«On ne doit jamais tenir pour acquise notre cohésion sociale», dit Joly

2017/12/22 Leave a comment

True.

And good to see that the Liberal government has maintained and strengthened the program introduced by the Conservatives to provide funding for security equipment for faith centres:

Les appels à manifester lancés la semaine dernière par des groupes d’extrême droite avant qu’ils ne se ravisent sont un rappel qu’on «ne doit jamais tenir pour acquise notre cohésion sociale».

C’est ce qu’a déclaré la ministre du Patrimoine canadien, Mélanie Joly, qui était de passage mercredi au Centre communautaire Laurentien situé dans l’arrondissement montréalais d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville.

Mme Joly y annonçait l’octroi d’une subvention de 29 000 $ visant à améliorer la sécurité de ce centre communautaire musulman, qui abrite également une mosquée.

Ottawa épongera la moitié de la facture de ce projet frôlant les 60 000 $. Des pellicules de protection empêchant de fracasser les fenêtres seront apposées. Le centre se dotera également d’un système d’alarme, d’un système de télévision en circuit fermé et d’un système de contrôle des entrées.

Cet investissement du fédéral provient d’un programme mis en place il y a quelques années pour protéger les communautés à risque contre les crimes haineux.

Lors du dernier budget, Ottawa avait doublé le financement de ce programme, appelé Programme de financement des projets d’infrastructure de sécurité pour les collectivités à risque et chapeauté par le ministère de la Sécurité publique, pour le porter à 10 millions de dollars sur une période de cinq ans.

Interrogée en point de presse sur la présence plus visible de groupes d’extrême droite dans le paysage politique québécois, Mme Joly, qui est responsable des dossiers de l’inclusion et de la diversité au sein du gouvernement fédéral, a souligné qu’il est de notre responsabilité à tous de ne jamais baisser la garde.

«À chaque fois qu’il y a des discours haineux qui sont prononcés, on doit toujours les dénoncer», a-t-elle souligné.

«On a un rôle de leadership moral à jouer», a-t-elle rappelé à la classe politique.

Bien qu’aucun incident majeur ne soit à déplorer au Centre communautaire Laurentien, un sentiment d’insécurité avait fleuri chez ses membres dans la foulée de l’attentat perpétré à la mosquée de Québec le 29 janvier dernier.

Quelques semaines plus tard, Mme Joly participait à une rencontre avec des représentants de la communauté musulmane d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville pour discuter de ce qui pouvait être fait pour «accroître la tranquillité d’esprit» de ses membres.

C’est alors que le Centre communautaire Laurentien a décidé de déposer un projet auprès du gouvernement fédéral pour renforcer la sécurité des lieux.

Quelques incidents isolés étaient venus ternir la quiétude des lieux au cours des dernières années, dont notamment des messages haineux laissés sur la boîte vocale du centre et des vitres brisées, se rappelle le directeur du centre, Samer Elniz.

Il ajoute toutefois que pour ces quelques gestes odieux commis à l’encontre du centre, il répertorie un nombre incommensurablement supérieur de paroles chaleureuses et de mains tendues.

«C’est une minorité qui veut jouer avec le sentiment de la majorité», dénonce-t-il, se disant convaincu que le climat social continuera à s’améliorer au Québec.

Source: «On ne doit jamais tenir pour acquise notre cohésion sociale», dit Joly

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Worries about Malaysia’s ‘Arabisation’ grow as Saudi ties strengthen

2017/12/22 Leave a comment

Of note in Malaysia as elsewhere in Southeast Asia:

Malaysia’s growing ties to Saudi Arabia – and its puritan Salafi-Wahhabi Islamic doctrines –  are coming under new scrutiny as concerns grow over an erosion of traditional religious practices and culture in the multi-ethnic nation.

A string of recent events has fueled the concern. Hostility toward atheists, non-believers and the gay community has risen. Two annual beer festivals were canceled after Islamic leaders objected. A hardline preacher, accused of spreading hatred in India, has received official patronage.

The government has backed a parliamentary bill that would allow harsh sharia punishments, such as amputations for theft and stoning for adultery. And after religious officials supported a Muslim-only laundromat, Malaysia’s mostly ceremonial royalty made a rare public intervention, calling for religious harmony.

Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, publicly lashed out at the government for allowing the “Arabisation” of Malaysia.

Marina, who heads the civil rights group Sisters in Islam, told Reuters Saudi influence on Islam in Malaysia “has come at the expense of traditional Malay culture”. Her father, 93, now heads the opposition alliance.

Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist Wahhabi beliefs have strongly influenced Malaysia – and neighboring Indonesia – for decades, but have strengthened considerably since Najib became prime minister in 2009 and began cozying up to the kingdom.

The relationship came under a harsh spotlight when nearly $700 million wound up in Najib’s bank account in 2013. Najib said it was a donation from the Saudi Royal family, rebutting allegations it was money siphoned from the 1MDB state investment fund he had founded and overseen. Malaysia’s attorney-general cleared him of any wrongdoing.

The trend toward a politicized brand of Islam in Malaysia, a middle-income emerging market, has alarmed Malaysia’s non-Muslims, including ethnic Chinese who comprise a quarter of the population and dominate private sector commerce. It is also a concern for foreign investors, who account for nearly half the local bond market and have invested $8.95 billion in project investments in the first nine months of this year.

The government denies actively promoting Wahhabi-style Islamic conservatism.

Najib has been largely silent about the recent religious controversies. Critics have accused the prime minister, whose governing coalition lost the popular vote in the last general election but retained a simple majority in parliament, of playing on fears that Islam and Malay political power will be eroded should the opposition win. An election is due by mid-2018.

ELECTION CALCULATIONS

Militancy has also been on the rise in Malaysia, which from 2013 to 2016 had arrested more than 250 people with alleged ties to Islamic State, many of whom were indoctrinated with hardline interpretations of Islam.

After the visit of the Saudi monarch this year, Malaysia announced plans to build the King Salman Centre for International Peace to bring together Islamic scholars and intelligence agencies in an effort to counter extremist interpretations of Islam.

The center, which is being built on a 16-hectare (40-acre) plot in the administrative capital of Putrajaya, will draw on the resources of the Saudi-financed Islamic Science University of Malaysia, and the Muslim World League, a Wahhabi Saudi religious body.

Saudi Arabia has long been funding mosques and schools in Malaysia, while providing scholarships for Malaysians to study in the kingdom. Many of them find employment in Malaysia’s multitude of Islamic agencies, said Farouk Musa, chairman and director of the moderate think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front.

One of the most worrisome doctrines they preach in multi-cultural Malaysia is ‘al-w ala’ wa-al-bara’ or ”allegiance and disavowal“, Farouk said. ”This doctrine basically means do not befriend the non-believers (al-kuffar), even if they are among the closest relatives.

”We have never heard of Islamic scholars forbidding Muslims to wish Merry Christmas before, for example. Now, this is a common phenomenon,” he said.

The adoption of Arab culture and interpretations of Islam is a result of greater exposure to Middle Eastern people and universities, said Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, a member of the Supreme Council of Najib’s political party, the United Malay National Organisation.

“The extensive usage of social media also accelerated the external influence on the locals,” he told Reuters.

The government is not promoting Wahhabism but rather the doctrine of “wasatiyyah”, or moderation and balance, to accommodate Malaysia’s multi-cultural society, said Abdul Aziz, who is also a federal deputy minister.

CROWN PRINCE‘S REFORMS?

Karima Bennoune, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for cultural rights, expressed concern in a report after her September visit to Malaysia about the deepening involvement of religious authorities in policy decisions. She said this was influenced by “a hegemonic version of Islam imported from the Arabian Peninsula” that was “at odds with local forms of practice.”

She also expressed concern about “the banning of books, including some about moderate and progressive Islam, in the country when the government extols these very concepts abroad”.

Marina Mahathir said religious departments, staffed with Saudi graduates, “are now consulted on absolutely everything, from movies to health and medicine to insurance, all sorts of things that they do not necessarily have any expertise in”.

The kingdom also exerts leverage over Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia through the quotas it gives to countries for the number of pilgrims they can send on the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam that all capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lives.

