ICYMI: How best to help women caught between different kinds of family law – Islam, marriage and the law

2017/12/19 Leave a comment

Good overview (and good that Ontario rejected Sharia family law courts and along with the family tribunals of other religions:

AS IS reported by The Economist in this week’s print edition, almost everybody can agree that there are acute difficulties at the interface between Islamic family law and the liberal West. Especially for married Muslim women, living in a kind of limbo between the Islamic world and the secular world can be exceptionally tough. So far, so much consensus. What people don’t agree on, however, is how to improve this situation.

Start with England, which presents an extreme case of the pathologies facing Muslim minorities in the West. In no other country have so many “sharia councils” sprung up to adjudicate the affairs of Muslim people, especially women who are trapped in unhappy marriages and want a religious divorce. (Some say these councils should be regulated, others want them abolished.) And in no other country is it so common for young Muslim couples to have religious-only marriages or nikahs which are never registered with the state, so that in the event of a breakdown the financially vulnerable partner, usually female, has few entitlements.

Aina Khan, a London-based lawyer who specialises in family law, is prime mover of a campaign called “Register Our Marriage”, which aspires both to change the law and to make Muslims, especially women, more conscious of the dire consequences of a religious-only rite.

The campaign wants to close the gap between faith-based and civil wedding ceremonies by making it easy, virtually automatic and indeed compulsory for religious nuptials to be registered in the eyes of the state. In other words, all faiths would acquire the status (and the corresponding obligations) long enjoyed by the Anglicans, Jews and Quakers.

As the website puts it:

This Petition is to reform outdated English marriage law, which is no longer “fit for purpose.” We need to reform the Marriage Act 1949 as it is 70 years out of date. Make it compulsory for every faith to register marriages, not just three faiths….100,000s have no legal rights in an unregistered religious marriage and this figure is rising yearly.

A different view is taken by Sadikur Rahman, a London solicitor who is also a supporter of the National Secular Society. He agrees that there is an anomaly in treating Anglicans, Jews and Quakers differently from other faiths. But he wrote in a recent article that according civil status to all Muslim marriages would be “highly problematic” for several reasons. As he argues:

The question of “what is a Muslim marriage” is a vexed one. Muslim marriage encompasses a range of unions which would not be acceptable on the basis that they may be discriminatory or open to abuse. For example polygamous marriages, temporary marriages amongst Shia Muslims and nowadays young Muslims of all sects…[and] marriages between adults and children.

On the other hand, Mr Rahman adds:

If we start debating what is and is not a Muslim marriage and go down the route of…siding with Islamic reformers in not accepting the above types as Muslim marriages at all, then the state would be entering into a religious theological debate which is no position for a secular state to be in. It is not for the state to start defining what is and is not a Muslim marriage.

The best approach, in Mr Rahman’s view, is for the state to be blind to all forms of marriage except the civil sort. That would involve stripping the Anglican, Jewish and Quaker faiths of their current privileged status and insisting that adherents of those faiths must register their nuptials with the state as a separate act if they want any legal status for their union.

Mr Rahman’s view highlights one of the paradoxes of rigorous secularism. If secularism is understood to mean that the state does not interfere in theological matters, then this can leave a large social space in which religions and sub-cultures can act according to their own traditions, which may be pretty conservative.

The Netherlands has, on the face of the things, an approach that is quite secularist but also addresses the problems identified by Ms Khan that occur when civil and religious nuptials drift apart. Dutch law says that a religious wedding cannot take place unless a civil union has also been contracted. But the country still has the problem of “marital captivity”—in other words, the dire situation of women whose husbands will not give them a religious divorce.

Kathalijna Buitenweg, a prominent Green member of the Dutch parliament, is lobbying the government for a change in civil law that would make it easier and more routine for judges to compel reluctant husbands to release their wives from the religious bonds of a dead marriage.

