white actors for various Asian roles in their upcoming live-action adaptation of Aladdin.
The Sunday Times published a report claiming the company resorted to darkening white people for roles requiring skills not readily available in the Asian community, listing stuntmen, dancers, and camel handlers as examples.
The movie — directed by Guy Ritchie and based on the Disney animation of the same name — is being filmed at Longcross Studios, Surrey, a 50-minute drive from London where 1.1 million people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab heritage live.
Responding to the report, Disney said: “This is the most diverse cast ever assembled for a Disney live action production. More than 400 of the 500 background performers were Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean and Asian.”
However, some have accused the company of not doing enough. Kaushal Odedra, who worked as a stand-in for a leading actor, told the publication he saw 20 “very fair-skinned” actors waiting to have their skin tone changed.
“On one set, two palace guards came in and I recognised one as a Caucasian actor, but he was now a darkly tanned Arab,” he claimed. “I moved inside the marquee where there were 10 extras and two were Caucasian, but they had been heavily tanned to look Middle Eastern.”
Bafta-nominated TV director Riaz Meer branded the alleged practice “an insult to the whole industry”, adding: “The talent exists and is accessible and there’s no way that Asian extras could not have been hired to meet the needs of the film.
“Failing to hire on-screen talent of the right ethnic identity to meet the clear needs of this production is just plain wrong. We expect better from all filmmakers.”
Ritchie has declined to comment on the situation. The Independent has contacted Disney for further comment.
Disney previously came under fire for creating a whole new role for a white actor in Aladdin. Billy Magnussen has been cast as a character called Prince Anders who did not appear in the original animated movie.
Egyptian-Canadian actor Mena Massoud — best known for roles in Jack Ryan and Open Heart — will play the movie’s titular character, while Naomi Scott will portray Princess Jasmine. Will Smith has been cast as the Genie, with Marwan Kenzari playing Jafar.
Another illustration of the harm that Saudi Arabia has caused in spreading Salafism:
The innocuous photos of two Nigerian Islamic clerics shopping and relaxing in London sparked a fierce debate on social media platforms in northern Nigeria in early December 2017. The photos were quite unremarkable. One showed the two men sitting on a park bench; another showed them in a clothing store wearing cowboy hats. In both, they were dressed in suits. And they were wearing gloves and scarves to protect themselves from London’s cold, wet weather.
The pictures caused a fierce online debate about piety, hypocrisy, morality, the sartorial prescriptions of Islam, and the tyranny of religious authorities in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria. The violent Islamist group, Boko Haram, is active in the region, which has become a hotbed of extremism.
So, why were these ordinary images so controversial? Why did they spark heated debates among educated northern Nigerian Muslim men and women?
The answer is simple. The two men are Salafi clerics, members of a clerical order that has come to wield outsized influence over Muslims in northern Nigeria. The clerics act as enforcers of an increasingly puritan Islamic order. They are uncompromising in defining what is moral and permissible and what is haram or sacreligious. They often equate Muslims’ engagements with modernity and Western ways of life with immorality and sinful innovation or bid’ah.
This leaves them open to charges of hypocrisy when they appear to make choices seen as contradicting their teachings. And this is what happened in London. The two clerics were wearing what in northern Nigeria is considered western dress. This touched off debates between two camps of young Muslims: those who resent the growing intrusion of the clerics into their lives and are eager to criticise their adventures in a Western city, and those who continue to look on the religious figures as revered exemplars of piety.
Wahhabism and the roots of Salafi Puritanism
The Islamic sect to which the two clerics belong heightened the controversy. Sheikh Kabiru Gombe and his mentor, Sheikh Bala Lau, are prominent clerics of the Izala sect, the most visible face of a growing community of Nigerian Salafism, a branch of Sunni Islam which holds to a strict, uncompromising doctrine.