This could all start to change if Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman succeeds in returning the Saudi kingdom to “a moderate Islam,” which he says was practiced before 1979.

He has already scaled back the role of religious police, permitted public concerts and announced women will be allowed to drive.

The kingdom has also set up an authority to scrutinize uses of the “hadith” – accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet – to prevent them being used to justify violence or terrorism.

Source: Worries about Malaysia’s ‘Arabisation’ grow as Saudi ties strengthen

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Stress From Racism May Be Causing African-American Babies To Die More Often : Shots – Health News : NPR

2017/12/21 Leave a comment

Ongoing impact from micro-agressions or other factors?

“Black babies in the United States die at just over two times the rate of white babies in the first year of their life,” says Arthur James, an OB-GYN at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for every 1,000 live births, 4.8 white infants die in the first year of life. For black babies, that number is 11.7.

The majority of those black infants that die are born premature, says James, because black mothers like Pierce have a higher risk of going into early labor.

Scientists and doctors have spent decades trying to understand what makes African-American women so vulnerable to losing their babies. Now, there is growing consensus that racial discrimination experienced by black mothers during their lifetime makes them less likely to carry their babies to full term.

James, 65, has seen far too many black babies who didn’t survive.

It just doesn’t seem right, says James, who is also African-American. “You ask yourself the question: What is it about being black that places us at an increased risk for that kind of experience?”

A decades-long quest

Richard David, a neonatologist at the University of Illinois of Chicago, has been studying this for decades. When he first began looking into the problem in the 1980s, he says scientists thought the two main culprits were poverty and lack of education.

“We knew African-American women were more likely to be poor,” says David. “We knew that fewer of them had completed their education by the time they were bearing children.”

But David, who at the time was at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, and his colleague James Collins at Northwestern University Medical School found that even educated, middle-class African-American women were at a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies with a lower chance of survival.

For example, David says, black and white teenage mothers growing up in poor neighborhoods both have a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies. “They both have something like a 13 percent chance of having a low birth weight baby,” he says.

But in higher-income neighborhoods where women are likely to be slightly older and more educated, “among white women, the risk of low birth weight drops dramatically to about half of that, whereas for African-American women, it only drops a little bit.”

In fact, today, a college-educated black woman like Samantha Pierce is more likely to give birth prematurely than a white woman with a high school degree.

“That’s exactly the kind of case that makes us ask the question: What else is there?” says David. “What are we missing?”

Some people suggested that the root cause may be genetics. But if genes are at play, then women from Africa would also have the same risks. So, David and his colleague, Collins, looked at the babies of immigrant women from West Africa. But as they reported in their 1997 study in The New England Journal of Medicine, those babies were more like white babies — they were bigger and more likely to be full term. So, it clearly isn’t genetics, says David.

Then, many years later, David and Collins noticed something startling. The grandchildren of African immigrant women were born smaller than their mothers had been at birth. In other words, the grandchildren were more likely than African-American babies — more likely to be premature.

This was also true of the grandchildren of black women who had emigrated from the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, the grandchildren of white European immigrant women were bigger than their mothers when they were born. David and Collins published their results in 2002 in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

“So, there was something about growing up black in the United States and then bearing a child that was associated with lower birth weight,” says David.

Growing up black and female in America

What is different about growing up black in America is discrimination, says David. “It’s hard to find any aspect of life that’s not impacted by racial discrimination,” he says. “Whether you’re talking about applying for a job, or purchasing a new car, finding housing, getting education … even given equal education, earning the same amount of money, that doesn’t happen. If you’re black, you tend to get less pay.”

As a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found, 92 percent of African-Americans believe that discrimination against African-Americans exists in America today. Higher education and income did not necessarily mean people experienced less discrimination, the poll found.

In 2004, David and Collins published a study in the American Journal of Public Health in which they reported the connection between a mother’s experience of racism and preterm birth. They asked women about their housing, income, health habits and discrimination. “It turned out that as a predictor of a very low birth weight outcome, these racial discrimination questions were more powerful than asking a woman whether or not she smoked cigarettes,” David says.