Thanks to the efforts of Shirin Musa, a campaigner, keeping a woman in such “marital captivity” is notionally a criminal offence under Dutch law. But that provision is so draconian that it will hardly be used in practice. A few civil-law cases, including Ms Musa’s own personal case, have been pursued successfully against reluctant husbands. But if Ms Buitenweg gets her way, civil-law cases will become much easier.

But here is a paradox. By the lights of strict secularism, using civil law to bring about religious divorce is problematic. Since religious marriages do not exist in the eyes of a rigorously secular state, it makes no difference to the state whether or not they are terminated. But by the lights of common decency, some would say, a woman caught inside a traditionalist sub-culture who wants to restart her life does needs help and should get it.

via How best to help women caught between different kinds of family law – Islam, marriage and the law

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Neo-Nazis are no joke—they just want you to think they are: Tabatha Southey

2017/12/18 Leave a comment

Southey on The Daily Stormer style guide – nails it:

“Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking—like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it’s true,” reads the style guide used by The Daily Stormer, a copy of which the Huffington Post got its hands on this week.

The Daily Stormer is a prominent America-based neo-Nazi and white supremacist website that takes its name and more from Der Stürmer, the tabloid newspaper of the Nazi Party. And what it seems to be saying with that “half-joking” advice and much else in the guide is: “Don the Magic Cloak of Plausible Deniability and come with us!”

This likely won’t come as a surprise to anyone who spends much time online. Many will have observed some of these far, far right fools prancing about under that just-kidding-maybe cover. They do this as if somehow we can’t see exactly what they’re up to, and as if what they’re up to isn’t being Nazis and working to recruit more Nazis.

The style guide instructs prospective contributors on how to use memes, “humour” and “ironic hatred” to “blame the Jews for everything,” that being the site’s “prime directive.” That Jews cause all the bad things “is pretty much objectively true,” says the 17-page primer, apparently penned by site editor Andrew Anglin. “As Hitler says, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies. As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews.”

The phrase “As Hitler says” is rather the point to that sentence. You use the words “As Hitler says” in that benign, casual, and authoritative way, and it doesn’t much matter what comes after them. You type “As Hitler says, ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’,” and you are telling any burgeoning Goebbels looking for a home for their murderous musings that “yes, we’re those Nazis. Goose-step on over and pull up a chair.”

The guide also provides advice on formatting and grammar, site-specific terminology—“Moslem,” not “Muslim,” is the preferred Daily Stormer house style—along with a list of “racial slurs” that are officially “allowed and advisable” that leaves me wondering what exactly crosses a line.

Think of this document as Strunk and White Power.

Keep it simple, keep it anti-Semitic: This is the guide’s message. Not all problems are created by Jews, aspiring Nazi ghostwriters are encouraged to say, but “if we didn’t have the Jews, we could figure out how to deal with non-whites very easily.” Similarly, “Women should be attacked but there should always be a mention that if it weren’t for Jews they would be acting normally.” “Jews are like hormones” seems to be the gist of it, as far I can tell, but until I hear someone say, “Yes, I ate half a cake and cried to an Adele song, it must be my Jews,” I can’t be certain.

The guide’s acceptable terms for women are, by the way, “Slut, whore, bitch, harlot, trollop, slag, skag.” That some of these words are antiquated to the point of near-whimsicality is by design. “The indoctrinated should not be able to tell if we’re joking,” Anglin explains. Put a funny hat on your hatred, play to the crowd.

Effectively utilizing these jokes—the so-called “lulz” in Internet parlance—is vital, the guide cautions, because “most people are not comfortable with material that come across as vitriolic, raging, non-ironic hatred.” Adding the “lulz”—expressing oneself dead seriously but in the cadence of a joke—throws that Cloak of Plausible Deniability over not just to the writer, but the audience as well. “No, I’m not really consuming literal neo-Nazi propaganda,” an as-yet-unconverted reader can tell themselves. “It’s just dead baby humour.”