Leaders of the sect are gaining popularity and displacing mainstream Sufi clerics in the region. They accuse traditional Sufi Muslims of hobnobbing with modernity and failing to practice Islam in its pure form. Sufis are vulnerable to these accusations because their creed focuses on individual mystical paths to God rather than on outward, political and authoritarian expressions of piety.
This difference has led to an increasingly intense contest between the two sides. The photographs of the two clerics catapulted the contest onto social media, blogs and web forums.
The personalities and profiles of the two clerics contributed to the intensity of the debates.
Sheikh Gombe is known in the region for his ultra-radical Salafi theological positions and pronouncements. He has made his voice heard in local and foreignsettings, capturing the imagination of some young Muslims in northern Nigeria. He presents an argument that being a pure Muslim means eschewing association with Western modernity. He is against modern and Western institutions such as secular film making, mixed gender socialisation and goods such as Western clothes. All, he argues, can pollute the piety of Muslims.
In my ongoing research on the historical roots of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria I call the rise of this branch of Islam the Salafi Islamic wave. Tracing its roots, I have found that it began with the slow but well-funded arrival of Wahhabism in northern Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s. Wahhabism is the puritan strain of Sunni Islam birthed in Saudi Arabia by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
The Wahhabi-Salafi’s most dominant organisational umbrella was – and still is – the Izala sect, which was founded in 1978 in Jos, Nigeria, by followers of the late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi.
At the time Gumi was travelling throughout the Muslim world and spending time in Saudi Arabia as a member of both the Supreme Council of the Islamic University in Medina and the Legal Committee of the Muslim World League. He returned to Nigeria in 1986 and was recognised as the spiritual leader of the Izala anti-Sufi reform movement. The movement’s following expanded dramatically under him.
The Izala group set up schools and the best graduates were sent – on generous Saudi Arabian scholarships – to the University of Medina to study Islam under a Wahhabi curriculum with a tinge of ultra-radical Salafism. They returned in the 1990s and inaugurated a new Salafi era in northern Nigerian Islam.
In the 2000s, Medina-trained Salafi clerics, backed by Saudi money and patronage, succeeded in upstaging the old Izala clerical order through a mix of youthful charisma, theological novelty and populism. They began entrenching their strict moral code conforming, according to them, to the Islamic Sharia law.
Beyond photos and suits
Western culture and lifestyle dominate popular culture in Nigeria. For many young Muslims in northern Nigeria, Salafism’s prescriptions and prohibitions are suffocating, particularly for those who want a more pragmatic engagement with a Western lifestyle. Many believe they can pursue these lifestyle choices and still practice their religion.
But Salafi clerics and their followers see no acceptable compromise. They are increasingly making themselves custodians of public morality. They routinely condemn conduct that they associate with decadent, permissive western modernity. For example, they dictate what northern Nigerian Muslims can and can’t wear.
The debate around the two clerics was therefore not a trivial conversation about the dress and the recreational choices of two Salafi clerics. The photos were loaded with symbolism and contradictions. Participants in the online debate used the opportunity to criticise – or excuse – the perceived tyranny and hypocrisy of a powerful Salafi establishment. And to express personal anxieties and fears.
The debate about modernity, Islam, and morality has migrated to online platforms because the internet is relatively anonymous. This has given both sides greater freedom to express their views. The debate encapsulates the ongoing ideological struggle in northern Nigerian Islam between those who live and defend a modern lifestyle, and those suspicious of Western modernity and the unmediated influence of Western education and culture.
So much for evidence-based policy and decision making:
A comprehensive, three-year research project on the value of having cops in schools has provided a stunning rebuke to the decision last fall by the Toronto District School Board to abruptly cancel its “School Resource Officer” program.
The 258-page analysis, done by two Carleton University professors and their PhD students, shows unequivocally that students overwhelmingly feel safer in school — and even report sleeping better and feeling less anxiety — with SROs.
The project actually began in 2012, long before Black Lives Matter, the amorphous activist group that was most visible — and voluble — in Toronto in the fight to see the program dropped.