Other studies have shown the same results.

via Stress From Racism May Be Causing African-American Babies To Die More Often : Shots – Health News : NPR

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i24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants

2017/12/21 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see whether there is much take up by descendants:

The newly minted Austrian government will grant citizenship to the descendants of Holocaust victims, Haaretz reported Tuesday.The decision comes in the wake of a diplomatic spat between Israel and Vienna as Austria’s new coalition between the conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party was sworn in on Monday, rekindling an alliance from the early 2000s which prompted unease around Europe.

The Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, has a past stained by frequent anti-Semitic incidents and instances of Nazi propaganda, which is why a harsh Israeli response was widely expected

According to a statement released by the Israeli government, “Israel will continue to work with civil servants of the Ministries headed by members of the Freedom Party”, but will also “continue to struggle against Anti-semitism” and “for the commemoration of the Holocaust.”

Some Israeli media have interpreted the statement as a “boycott” of the Freedom Party Ministers at the political level, since it says that “working relations” will continue with “civil servants”.

Others have emphasized that working relations will go on, reading the statement as a weak reaction. The reaction is certainly milder than in 2000, when the Freedom Party first joined a coalition government and Israeli authorities withdrew the Ambassador from Vienna.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has traveled to Israel a number of times, and developed ties with representatives of the Israeli right. In one of his last trips, however, late Israeli President Shimon Peres had refused to meet him.

via i24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants

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ICYMI: Racist reporting still rife in Australian media

2017/12/21 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen the equivalent study of Canadian media but may have missed it (readers to advise):

Half of all race-related opinion pieces in the Australian mainstream media are likely to contravene industry codes of conduct on racism.

In research released this week, the Who Watches the Media report found that of 124 race-related opinion pieces published between January and July this year, 62 were potentially in breach of one or more industry codes of conduct, because of racist content.

Despite multiple industry codes of conduct stipulating fair race-related reporting, racist reporting is a weekly phenomenon in Australia’s mainstream media.

We define racism as unjust covert or overt behaviour towards a person or a group on the basis of their racial background. This might be perpetrated by a person, a group, an organisation, or a system.

The research, conducted by not-for-profit group All Together Now and the University of Technology Sydney, focused on opinion-based pieces in the eight Australian newspapers and current affairs programs with the largest audiences, as determined by ratings agencies.

We found that negative race-related reports were most commonly published in News Corp publications. The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and Herald Sun were responsible for the most negative pieces in the press. A Current Affair was the most negative among the broadcast media.

Chart 1: Number of race-related stories by outlet and type of reporting

Muslims were mentioned in more than half of the opinion pieces, and more than twice as many times as any other single group mentioned (see chart 2).

Muslims were portrayed more negatively than the other minority groups (see chart 3), with 63% of reports about Muslims framed negatively. These pieces often conflated Muslims with terrorism. For example, reports used terrorist attacks in the UK to question accepting Muslim refugees and immigrants to Australia.

This was a recurring theme in race-based opinion pieces over the study period. In contrast, there were more positive than negative stories about Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.

Negative commentary about minority groups has lasting impacts in the community. An op-ed in the New York Times recently highlighted the impact that racism in the media has on individuals. It explained:

…racism doesn’t have to be experienced in person to affect our health — taking it in the form of news coverage is likely to have similar effects.
The noted effects include elevated blood pressure, long after television scenes are over. Racism is literally making us sick.

Note also that given the lack of cultural diversity among opinion-makers, particularly on television, social commentators are largely talking about groups to which they do not belong. According to the 2016-20 PwC Media Outlook report, the average media employee is 27, Caucasian and male, which does not reflect the current population diversity of Australia.

This creates a strong argument for increasing the cultural diversity of all media agencies to help minimise the number of individuals or groups being negatively depicted in race-related reports.

via Racist reporting still rife in Australian media

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Diversity must be the driver of artificial intelligence: Kriti Sharma

2017/12/20 Leave a comment

Agree. Those creating the algorithms and related technology need to be both more diverse and more mindful of the assumptions baked into their analysis and work:

The question over what to do about biases and inequalities in the technology industry is not a new one. The number of women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields has always been disproportionately less than men. What may be more perplexing is, why is it getting worse?