“The goal is to continually repeat the same points, over and over and over again,” the guide stresses. “The reader is at first drawn in by curiosity or the naughty humour, and is slowly awakened to reality by repeatedly reading the same points.” It bears repeating that, to the writer of this guide, “awaken to reality” means “embrace genocide.”

We’re living in the Irony Age, and we’re forging it into deadly weapons.

What should be completely avoided by anyone who hopes to get their work featured on The Daily Stormer—where the policy is “if we don’t like [the articles] you can put them on your own blog or whatever, if we accept them for publication we will pay you $14.88”—is the “sometimes mentioned idea that ‘even if we got rid of the Jews we would still have problems.’ ”

“The Jews should always be the beginning and end of every problem,” Anglin cautions. Specifics include “poor family dynamics” and the “destruction of the rainforest.”

Regardless of whether you were wondering, the “14 words” represent, for neo-Nazis, the words of David Lane, an American white supremacist leader and convicted felon whose mandate was: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Why 88 cents? Because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. That “88” is an abbreviation for the “Heil Hitler” salute. Several photographs found on the website registered to white-supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof featured the number the 88 and 1488 was written in the sand in one picture. (If I have to learn Nazi numerology, you’re gonna join me.)

If you rolled your eyes as you read that, because it’s difficult to take the whole concept of 1488 — it’s like someone telling you their “lucky lottery numbers” of genocide—the reality is that it has  worked. Somewhere between guessing and guffawing is where StormFront wants you to be, but make no mistake—gassing is where they want this to end.

There’s no ambiguity here. “This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas [Jewish people, but that’s not the term he uses]. But that’s neither here nor there,” writes Anglin, and such an extreme position—and once again, this is a feature not a bug—is sometimes discounted as near-self-parody. Stormfront is not a site you have to go digging about on the net to find; it pops up, I have been sent links, and Anglin warns about the kind of posts that can get them booted off Facebook. But it is sometimes dismissed as too fringe to be worth addressing.

This ghastly glibness has, however, seeped deeply into the mainstream—even before it was revealed, theirs was basically a playbook in heavy circulation—and everything Stormfront does serves to make much that would have shocked many of us a few years ago start to look comparatively centrist. They’re the reason people get to the thinking that “those guys in Charlottesville with tiki torches were just blowing off steam.”

The internet is a vast, fresh pitch, but we’re watching an old game. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946. “They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves. …They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

FBI statistics released in November show that anti-Semitic incidents accounted for 11 per cent of hate crimes of all types in the United States in 2016, and over 50 per cent of religious hate crimes, a slight increase from the year before. African-Americans, like the people Dylann Roof targeted in their church, account for by far the most number of hate crimes, yet again. This “foolishness” is fuel on a very real fire. It’s time we treated them as such.

via Neo-Nazis are no joke—they just want you to think they are – Macleans.ca

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Holocaust must be bigger part of migrant courses: German minister

2017/12/18 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the revised Canadian citizenship study guide portrays antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of racism and discrimination:

More emphasis should be placed on the Holocaust in integration courses for migrants, Germany’s justice minister said, reflecting heightened unease among leading politicians about a spate of anti-Semitic acts including Israeli flag burnings.

More than a million migrants have arrived in Germany in the last three years, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East, causing concern that anti-Semitism could increase.

German police have reported protesters setting Israeli flags ablaze and using anti-Semitic slogans in Berlin and other cities in demonstrations against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In a piece for weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Justice Minister Heiko Maas wrote that the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed six million Jews, and its significance needed to become an even more important part of integration courses and migrants should be tested on it in the examination at the end of their course.

“The lessons from the Holocaust need to be one of the guiding ideas in those lessons and not just some chapter of German history,” he said.

“Racism has no place in Germany, so everyone who wants to stay in Germany for the long term needs to be clear that we fight the Neonazis’ anti-Semitism and we won’t tolerate any imported anti-Semitism from immigrants either,” Maas added.