That’s when the Carleton research group — headed by Linda Duxbury, a professor in the Sprott School of Business, and Craig Bennell, psychology professor at the university — received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, to conduct research on changes needed to make policing in Canada better.
Guided by a research advisory board, the team eventually undertook an in-depth look at the Region of Peel next door to Toronto.
There, Peel Regional Police has had SROs in every high school in both public and Catholic systems for more than two decades, and since the program now costs the police $9 million a year, they and the school boards wanted to know, did it work?
Researchers selected five schools that would reflect the diversity of the sprawling region itself: two were so-called “urban-grant” schools and were in socio-economically deprived parts of the region; one was in a wealthy area; two were located in middle-class districts.
Four of the five schools had ethnically diverse student bodies.
The project was a longitudinal (from 2014-2017, multi-method (quantitative, qualitative and ethnographic analysis, as well as a Social Return on Investment or SROI analysis) case study to “identify the value,” or not, of the SRO program.
(SROI analysis is a measurement tool that helps organizations to understand and quantify the social, environmental and economic value they’re creating.)
That meant researchers used both longitudinal survey data from two groups of more than 600 Grade 9 students each at two times of the year – the first, as they came into high school from elementary schools where they are no SROs, and the second, five months later, as they were about to move out of Grade 9 – and in-depth interviews with eight students, all volunteers, and none of them Caucasian.
Responses were confidential; ethics clearance was obtained from Carleton and the two school boards; a note was sent home to parents telling them about the study and offering them the chance to withhold consent.
Only three sets of parents did.
The thinking was, if the goal of the SRO program is to create a safe learning environment, the students about to leave Grade 9, who’d had five months of being in a school with an SRO, should report feeling safer.
Well, did they ever.
All students benefited one way or another by having an SRO, regardless of their gender, or whether they’d ever been arrested or stopped by the police, or whether they had been victimized. “All students … indicated that they felt significantly safer at school and less stressed and anxious” after five months’ exposure to the SRO.
And the more contact a student had with an SRO, the more likely he or she was to see the program in a positive light — and fully 75 per cent of the students felt safer because of the SRO.
Even those who had been arrested or stopped by cops “are significantly more likely than those who have not to report that they feel safe at school and less likely to experience stress and anxiety at school because they are fearful of being bullied or harassed.”
The ones who had been victimized — about 16 per cent — “are one of the greatest beneficiaries of the SRO program and can expect to gain the most from the presence of police in the high schools.”
Even with the SROs, the research found that bullying, particularly by gang members, particularly for kids on the way to and from school, is a real issue for many students in Peel Region. One can only imagine how scared some of those students might be if their schools didn’t have an SRO.
Oh, wait: You don’t have to imagine.
When the Toronto board cancelled its SRO program last fall — it had run in 45 schools — on the basis of anecdotal allegations it was racist and against its own report, which found that the majority of students liked the program but some felt targeted or uncomfortable, it abandoned evidence-based decision-making and effectively hung its students out to dry.
And by the way, using the SROI analysis, the Carleton research found that the social and economic value of having cops in the five schools cost Peel Police $660,289.
The return — that students feel safe, are engaged, can more easily embark on young adulthood successfully, while the community around the school feels safer, etc., etc. — yielded a total present value of $7,349,301.
In other words, for every dollar invested in the Peel SRO program, a minimum of $11.13 of social and economic value was created.
Toronto preferred, to use that ghastly phrase, the “fake news” of activist shouting; Peel opted for the facts.
The above table contrasts the overall representation of the Canadian Forces, RCMP, CSIS and CSE. The latter two organizations, more intelligence-driven than the CF and RCMP, indicate some hope for the strategy:
Canada’s special forces hope to recruit more than just a few good women in the coming years, says the commander of the elite force.
Maj-Gen. Mike Rouleau said the special forces, the highly trained military units that hunt terrorists and conduct covert operations, are considering how they can recruit more women.
More than just a nod toward society’s growing demand for gender balance, having more women in the unit would make it more effective, he said.