It’s 2017, and yet according to the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in a review of more than 380 studies from academic journals, corporations, and government sources, there is a major employment gap for women in computing and engineering.

North America, as home to leading centres of innovation and technology, is one of the worst offenders. A report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found “the high-tech industry employed far fewer African-Americans, Hispanics, and women, relative to Caucasians, Asian-Americans, and men.”

However, as an executive working on the front line of technology, focusing specifically on artificial intelligence (AI), I’m one of many hoping to turn the tables.

This issue isn’t only confined to new product innovation. It’s also apparent in other aspects of the technology ecosystem – including venture capital. As The Globe highlighted, Ontario-based MaRS Data Catalyst published research on women’s participation in venture capital and found that “only 12.5 per cent of investment roles at VC firms were held by women. It could find just eight women who were partners in those firms, compared with 93 male partners.”

The Canadian government, for its part, is trying to address this issue head on and at all levels. Two years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on, and then fulfilled, the promise of having a cabinet with an equal ratio of women to men – a first in Canada’s history. When asked about the outcome from this decision at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, he said, “It has led to a better level of decision-making than we could ever have imagined.”

Despite this push, disparities in developed countries like Canada are still apparent where “women earn 11 per cent less than men in comparable positions within a year of completing a PhD in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics, according to an analysis of 1,200 U.S. grads.”

AI is the creation of intelligent machines that think and learn like humans. Every time Google predicts your search, when you use Alexa or Siri, or your iPhone predicts your next word in a text message – that’s AI in action.

Many in the industry, myself included, strongly believe that AI should reflect the diversity of its users, and are working to minimize biases found in AI solutions. This should drive more impartial human interactions with technology (and with each other) to combat things like bias in the workplace.

The democratization of technology we are experiencing with AI is great. It’s helping to reduce time-to-market, it’s deepening the talent pool, and it’s helping businesses of all size cost-effectively gain access to the most modern of technology. The challenge is there are a few large organizations currently developing the AI fundamentals that all businesses can use. Considering this, we must take a step back and ensure the work happening is ethical.

AI is like a great big mirror. It reflects what it sees. And currently, the groups designing AI are not as diverse as we need them to be. While AI has the potential to bring services to everyone that are currently only available to some, we need to make sure we’re moving ahead in a way that reflects our purpose – to achieve diversity and equality. AI can be greatly influenced by human-designed choices, so we must be aware of the humans behind the technology curating it.

At a point when AI is poised to revolutionize our lives, the tech community has a responsibility to develop AI that is accountable and fit for purpose. For this reason, Sage created Five Core Principles to developing AI for business.

At the end of the day, AI’s biggest problem is a social one – not a technology one. But through diversity in its creation, AI will enable better-informed conversations between businesses and their customers.

If we can train humans to treat software better, hopefully, this will drive humans to treat humans better.

via Diversity must be the driver of artificial intelligence – The Globe and Mail

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Trump may have emboldened hate in Canada, but it was already here: Ryan Scrivens

2017/12/20 Leave a comment

Good overview by Scrivens:

A key turning point, in fact, was during the latter months of 2015. Two important events created a perfect storm for the movement.

First was Justin Trudeau’s pledge, as part of the Liberal party’s election platform, to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015. The second was the terrorist attack on concert-goers in Paris, inspired by the so-called “Islamic State,” on Nov. 13, 2015.

Each of these events were distinct in nature, yet Canada’s radical right wing treated them as interconnected, arguing that Canada’s newly elected prime minister was not only allowing Muslims into the country who would impose Sharia law on Canadian citizens, but that they too could be “radical Islamic terrorists.”

It all sparked a flurry of anti-Muslim discourse in Canada.

The day after the Paris attack, a mosque in Peterborough, Ont., was deliberately set ablaze, causing significant damage to the interior of the building.

The next day, a Muslim woman picking up her children from a Toronto school was robbed and her hijab torn off. The perpetrators called her a “terrorist” and told her to “go back to your country.”

Days later, an anti-Muslim video was posted on YouTube in which a man from Montreal, wearing a Joker mask and wielding a firearm, threatened to kill one Muslim or Arab each week.