Jens Spahn, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Der Spiegel he thought immigration from Muslim countries was one of the causes of recent anti-Semitic demonstrations in Berlin.

via Holocaust must be bigger part of migrant courses: German minister

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with

La haine de Louis-Ferdinand Céline se rappelle au présent

2017/12/18 Leave a comment

Similar issues as with respect to publishing Mein Kampf. Despite this being prepared as a critical edition, likely some will ignore that aspect and misuse the book:

La réédition des pamphlets antisémites, racistes et pro-hitlériens de Louis-Ferdinand Céline, orchestrée en 2012 par une petite maison d’édition de Québec, fait polémique en France depuis quelques jours alors que Gallimard se prépare à la rendre disponible sous sa marque aux lecteurs français dans le courant de l’année 2018.

La diffusion de ces textes sulfureux était interdite jusqu’à aujourd’hui en Europe, à la demande de la veuve de l’auteur. Elle inquiète toutefois le bureau du premier ministre français, Édouard Philippe, qui, par la voix de son délégué à la lutte contre le racisme, a réclamé cette semaine à Antoine Gallimard des détails sur « les conditions d’élaboration de cette édition critique » afin de s’assurer qu’elle ne devienne pas un outil de propagande haineuse. Des craintes non fondées, a indiqué jeudi au Devoir l’éditeur québécois de cette réédition, puisqu’elle est accompagnée d’un « appareil critique » solide qui permet de « démystifier ces textes », mais également de les circonscrire « dans une période close », les années 1936, 1937, 1938 et 1941, qui les a fait naître.

« Garder ces textes dans l’ombre leur conserve un pouvoir de séduction, celui de l’interdit », a résumé l’éditeur Rémi Ferland, propriétaire des Éditions Huit, qui a porté la réédition des pamphlets de Céline sous le titre Écrits polémiques il y a cinq ans. À l’époque, la rage haineuse et le radicalisme destructeur de l’auteur contenus dans ses Mea Culpa, Bagatelles pour un massacre, L’école des cadavres et Les beaux drapsvenaient de tomber dans le domaine public, au Canada seulement, et ce, 50 ans après la mort de l’auteur. « Toutes proportions gardées, la publication de Sade a été longtemps défendue, poursuit-il. Or, la levée de cet interdit n’a assurément pas fait naître de vocation au sadisme, pas plus, à mon humble avis, qu’une édition de Céline n’entraînerait une recrudescence de l’antisémitisme. »

Avec le style efficace et révolutionnaire qu’on lui connaît, Louis-Ferdinand Céline pourfend sans retenue dans ces textes acides les Juifs et attribue à ce peuple tous les maux du monde en le soupçonnant de tenir les ficelles des mondes politique, économique ou culturel. Les préjugés étaient nourris ouvertement par des politiciens et des intellectuels de son temps. Ils ont préparé la voie à l’horreur du génocide qui a marqué l’histoire du XXe siècle. « Dans un contexte où le fléau de l’antisémitisme doit être plus que jamais combattu avec force, les modalités de mise à la disposition du grand public de ces écrits doivent être réfléchies », estime le délégué du premier ministre, Frédéric Potier, dans une lettre adressée à Gallimard et reproduite cette semaine par le site ActuaLitté. Le représentant du gouvernement français rappelle au passage l’importance d’accompagner ces textes d’un « appareillage critique » capable d’« éclairer le contexte historique et idéologique de leur production » et de décrypter les « biais de l’auteur et des erreurs factuelles contenues » dans ces écrits chargés.

Malgré nos appels, il n’a pas été possible de parler à Antoine Gallimard vendredi. Selon nos informations, l’acquisition en novembre dernier des Écrits polémiques auprès des Éditions Huit, pour le marché français, vise bel et bien à assurer ce bon encadrement critique. Cette édition a été établie, présentée et annotée par le spécialiste de l’oeuvre de Céline, Régis Tettamanzi, professeur à l’Université de Nantes et auteur de Céline à l’épreuve (Édition Honoré Champion), qui a collaboré à l’édition de l’oeuvre de Céline dans la prestigieuse collection La Pléiade. Entre autres.