This is the future, and it is a bit of James Bond, but if you want to defeat a [terrorist] cellular-based network, you need to be in front of that cell– Steve Day, former commander of counterterrorism unit
“Having female operators would allow us to be more flexible in the battlespace,” Rouleau said in a recent interview. “It would allow us to be more under the radar in certain cases.”
In certain countries, two men walking down the street might draw attention, but having a man and woman conduct the same mission might be less noticeable, Rouleau suggested.
A former commander of the country’s elite counterterrorism unit, JTF-2, which is part of the special forces command, said the need for such mixed gender teams is something Canada’s allies have already recognized.
The more special forces are called on to fight terrorists, the more they will have to act and fight like intelligence agents, rather “door-kicking” commandos, said retired colonel Steve Day, who is now president of Reticle Security.
“Our closest allies routinely deploy male and female alongside each other to do the softer, intelligence-gathering, sensor-type operations,” he said.
“This is the future, and it is a bit of James Bond, but if you want to defeat a [terrorist] cellular-based network, you need to be in front of that cell, and at the moment, we’re not there.”
Clear criteria
Up to 14 per cent of the more than 2,200 Canadian special forces personnel are women, a percentage Rouleau said he wants to increase to 25 per cent.
That figure would be in line with the overall direction of the Canadian military, which has set the same goal.
“We’re an equal opportunity employer,” said Rouleau. “We’d love to have more women in the force.”
It is, however, easier said than done.
Rouleau noted a handful of women currently serve in both the special forces command and the unit that responds to chemical, biological and radioactive incidents.
A few have even tried out for JTF-2, but none have gone on to take the training course, because they failed to qualify, he said.
In order to be successful, Day said, a cultural change is needed within the special forces that recognizes not only the value of women in the field, but the fact that the elite troops are capable of doing more than assaulting a target.
The very first introduction of women into the special forces ranks in 2003-2004 “didn’t go over that well because organizationally we were quite immature when it came to understanding what the selection process would be,” said Day.
“There was a lot of pushback and no end of short-term grief.”
The problem is not simply gender bias, he added.
The selection process of an “assaulter” — a soldier well-suited to combat — is well documented, he said, but the criteria for choosing the best people for more intelligence-based operations is not as well defined. That needs to change, Day said.
Rouleau acknowledged his organization can do more to get out the message that “female operators are not only welcome, but in many cases, they would make us operationally more successful.”
Army under strain
The Liberal government’s defence policy, released last spring, mandated the expansion of special forces by up to 605 personnel, presenting all sorts of challenges beyond the gender issue.
At the moment, troops can only join the elite unit through the regular forces, and up to 94 per cent of those transfers come from the army.
The wider military is having its own problems.
The army currently sits at 47,000, which includes regular and reserve soldiers, as well as Canadian Rangers, who patrol the Arctic. But the regular force is short up to 1,500 troops from its allotted strength of 23,100, according to Department of Defence statistics.
Members of Canadian Forces Special Operations JTF-2 unit storm a ship during a training mission off the shores of Churchill, Man. in 2012. The nature of operations for special forces is changing to include more intelligence gathering. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Senior defence officials insist they’re hitting recruiting targets, but retention of highly skilled members is a problem.
Drawing from an army that is struggling to keep qualified soldiers “is a concern,” said Rouleau, who acknowledged he and his staff are looking for a direct-entry model similar to a program introduced by the U.S. Army, known as 18-Xray.
“You can’t come from the street to be a special forces operator,” said Rouleau. “But that doesn’t mean in the future we won’t have a model that you can come from the street.
“I’m not saying that’s where we’re going. I’m saying we’re looking at alternate options to today’s model to make sure that we’re both capturing the talent that’s out there, but also try, if we can, to alleviate some of the pressure from the services.”
The American system gives recruits the opportunity to “try out” for special forces right away.
U.S.officials say it does not guarantee a recruit will be accepted, only that they will be given the opportunity to demonstrate they have “the right stuff.”
Multicultural Meanderings 