Similar events continued to unfold in 2016 — all, of course, well before Trump’s election victory. A school in Calgary, for example, was spray-painted with hate messages against Syrians and Trudeau: “Syrians go home and die” and “Kill the traitor Trudeau.”

Edmonton residents were also faced with a series of anti-Islamic flyer campaigns, hateful messages were spray-painted on a Muslim elementary school in Ottawa and man in Abbotsford, B.C. went on a racist tirade and was caught on video.

Canadian chapters of Soldiers of Odin first made their presence known in the early part of 2016 by patrolling communities and “protecting” Canadians from the threat of Islam, and the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), an anti-Islam group who first appeared in Canada in 2015, continued to rally in Montreal and Toronto in 2016.

And so it would be impulsive and short-sighted for us to attribute our spike in hatred solely to Trump and his divisive politics.

Instead, the instances listed above serve as an important reminder that prior to Trump’s election victory Canada was experiencing a rise in hatred.

In responding to hatred in Canada, we must first acknowledge that it exists in Canada, and it becomes ever more present during times of social and economic uncertainty. We must also acknowledge that the foundations of hatred are complex and multi-faceted, grounded in both individual and social conditions.

So too, then, must counter-extremist initiatives be multi-dimensional, building on the strengths and expertise of diverse sectors, including but not limited to community organizations, police officers, policy-makers and the media. Multi-agency efforts are needed to coordinate the acknowledgement and response to right-wing extremism in Canada.

I see signs of us moving in the right direction in building resilience against hatred in Canada. But in the months and years ahead, there’s still much to do.

via Trump may have emboldened hate in Canada, but it was already here

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German anti-Semitism commissioner idea backed by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere | DW

2017/12/19 Leave a comment

Ongoing concern:

Germany’s interior minister has joined the chorus of politicians expressing concern over the burning of Israeli flags in Berlin. Germany’s Central Council of Jews has been calling for an anti-Semitism commissioner.

Acting Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in an interview with German national newspaper Bild am Sonntag that he supports creating the position of anti-Semitism commissioner in the next German government.

The conservative De Maiziere said his support for the commissioner went beyond the most recent incidents — in which Berlin protesters burned Israeli flags to demonstrate against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — and was also based on the recommendation of an independent commission of experts.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews has also called repeatedly for an anti-Semitism commissioner to be part of the chancellor’s office.

In the interview, de Maiziere expressed his concern over the increase in anti-Semitic agitation in Germany.

“Each crime motivated by anti-Semitism is one to many and shameful for our country,” he told the paper. He also said that occurrences of derogatory comments, inappropriate jokes and discrimination towards “our fellow Jewish citizens” were on the rise.

“Hatred towards Jews must never be allowed to take hold again in Germany,” he added, alluding to Germany’s historic responsibility for the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed.

His words on the subject of anti-Semitism were the latest to emerge from a German politician in the aftermath of protests in front of the US Embassy in central Berlin and in the immigrant-heavy Neukölln neighborhood.

The minister spoke out in favor of cracking down on protesters’ actions that demonstrate a hatred of Israel, including through police action when possible.

“We cannot tolerate it when a country’s flag is burned in public,” he said. “It is the symbolic annihilation of a country’s right to exist.”

Current German law makes it illegal to burn flags and symbols of a foreign state that have been officially installed. Burning homemade or non-official flags is not a crime, though incitement to violence against Jews is.

De Maiziere said that he found the burning of homemade flags comparable to burning official ones. “I consider the burning of imitation flags to also be a disruption of public security and order.”

De Maiziere’s fellow Christian Democratic (CDU) politician and acting Chancellor Angela Merkel also has denounced the burning of Israeli symbols.

via German anti-Semitism commissioner idea backed by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere | News | DW | 17.12.2017

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India cabinet backs bill to criminalise Islamic instant divorce – BBC

2017/12/19 Leave a comment

Welcome. However, enforcement will likely be a challenge:

The Indian cabinet has backed a bill that will make the Islamic practice of instant divorce a criminal offence.

The bill proposes jail of up to three years for a Muslim man who indulges in the controversial practice.

The government hopes to get the bill passed by parliament in the winter session, which began on Friday.