Dans L’esthétique de l’outrage. Idéologie et stylistique dans les pamphlets de L.-F. Céline (1999), M. Tettamanzi reconnaît qu’il est « évidemment dangereux de voir ces textes circuler sans précaution aucune, comme un produit anodin ». Dans l’introduction des Écrits polémiques, il ajoute que l’Internet en a fait justement ce « produit anodin » qui force désormais, selon lui, la republication de ces propos haineux « munis d’un appareil critique qui les fasse échapper, précisément à une lecture banale » et « banalisée ».

Lucette Destouches, la veuve de Céline, aujourd’hui âgée de 105 ans, s’est toujours opposée à la publication des textes antisémites de son mari, respectant ainsi la volonté de Céline qui craignait de son vivant que la réédition de ses propos racistes ne le fasse condamner à mort dans le contexte d’après-guerre. L’édition orchestrée en 2012 par la maison célinophile de Québec a valu d’ailleurs une mise en demeure à l’éditeur dans laquelle Mme Destouches protestait contre ce projet et réclamait que la commercialisation de cet ouvrage de 1044 pages se fasse à l’extérieur des frontières de la France et de l’Union européenne. Gallimard vient donc de la faire changer d’avis en obtenant l’autorisation de publier ce titre qui, depuis 2012, a été vendu à 2400 exemplaires et a fait l’objet de six tirages, selon les informations obtenues auprès des Éditions Huit. L’oeuvre de Céline va entrer dans le domaine public en 2032 en France.

La publication des écrits antisémites de Louis-Ferdinand Céline n’est pas sans rappeler la réédition en 2016 de l’autobiographie d’Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Mon combat), qui avait fait polémique à l’époque, déchirant les tenants de l’interdiction perpétuelle et ceux préconisant au contraire un regard critique et une lecture accompagnée de ces oeuvres pour en saisir l’esprit dévastateur qui semble parfois vouloir se rappeler dans certains discours au mauvais souvenir du présent.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with

The growing diversity within federal ridings: Policy Options

2017/12/16 Leave a comment

My latest:

Increased political representation of visible minorities in Canada makes it virtually impossible for any major political party to take explicit anti-immigration positions.

via The growing diversity within federal ridings

For those interested, the full table of all 338 ridings can be found here: C16 – Visible Minority – Ridings

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

CSIS settles multimillion-dollar lawsuit with employees who claimed workplace Islamophobia, racism and homophobia

2017/12/16 Leave a comment

Appears new CSIS director understood the implications and reacted quickly:

Canada’s spy service has settled a multimillion-dollar lawsuit with five intelligence officers and analysts who claimed they faced years of discrimination because they were gay, Muslim or Black.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service posted a comment from director David Vigneault on the agency’s website Thursday afternoon, stating that the agreement had been reached with the help of a mediator.

“The settlement is in the best interest of all those concerned,” Vigneault wrote. “The complexity of the ever-evolving threat environment requires that all CSIS employees are equipped to give their best. As such, I strongly believe in leading an organization where each employee promotes a workplace which is free from harassment and conducive to the equitable treatment of all individuals.”

CSIS did not release the terms of the settlement, saying they are confidential.

Toronto lawyer John Phillips, who represented the five employees, said he could not comment on the case.

The $35-million lawsuit, launched in July, was a rare public airing of internal complaints at one of Canada’s most secretive organizations and contained detailed allegations about managers who openly espoused Islamophobic, racist and homophobic views.

Some of the most damning claims concerned emails allegedly sent by managers to Toronto intelligence officer “Alex.” (The five employees and managers are identified by pseudonyms as identifying a spy can be considered an offence under Canada’s Security of Information Act.)