In a major victory for women’s rights activists, the Supreme Court outlawed the “triple talaq” practice in August and called it “un-Islamic”.

India is one of a handful of countries where a Muslim man can divorce his wife in minutes by saying the word talaq (divorce) three times.

Muslim women and rights groups have been campaigning for years against the custom.

Campaigners have described it as humiliating and discriminatory.

The bill, called the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, has been drafted by a group of ministers, led by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The Indian government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has supported ending the practice.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought up the issue several times, including in his Independence Day address on 15 August.

What is instant divorce?

There have been cases in which Muslim men in India have divorced their wives by issuing the so-called triple talaq by letter, telephone and, increasingly, by text message, WhatsApp and Skype. A number of these cases made their way to the courts as women contested the custom.

Triple talaq divorce has no mention in Sharia Islamic law or the Koran, even though the practice has existed for decades.

Islamic scholars say the Koran clearly spells out how to issue a divorce – it has to be spread over three months, allowing a couple time for reflection and reconciliation.

Most Islamic countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, have banned triple talaq, but the custom has continued in India, which does not have a uniform set of laws on marriage and divorce that apply to every citizen.

Via: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42366461

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A New Troubling Trend for International Students Coming to Canada

2017/12/19 Leave a comment

Anecdote-based but incentive structures are there. Hard to devise cost effective detection and enforcement strategies. Surprisingly, Flora has no specific proposals to curb such abuse:

The desire to emigrate has increased so much among the Punjabi community in India that people are doing everything they can to leave their country and reach foreign shores — even employing such extreme methods as using human traffickers, or wilfully violating immigration laws.

But in recent years, a new trend is emerging. It’s very simple: If a person can’t come to Canada on his own or as an international student, they still come to Canada at the price of an international student’s expense.

This was a big surprise to me. I was waiting on my Brampton street for the school bus to drop off my daughter, when a group of young women walked by.

“Oh study is so expensive here,” said one. Another girl said, “Maybe for you, but I’m not even paying a dime!”

The other girls were surprised. “How is that?” asked the first girl.

As the girl explained, there was a family in India whose son badly wanted to emigrate to Canada. They did everything, but no luck. But this girl was a bright student and easily qualified for a student visa.

“So we made the deal,” she explained. “They pay all my expenses, from airline fare to the college fees, books… right down to my boarding and lodging, and all my living expenses in Canada. In return, we’ll get the boy to Canada by proving that we are married.”

Our people are nothing if not creative. But the simplicity of the scheme took my breath away.

According to Canadian law, if an international student is married, they can bring their spouse over and the spouse can acquire a work permit for the duration of the student’s period of study.  So the young man’s side takes on the financial burden, while the young woman gets her “husband” across and completes her four-year degree.

Assuming the age of the fiance is about 18 to 22 years at the time they arrive, over the next four or five years they become permanent residents. After that they get divorced, at around the age of 23-26 years. They then find their original life partners and settle their life in Canada. Both sides part ways happily and go their separate ways. A good business transaction indeed.

In recent years, the Punjabi community has already made itself famous for fake marriages. Such fake marriages have not completely stopped, but the system has been tightened up.

According to the Canadian Bureau of International Education, in Canada in 2016, there were 353,000 international students in Canada. Among this tally, 34% were from China and 14%  from India. From 2008 to 2015, the number of international students coming to Canada also increased 92%. Data from a 2010 government report tells us that international students brought almost $8 billion of tuition fees into the economy and spurred the creation of 81,000 new jobs.

These figures show Canada needs international students. But it is also true that there is no need for unnecessary attempts to follow the wrong path. Will the Liberal government pay attention to this spurious trend?

One more fallout of such creativity is that the immigration department is unable to tell the difference between true and false marriages. Consequently, genuine cases are affected.

The rise in fake marriages has many Punjabi community organizations concerned about this issue enough to pressure the federal government to make changes in immigration laws to prevent such fraud.

At the end of the day, it’s not the system that’s the problem, it’s us who misuse it by hook or by crook, to fulfill our dreams. And it needs to stop.

via GUEST COLUMN: A new troubling trend for international students coming to Canada | Toronto Sun

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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