“Alex,” is gay and has a Muslim partner. According to the statement of claim, one email allegedly sent in October 2015 stated: “Careful your Muslim in-laws don’t behead you in your sleep for being homo.”

Vigneault, who had only been appointed director a few weeks before the lawsuit was launched, responded quickly to the allegations.

As the Star reported in October, he invited the five employees to a lengthy meeting to hear the allegations first-hand. He also released a statement acknowledging that his agency suffers from a workplace climate of “retribution, favouritism, bullying and other problems,” which he said is “categorically unacceptable in a high-functioning, professional organization.”

via CSIS settles multimillion-dollar lawsuit with employees who claimed workplace Islamophobia, racism and homophobia | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

American Bar Association is ‘greatly concerned’ about low percentage of female and minority US attorney candidates

2017/12/16 Leave a comment

Consistent with the lack of diversity among Cabinet and other appointees:

ABA President Hilarie Bass has sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions that asks him to urge senators proposing U.S. attorney candidates to take diversity into account.

The letter (PDF) is dated Nov. 30, nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump announced a ninth wave of U.S. attorney nominations. Of the 57 U.S. attorney candidates announced so far by the Trump administration, one was black and three were women, Newsweek reported.

The letter acknowledges that senators representing states in which U.S. attorneys are to serve have long had the prerogative to make recommendations for appointments. But the attorney general who will oversee the U.S. attorneys “also has influence over the process,” the letter says.

“We are greatly concerned that a lower percentage of women and people of color have been appointed to these positions in the past year than in previous administrations—both Democrat and Republican,” the letter says. “That is why I am writing you to ask that you take an active role to help ensure that the cadre of U.S. attorneys appointed in this administration is more reflective of the legal profession and our society.”

The letter says equal numbers of men and women are graduating from law school, but the profession is 65 percent male and 85 percent white. Progress in achieving diversity “has been uneven, slow, and concentrated in low- and mid-level legal jobs,” Bass writes. “Racial and ethnic groups, sexual and gender minorities, and lawyers with disabilities continue to be underrepresented and face hurdles to advancement throughout the profession.”

“Our failure to achieve a diverse justice system despite the ever-increasing multiculturalism of our nation invites a crisis in public confidence,” the letter says. “A justice system that is not representative of the diverse community it serves risks losing its legitimacy in the eyes of those who come before it.”

via ABA is ‘greatly concerned’ about low percentage of female and minority US attorney candidates

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Funding religious schools: the majority of Canadians say at least some public dollars should be provided – Angus Reid

2017/12/16 Leave a comment

Suspect support would vary if questions were posed with respect to different religions as the 2007 Ontario election showed given concern in particular over Muslim schools:

Should religiously affiliated schools receive taxpayer dollars? And if so, what amount, and under what circumstances?

This ongoing debate in Canadian education – one complicated by the historical position of Catholic schools as a key provider of publicly funded education in many provinces – has been revived most recently in Saskatchewan, where legal challenges are underway to a court ruling that the provincial government cannot fund non-Catholic students’ attendance at the province’s Catholic schools.

Recent polling from the Angus Reid Institute – part of a year-long partnership with Faith in Canada 150 – finds Canadians more amenable than not to this particular intersection of church and state.

Asked a broad question about public funding of private, faith-based schools, six-in-ten Canadians (61%) say such institutions should either receive support equal to that enjoyed by public schools (31%), or at least some amount of government funding (30%).

More Key Findings:religious school funding canada

  • Those favouring partial funding were asked a follow-up question about roughly how much money religious schools should receive. More than half (51%) in this group say funds should be less than 50 per cent of what public schools get
  • Younger respondents – those ages 18-34 – are more likely than their elders to say public funds should be appropriated to religious schools (38% favour full funding, and 35% prefer partial)
  • Residents of the three provinces where separate, publicly funded Catholic school boards still operate – Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario – are more likely to support full funding than people in other parts of the country

How much funding should religious and faith-based schools receive?

As mentioned, six-in-ten Canadians (61%) say faith-based education should receive government funding, though they disagree about how much money religious schools should receive in comparison to the public system. Three-in-ten (31%) say faith-based education should receive government funding on par with public schools. Another three-in-ten (30%) say religious schools should get only partial funding, while the plurality (39%) say they should receive no public money at all.

Respondents who said religious schools should receive partial funding were asked how much money they would allocate to such institutions, relative to public school funding. Slightly more than half (51%) said they would provide less than 50 per cent of the amount public schools receive to religious schools, while one-in-five (20%) said they would provide more than 50 per cent of what public schools receive. The rest (29%) were unsure.

Taken together with those who would provide full funding or no funding at all, the group that would provide partial funding can be broken down as seen in the following graph.

religious school funding canada

Notable differences by region, age, and gender

Three provinces – Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario – currently provide separate streams of public funding for Catholic schools. These separate schools have their own publicly funded school boards, and have historically educated Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Given the prominent ongoing role of publicly funded religious schools in these three provinces, it’s perhaps not surprising that the three are the only regions above the national average in terms of the number of residents supporting full funding for religious education.

It’s worth noting, of course, that in no region of the country does a majority of the population reject all public funding for faith-based schools. Quebec – where the religious neutrality of the state is a recurring and salient political issue – comes closest, as seen in the following table:

Age and gender are also key drivers of opinion on this question, with men more likely to say religious schools should receive “no funding at all” and women more divided, as seen in the graph that follows.

Looking at responses by age, it becomes clear that those closest to their own school days view public spending on religious education most favourably. A plurality (38%) of those ages 18 – 34 say religious schools should receive full funding, while among older age groups “no funding at all” is the plurality choice:

religious school funding canada

One demographic characteristic that – perhaps surprisingly – doesn’t have much impact on responses to this question is whether a person has children living in their household or not.

Parents and guardians are only marginally more likely to favour full funding (33% do, compared to 30% of those without kids in their households – a difference that is not statistically significant). Likewise, people with children are no more or less likely to favour partial funding, nor are they more or less inclined to say this partial funding should be above 50 per cent. See summary tables at the end of this report for greater detail.

Via: http://angusreid.org/funding-religious-schools-majority-canadians-say-least-public-dollars-provided/

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Private faith schools are resisting British values, says Ofsted chief | The Guardian

2017/12/16 Leave a comment

Significant report and issue:

Private faith schools run by religious conservatives are “deliberately resisting” British values and equalities law, according to the chief inspector of schools in England, who appealed for school inspectors to be given new powers to seize evidence during visits.

Source: Ofsted

Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, listed a string of disturbing policies and literature used by private faith schools, detailed in the school inspectorate’s annual report published on Wednesday.

“We have found texts that encourage domestic violence and the subjugation of women. We have found schools in which there is a flat refusal to acknowledge the existence of people who are different, so for example lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

“We also find well-meaning school leaders and governors who naively turn to religious institutions of a particularly conservative bent for advice about religious practice, not realising when this advice does not reflect mainstream thinking,” Spielman said at the report’s launch.

The chief inspector – who took over running the watchdog from Sir Michael Wilshaw at the start of the year – said the discoveries made for uncomfortable reading, denying it amounted to criticism of faith schools in general.

“When I see books in schools entitled Women Who Deserve to Go to Hell; children being educated in dank, squalid, conditions; children being taught solely religious texts at the expense of learning basic English and mathematics, I cannot let it be ignored,” said Spielman, who argued that inspectors should be able to remove such texts from school libraries.

The Ofsted report detailed its recent inspections of private faith schools, with 26% rated inadequate and 22% as requiring improvement – Ofsted’s two lowest categories.

Of the 140 small Muslim private schools inspected by Ofsted in the year, 28% were graded as inadequate, along with 38% of Jewish private schools and 18% of Christian schools.

Spielman had praise for the bulk of state schools, noting that 90% of primaries and nearly 80% of secondaries were rated as good or outstanding.

“If this speech generates any headlines, I doubt they will be ‘English education is good’,” Spielman said.

But the report also focused on a group of schools that Spielman said remained “intractable” to improvement, including a group of nearly 130 that had failed to achieve a good rating in inspections this year or at any time since 2005.

via Private faith schools are resisting British values, says Ofsted chief | Education | The Guardian

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Why Ottawa needs to nudge Canada’s boards toward greater diversity: Senators Massicotte and Omidvar

2017/12/15 Leave a comment

Agree – sensible amendments that provide latitude for companies to set their objectives with accountability and transparency provided through regular company and overall reporting:

This week, the Senate will vote on Bill C-25. The bill proposes to reform the process for electing directors of distributing corporations and co-operatives and modernize communications between corporations and their shareholders. It also requires distributing corporations to provide shareholders, at annual general meetings, information about diversity among directors and senior management.

The goal of the legislation is to increase diversity among corporate boards and among their executive ranks. The intent of the legislation is right. We need more diversity. But the measures proposed are not enough.

Three years ago, the Canadian Securities Administrators adopted a “comply or explain” model that is specific to the representation of women on boards and applies to most publicly traded companies in Canada. Bill C-25 emulates this approach.

Results have been disappointing: Only 14 per cent of board seats are now occupied by women, a meagre three-percentage-point progress from 11 per cent in 2015. Regarding senior management, only 15 per cent of positions are filled by women, a proportion that has not progressed at all since 2015.

Women are better represented on boards and in senior executive positions at larger firms. But even in FP500 companies, other groups are unacceptably underrepresented. Only 1.1 per cent of board members are Indigenous, 3.2 per cent are persons with a disability and 4.3 per cent are members of a visible minority.

Why would an approach that has yielded so few advances in recent years work better in the future? The government is asking Canadians to be patient, but shouldn’t we request an improved approach? We strongly believe we should.

This week, we will table an amendment in order to ensure we do more than what is timidly proposed in Bill C-25. This amendment puts forward an approach that is both progressive and respectful of corporations’ choices and strategies.

The term “diversity” is not defined in Bill C-25. When diversity is left undefined, even on the most basic level, as we saw in the United States, it loses its emphasis. It becomes experiential rather than identity-based. Given the myriad interpretations possible, the term risks being diluted beyond recognition, with very little accountability in place.

Our amendment would require publicly traded corporations to set self-determined numerical goals, such as percentages and timetables, to bolster the representation of at least four underrepresented groups within boards and senior management. It would specifically target the designated groups identified in the 1995 Employment Equity Act: women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities and visible minorities.

To be clear: Companies would be allowed to establish numerical goals for these four groups, considering industry and company-specific factors and also include other forms of diversity if they so wish.

We know this approach works. According to the Canadian Securities Administrators, issuers that set themselves targets for the representation of women on boards do more than twice as well (reaching a 26-per-cent female composition of their boards) than companies that do not set such goals (12 per cent being their proportion).

So, by requiring corporations to report policies and goals to their shareholders, this amendment is designed to nudge them to accelerate change.

But if we are to know whether real progress is made, we need a periodical, complete, up-to-date picture of the situation in the upper echelons of the corporate world. That is why the amendment would require that corporations also send diversity and numerical goals information to the government. As well, each year, the minister would be required to prepare and publish a report presenting the aggregate data received.

The approach that we propose seeks better representation for women and other underrepresented groups, while leaving corporations free to take into account their particular circumstances. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach and it is a much better alternative than the wait-and-see approach proposed by the government.

This is an important piece of legislation. Diversity is our strength but inclusion is our choice. We need to make these changes to improve the bill and accelerate progress.

via Why Ottawa needs to nudge Canada’s boards toward greater diversity – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →