Canada’s M-103 debacle is a trial balloon for something much bigger | Furey

2017/03/22 Leave a comment

Sun Media continues to fan the flames. And not sure that the Conservatives are that keen, Kellie Leitch and Steven Blaney excepted, are that keen on maintaining a high focus (Patrick Brown, leader of Ontario PC, in his acceptance of the comparable motion – “hate is hate” – said it well):

“There will be no Shariah law in Ontario,” Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty said in 2005.

He was announcing that religious arbitration decisions would no longer be backed up by Ontario courts.

“There will be one law for all Ontarians.”

We made the right choice then. But a lot has changed in the years since. Would we do the same now?

This is the undercurrent of the fight now playing out over Canada’s so-called anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103. The motion itself is fairly benign, its only actionable item being the call for a committee study.

The bigger problem is this whole exercise is about getting a Western liberal democracy to grant recognition to weaponized language used around the world by Islamists to shore up their intolerant political agenda.

While to ill-informed social justice warriors, rejecting Islamophobia just means the common sense courtesy of not ripping off a woman’s hijab in the grocery store, that’s not what it means for many millions of people across the Muslim world.

A quarter of the countries in the world have some form of anti-blasphemy and apostasy laws, many of which are fuelled by a broad definition of Islamophobia. For too many of their citizens, opposing Islamophobia means locking up contrarian bloggers or cartoonists who draw the prophet. This is what we’re at risk of normalizing.

The motion was previously slated for second reading in April but is now set to appear in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The scheduling change means the fallout from M-103 will be drowned out by the federal budget, which will be tabled on Wednesday.

Clearly, the Liberals are no longer so keen on giving this the limelight. No wonder. They thought they’d set a trap for the Conservatives but instead fell into it themselves.

Motion sponsor Liberal MP Iqra Khalid has shied away from most media requests. When Conservative MPs such as Erin O’Toole proposed modest amendments to get consensus, Khalid declined and revealed the prime minister’s office was calling the shots.

Then Canadians saw right through her exercise of reading the thousands of mean messages she’d been sent. They know full well that hateful threats are wrong but also know two wrongs don’t make a right.

While those of us in the press criticizing the motion were, at first, few, more have come on board. CBC journalists Terry Milewski and Neil Macdonald have recently asked smart questions about it.

Meanwhile, multi-faith and ethnically diverse protests have cropped up across the country. And on Monday, a new group called Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms gave a press conference against the motion on Parliament Hill.

The strongest moment was when a gay Muslim man who gave his name as Yusuf took to the microphone to explain “we would like to open our religion to criticism – to find our weaknesses and strengths.”

Yusuf’s referring to the Islamic reformation, a process people both in and out of the faith argue is needed to drag this growing monotheism into modernity. Will the Liberals help or hinder making progress on one of the defining issues of our time?

This matters. The time to get it right is now.

An Environics poll from last year revealed Canadian Muslims are becoming more observant and more likely to embrace patriarchy and homophobia. A Macdonald-Laurier Institute survey from 2011 found 62% of Canadian Muslims backed some form of Shariah law. And Statistics Canada found the Muslim population recently doubled over 10 years, crossing 1 million persons in 2011.

We may not see it now, but this motion is a trial balloon for the main event – likely a future debate that will resemble what Ontario had in 2005. But this one will be much bigger.

Source: Canada’s M-103 debacle is a trial balloon for something much bigger | Furey | Co

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Dutch voters deliver a treat: Sears

2017/03/21 Leave a comment

Will share with some of my Dutch friends but interesting analysis of the results and possible implications for Canada:

The headline across the continent this week was, “Europe Breathes a Sigh of Relief.” Common sense and the ‘centrist’ Dutch prime minister had survived. But drill down just a little and a different picture emerges. Yes, conservative Mark Rute did survive, but he lost 25 per cent of his caucus. The biggest loser was the Dutch Labour party, which lost 75 per cent of its MPs.

The real winner, however, despite the media hysteria pre-election day was not Geert Wilders, who won only five new seats. It was the Green Left party, which tripled its caucus, D66, a liberal party, and the Christian Democrats, traditional progressive conservatives. Together these three doubled their size in the new Parliament.

What is the voters’ message to this complex collection of pizza slice parties? It’s very clear.

Those who indulged anti-immigrant, racist dog-whistle politics and more austerity — including PM Rute — were punished. Those who supported the EU, economic stimulus and a Holland open to immigration and the world were winners. Greasy Geert was the outlier for only the bewildered and angry.

This is a powerful message for progressive politicians. The giant of Dutch progressive politics, the Labour party, was decimated, after supporting austerity and flirting with anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Greens, in Holland as elsewhere, may be economically incoherent, but voters rewarded their toughness on austerity and immigrant bashing.

Of course, progressive politicians should never patronize the anger of working class white voters as “deplorable.” Their anger is well-founded and demands a response. But, no, those same politicians should never slime up to racist populists as a survival strategy. As my socialist grandmother used to say to right-drifting New Democrats, “There are two more believable capitalist parties than us, why would you think copying them will fool anyone?”

Wilders — a man who equates the Qur’an with Mein Kampf — is a long time former staffer in Rute’s party. His populist costume conceals a traditional conservative ideology. Why would any thoughtful progressive try to compete with his current poisonous politics by imitating him?

The great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor observes that no one is borne racist, we learn it. Taylor cautions that each of us is genetically wired to be susceptible to a fear of “the other,” given the right fear-mongering baits. We have built a broad social consensus for an open, tolerant society here, but it is fragile. It can be fatally undermined by enough angry voices in hard times. This is what makes the dog-whistle racism of some Canadian Conservatives so despicable.

As Taylor puts it, each society has the ability to swing from a dark place to a sunnier plateau — and back again. Working in Egypt during the Tahrir Spring, my young Yemeni female colleagues sighed sadly, as they recalled pictures of their bathing-suited mothers playing soccer with their male friends on the beach in 1960s Aden. Many Arab nations have travelled toward openness and freedom and then slid back again.

Taylor reminds us that from the revolution in 1789 to the late 1950s France was the most welcoming and socially inclusive society in Western Europe, where thousands of Russians, Poles, Asians and North African refugees had fled. What Changed? The Algerian War, in part, and a quiescent leadership elite that first tolerated and then promoted racial division, exclusion and hate.

The real roots of populist anger — rising inequality and falling incomes, rising barriers to the newly arrived and those starting out, and falling standards of living for a new generation — must be addressed boldly and creatively. But let’s drop the flirtation with racist politics in doing so.

Imagine a different, more courageous response …

A pioneer such as Conservative leadership candidate Deepak Obhrai celebrating his success, his qualification to lead and, yes, his difference. Would it not be a proud Canadian moment, if Obhrai delivered a thundering endorsement of anti-racist, pro-immigrant politics — a strong Progressive Conservative tradition — and then got a standing ovation from party members?

Or imagine New Democrat Jagmeet Singh, speaking in French to a crowd at the Quebec City mosque, delivering a ringing denunciation of the racial, religious and ethnic provocateurs, and having the crowd — including niqab-clad women and pur laine Quebecers — rise to their feet.

Let’s hope the Conservatives have learned the lesson of their niqab humiliation and that they have the wisdom to smack down those who would play dangerous games with the hard-won harmony and social cohesion we have built.

And let’s ensure that any Canadian progressive tempted to play footsy with racism understands the certainty of their political humiliation.

Source: Dutch voters deliver a treat: Sears | Toronto Star

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Multiculturalism will only work if all Australians sign up, Coalition’s first policy statement says – ABC News

2017/03/21 Leave a comment

A shift towards more explicit integration messaging, not unlike that occurred under former Minister Kenney starting in 2007:

The Federal Government’s first policy statement on multiculturalism declares it a “success” but says every Australian must sign up to shared values and mutual obligations.

Releasing Multicultural Australia: United, Strong, Successful (Australian Government’s Multicultural Statement) today, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Zed Seselja said the Coalition had put its stamp on the “unifying” statement, which is also the first since 2011.

The son of Croatian migrants, Senator Seselja acknowledged there were some people who were “very anti” the idea of multiculturalism but said he believed most Australians supported the policy.

“Overwhelmingly it has been a success and I want to see that continue. But we need to bring the community with us and the way we do that is by reaffirming the fundamental values of our nation,” he told the ABC.

The statement emphasises that Australians are bonded by the “shared values” of respect, freedom and equality and adds the “fundamental rights of every individual” cannot be broken.

It also addresses growing concerns about the threat of global terrorism, and the need for social cohesion, by declaring that every Australian is expected to obey the nation’s laws and support its democratic processes.

“Underpinning a diverse and harmonious Australia is the security of our nation,” the statement says.

Coalition MPs including George Christensen have questioned the benefits of multiculturalism and used the rise of violent extremism overseas to push for greater restrictions on immigration and citizenship.

Labor’s multicultural statement, released by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2011, focused primarily on fairness and inclusion; the Coalition’s version places a stronger emphasis on national security in a time of greater global uncertainty.

The statement promotes the principle of mutual respect and mutual obligations and states the Government “continues denouncing racial hatred and discrimination as incompatible with Australian society”.

But Senator Seselja denied this was at odds with a push within the Coalition to change the contentious section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, saying the latter was a debate about where to draw the line in terms of free speech.

“There is no contradiction whatsoever,” he said.

Multiculturalism was conceived as a policy in Australia in the 1970s, replacing the previous approaches of assimilation and integration.

Source: Multiculturalism will only work if all Australians sign up, Coalition’s first policy statement says – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Les ultraorthodoxes font leurs devoirs

2017/03/21 Leave a comment

Slow process getting to this point but the change appears to be accepted and in some cases, welcomed within the community:

Las de devoir se battre avec Québec chaque année pour le renouvellement de leur permis, plusieurs écoles juives ultraorthodoxes se sont finalement résolues à faire accréditer leurs professeurs qui enseignaient jusqu’alors sans brevet. Une première vague de professeurs s’apprêtent à obtenir leur diplôme du programme de formation des maîtres de l’Université du Nouveau-Brunswick. Une expérience qui porte des fruits, comme a pu le constater Le Devoir.

« C’est un petit miracle, résume le directeur général du Centre Bronfman de l’éducation juive, Shimshon Hamerman, en entrevue au Devoir. Traditionnellement, les communautés ultraorthodoxes ne suivent pas les études laïques […]. Mais les conseils d’administration des écoles ont compris qu’ils ne pourraient pas avoir de permis — et certainement pas un permis à long terme — si leurs professeurs n’avaient pas le brevet. Ils voulaient vraiment respecter la loi. »

Par l’entremise du Centre Bronfman, les directeurs d’écoles des communautés juives ultraorthodoxes ont contacté différentes universités québécoises. Mais selon leurs dires, il était difficile d’obtenir la flexibilité requise pour ce projet, car les élèves travaillent déjà comme professeurs à temps plein dans les différentes écoles associées à leur communauté religieuse.

Shashana R., Sarah Klein et Chana Biegeleisen suivent une formation de l’Université du Nouveau-Brunswick pour obtenir leur brevet en enseignement.

Ils se sont donc tournés vers l’Université du Nouveau-Brunswick, qui offre un programme de baccalauréat en enseignement adapté aux horaires des participants. Depuis quatre ans, une fin de semaine par mois, un professeur est dépêché à Montréal pour offrir une formation intensive. Des périodes d’enseignement sont aussi prévues pendant les vacances estivales et autres congés scolaires. Les soirs et les fins de semaine, les étudiants bénéficient de formations en ligne. Ils devraient obtenir leur diplôme en juin prochain.

« Ça coûte beaucoup plus cher que s’ils étudiaient dans une université locale, mais c’est la preuve de leur engagement à vouloir se conformer aux exigences ministérielles, plaide M. Hamerman. Les professeurs payent de leur poche pour obtenir cette formation qui leur donne accès au brevet d’enseignement de Québec en vertu d’une entente de reconnaissance mutuelle entre les gouvernements du Québec et du Nouveau-Brunswick. »

Former les professeurs

Dans un petit local surchauffé du Centre des enseignants de la Torah Umesorah, sur l’avenue du Parc, une trentaine d’élèves tentent de répondre à la leçon du jour : « Quel est le rôle de l’éducation ? » Les femmes, majoritaires, sont assises à l’avant. Certaines bercent leurs nouveau-nés tout en prenant des notes. « Elle peut rester tant qu’elle n’est pas tannante », blague la maman d’un poupon de neuf semaines. Les hommes restent en retrait derrière une bibliothèque qui fait office de paravent virtuel.

Photo: Jacques Nadeau Le DevoirUne classe d’élèves au travail

« Les parents sont de plus en plus exigeants quant à l’éducation laïque que reçoivent leurs enfants, alors il faut que je sois à la hauteur de leurs attentes », explique en entrevue Avrohom Biegeleisen, qui enseigne depuis 12 ans à la Yeshiva Gedola. Sa femme, Chana, professeure et mère de 10 enfants, suit également la formation. « Ça m’aide beaucoup, notamment dans la façon d’organiser mes cours. »

Professeure à l’école des filles de la communauté Skyer, Perel Brewer affirme que cela demande beaucoup d’efforts, mais que ça en vaut la peine : « Ce qui est génial, c’est que je n’ai pas besoin d’attendre quatre ans pour mettre en application les enseignements. Ce que j’apprends ici aujourd’hui, je peux l’appliquer dès demain dans ma classe. »

Sarah Klein, qui enseigne également à la Yeshiva Gedola, ne s’en cache pas : elle est une « meilleure professeure » depuis qu’elle suit le programme de formation des maîtres. Elle bénéficie d’une « tolérance » du ministère de l’Éducation, mais elle sait que son brevet va faire une « grande différence » aux yeux de Québec. La jeune femme s’y connaît en matière d’exigences gouvernementales. Le matin, elle enseigne aux enfants de la maternelle et l’après-midi, elle travaille à des tâches cléricales, qui consistent en grande partie à remplir des formulaires pour le gouvernement en vue du renouvellement du permis.

Source: Les ultraorthodoxes font leurs devoirs | Le Devoir

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ICYMI: Will Saudi King’s Indonesia Visit Change Face of Islam? – The Atlantic

2017/03/20 Leave a comment

More on the worrisome aspects of Saudi Arabia:

When Saudi Arabia’s King Salman landed in Indonesia on Wednesday, he became the first Saudi monarch to visit the world’s largest Muslim-majority country since 1970. Officials in Jakarta had hoped the visit would help them strengthen business ties and secure $25 billion in resource investments. That’s largely been a bust—as of Thursday, the kingdom has agreed to just one new deal, for a relatively paltry $1 billion.

But Saudi Arabia has, for decades, been making investments of a different sort—those aimed at influencing Indonesian culture and religion. The king’s current visit is the apex of that methodical campaign, and “has the potential to accelerate the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s cultural resources in Indonesia,” according to Chris Chaplin, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asia. “In fact, given the size of his entourage, I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be a flurry of networking activity amongst Indonesian alumni of Saudi universities.”

“The advent of Salafism in Indonesia is part of Saudi Arabia’s global project to spread its brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world,” said Din Wahid, an expert on Indonesian Salafism at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta.

Salaf is Arabic for “forebear,” and Salafism is a Sunni movement that advocates a return to the Islamic traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries. It arose in reaction to 18th-century European colonialism in the Middle East, but it took particular root in Saudi Arabia in the hands of the influential preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Al-Wahhab’s alliance with the House of Saud in 1744 cemented Wahhabism as the spiritual backbone of the Saudi Arabian state. And in the 20th century, Saudi Arabia, which had become fabulously oil-rich, started to invest its considerable resources in propagating its ideology abroad.The heart of Indonesian Salafism is the Institute for the Study of Islam and Arabic (LIPIA), a completely Saudi-funded university in South Jakarta whose campus was abuzz the day before the king’s visit.“It’s really great that our two countries are becoming closer,” said one student who, like most of the other male students at LIPIA, had a wispy beard and wore cropped pants, per hadith verses stating that covering one’s ankles connotes arrogance. “I’ve been reading all the news about the royal visit. I hope to further my own studies in Saudi Arabia, God willing.”

LIPIA’s doors opened in 1980. Its ostensible purpose is to spread the Arabic language, and there’s not a word of the country’s official language, Bahasa Indonesia, on its campus—not a bathroom sign, not a library book. Tuition at LIPIA is free for all its 3,500 students. Music is considered bid’ah, an unnecessary innovation, and is prohibited, along with television and loud laughter. Men and women do not interact; classes of male students attend live lectures on one floor while female students watch the same lecture, live-streamed, on a separate floor.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs accredited LIPIA in 2015, which bodes well for the university’s push to open four more branches across the archipelago. Hammed al-Sultan, head of LIPIA’s Arabic language department, was confident that the satellite campuses would open by the fall of this year. But they will need their own green lights from the ministry, which has voiced concerns about whether they will uphold moderate Islam and Indonesia’s state philosophy of Pancasila, which enshrines religious tolerance.

When I asked whether LIPIA Jakarta already does this, al-Sultan said, “Pancasila … sorry, what is that again?” A LIPIA representative acting as our translator quickly briefed him on it. Al-Sultan said, “Yes, our integration of Pancasila is in progress, since it was a requirement for our accreditation two years ago.”

Muhammad Adlin Sila of the Ministry of Religious Affairs was more frank. “We are concerned about some alumni from LIPIA who are big fans of khilafah [the caliphate of the Islamic State].”

Ulil-Abshar Abdalla, a LIPIA alumnus who now runs the Liberal Islam Network, said he found the university’s theological climate oppressive when he attended in the early 1990s. “Theology, which is a mandatory subject there, is only taught by committed Wahhabis, and I really think their ideology is antithetical to traditional Indonesian Islam, which is usually syncretic and relaxed,” he explained.

Source: Will Saudi King’s Indonesia Visit Change Face of Islam? – The Atlantic

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Internal review questions number of diplomatic passports

2017/03/20 Leave a comment

Valid review initiated by the Conservative government, given the incremental and somewhat ad hoc evolution of the diplomatic and special passport policy.

The article assumes that all diplomatic and special passports issued to public servants are for Global Affairs employees. Employees of other departments at embassies and consulates abroad (e.g., IRCC being the largest) are also issued these kinds of passports:

Federal officials are raising questions about whether Canada should be issuing so many diplomatic passports each year, including some to retired officials who perform no diplomacy.

The problem arises from “unclear, inconsistent or outdated eligibility provisions,” according to an internal document from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which runs the passport program.

A formal review of the program began in 2015, under the Conservative government, and continues today under the Liberals, with a set of clearer rules expected by next year.

Progress has been slow, partly because of “sensitivities surrounding eligibility for diplomatic passports,” says an accompanying slide show, marked “secret.”

The briefing says “high-profile stakeholders” might be “resistant to the perception” of no longer being eligible.

“Some stakeholders also view their diplomatic or special passport as a symbol of prestige or a guarantee of certain immunities or privileges abroad.”

CBC News obtained details of the review through a request under the Access to Information Act.

About 9,500 diplomatic passports, with their distinctive red covers, are in circulation, though only about 7,000 are held by employees of Global Affairs Canada, the department in charge of Canada’s embassies, high commissions and missions abroad. Some 2,800 new ones are issued each year.

The rest are held by a broad range of others, including spouses or children of former prime ministers or of former governors general.

Outdated rules

The current rules were set in 1956 by the federal cabinet under the Diplomatic and Special Passports Order, which has not been substantially updated in more than 60 years.

In the meantime, eligibility has been gradually expanded through a long series of so-called ministerial instructions. There are now more than 50 such instructions; many no longer relevant or consistent with other rules.

Adding further complexity are so-called special passports, which have green covers and are issued largely to National Defence employees for work overseas.

About 45,000 special passports are in circulation, some held by retired officials who no longer work in government — such as former lieutenant governors, former heads of missions, and Privy Councillors who have long since withdrawn from public life.

Some 9,850 special passports are issued each year, including to MPs, senators, premiers and speakers of legislative assemblies.

The passport program collected $3.5 million in fees to issue diplomatic and special passports in 2014-15, more than enough to cover operating costs of $2.3 million. But most of those fees — $225 per passport — are paid indirectly by taxpayers, with departments such as National Defence and Global Affairs picking up the bills.

And some diplomatic passports are issued without charge to former prime ministers, former governors general, former ministers of foreign affairs, former lieutenant governors and others, including their spouses.

The latest review follows an earlier examination of the program ordered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in October 2010.

Earlier that year there were two incidents in which an MP and a former cabinet minister separately used their green passports for personal travel to Mexico, and were turned back by Mexican officials in a politically motivated visa dispute with Canada.

Canadian standard passport and special passport

The review is also examining the numbers of special passports, with a green cover, being issued each year, about 9,850. Most go to National Defence employees and military members, but some go to provincial officials and others as a courtesy. (cic.gc.ca)

No immunity

The Minister of Foreign Affairs issued instructions for the proper use of such passports in 2011.

“There were occasional, isolated cases of the misuse of the special and diplomatic passport,” said IRCC spokesperson Faith St-John.

Among the rules: holders of such passports cannot use them for travelling on personal business, but must instead carry the standard blue-cover personal passport familiar to most Canadians. (The few exceptions to this rule include the prime minister, the Governor General, cabinet ministers and diplomats posted abroad.)

Source: Internal review questions number of diplomatic passports – Politics – CBC News

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Holocaust Organizations, Scholars Slam Possible Defunding of Anti-Semitism Office

2017/03/17 2 Comments

Will be surprising if the Trump administration pursues defunding as they should have learned from previous mistakes (i.e., not mentioning Jewish victims of the Holocaust, delayed condemnation of antisemitic acts and hate crimes). But who knows:

As President Donald Trump prepared to enter the White House, reports began to circulate about what his first budget proposal would look like. The day before his inauguration, The Hill reported on plans of the incoming administration to make drastic cuts in government spending, including the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and reductions in funding and program eliminations within the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Justice and State.

Within this last department, Bloomberg reported late last month, the administration was considering whether to eliminate several special envoys, including one on anti-Semitism. On Monday, more than 100 Holocaust organizations, educators and scholars released a statement in response, following similar efforts by the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.). William L. Shulman, president of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, tells Newsweek it took the intervening time to put together the statement, edit it and circulate it for signatures.

“We are alarmed by reports that the President plans to defund the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, an office that tracks and counteracts anti-Semitism abroad,” the Association of Holocaust Organizations wrote. “We urge the U.S. government to maintain and strengthen the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and to create a new office to address this urgent issue domestically.

“The need becomes clearer by the day as hatred, like a tidal wave, sweeps across the nation,” the statement explained. “Cemeteries, synagogues, churches and mosques are being desecrated. Jewish Community Centers and schools are targets of bomb threats and shootings. Swastikas and white supremacist threats appear on walls and on social media. Now is the time to increase vigilance, not roll it back.”

The office in question was created via the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, which expressed “the sense of Congress [that] the United States should continue to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism worldwide through bilateral relationships and interaction with international organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)” and that “the Department of State should thoroughly document acts of anti-Semitism that occur around the world.” The act directed the Secretary of State to establish an Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism, which would be headed by a special envoy, to take on the role of tracking, reporting on and combating anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Semitism is not only a Jewish problem,” Ira Forman, who served as the most recent Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism under former President Barack Obama, is quoted as saying in the release. “Jew-hatred—like other forms of religious and ethnic prejudice—is a threat to the very foundations of liberal democracies.” Speaking to Jewish Insider about the possible defunding, Forman said, “I can’t believe someone at the White House won’t have better sense than to realize that this is a disaster…. This is as bipartisan an issue as you can get, and I just hope folks at the White House come to their senses.”

Source: Holocaust Organizations, Scholars Slam Possible Defunding of Anti-Semitism Office

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Multiculturalism in Sweden: an Indian’s perspective – The Local

2017/03/17 Leave a comment

Interesting piece by Joy Merwin Monteiro, a climate scientist, currently working as a post doc at Stockholm University [Indian multiculturalism or pluralism is “deep” with greater emphasis on communal rights]:

Why India? Well, one can provide any number of reasons, but I would prefer to make my point by way of examples from Indian history. Due to its geographical location at the centre of the Indian Ocean and its fabled wealth, India has attracted immigrants for millennia, as traders, conquerors and refugees. We have had Jewish refugee communities fleeing from Portugal and Spain, Zoroastrians fleeing the Islamisation of Iran, Buddhists (including the Dalai Lama) fleeing the annexation of Tibet and Muslimrefugees from Iran.

Communities of Chinese, East Africans and Armenians have lived in India for centuries. The above list does not even include the conquering peoples of Central Asian and Turkicorigin, followed by the more recent colonisation by European powers. In contemporary times, India has become a preferred destination for those I would term “spiritual refugees“. In terms of actual numbers, these communities may be small, but their influence in Indian society has been disproportionately large: To this day, the economic and cultural achievement of some of the communities listed above is a source of envy and respect for other Indians. Note that here I have not even considered the huge internal diversity within India, with its various communities, castes and creeds, which in itself is a daunting subject to explore.

So, do these various immigrant communities maintain their distinct identity? Yes, very proudly. Do they tend to live in areas dominated by their own kind? All the time. Do they marry outside their community? Hardly, if ever. Do they consider themselves Indians? Very much! To the Western observer, steeped in the notion of “one people, one state” – a modern notion, even in Europe: there are vineyards that predate the concept of the Nation-State by a century or two  – it must seem incredible that India can function as a modern democracy without much in terms of shared culture and values. In fact, most observers expected the Idea of India to collapse without British “stewardship”; Today, no one would dispute the fact that India is one of the most robust and politically energetic democracies to emerge from the ruins of the Second World War.

It is true however that almost all communities in India, immigrant or not, are wary of each other, and most don’t even like each other. However, they need each other to go about their daily life – most Hindus would prefer a Muslim butcher or mechanic over someone from their own community, I would bet my money on a Parsi businessman, and everyone wants to send their children to a Jesuit run school. You don’t have to like each other to respect each other; you don’t even have to respect each other to tolerate each other. If there is any such thing as a universal shared value in the hodge-podge of nations that make up India, it is tolerance. We even tolerate things that we should not – corruption, poverty and exploitation being prime examples. To my mind, these two aspects of Indian society – a dense network of interdependencies, and tolerance towards values utterly foreign to you – have not only kept us ticking, but have also provided the political stability required to build one of the fastest growing economies in the world.


Joy Merwin Monteiro, the author of this opinion piece. Photo: Private

There are two ways to integrate an immigrant: The American “Melting Pot” way, where the immigrant is expected to lose her personal value system in deference to the larger national value system, however defined, or the Indian “Mosaic” way, which allows her to retain her values, which adds to the larger set of national values, while emphasising tolerance as a way towards social stability. The “Mosaic” way was probably best summarised by M K Gandhi:

“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

These are troubled times in the world. Troubled times are also revelatory, since they provide us with an opportunity to look deep within, and decide who we really are. Sweden has been exemplary in its handling of environmental and humanistic issues; I wish the Swedes all the best in their journey ahead towards becoming a truly multi-cultural society.

Source: Multiculturalism in Sweden: an Indian’s perspective – The Local

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Metropolis 2017 Conference

2017/03/16 Leave a comment

Participating in workshops on integration, citizenship and second-generation. Fewer posts this week.

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Chris Selley: Most Canadians support ‘values screening’ — which is neither surprising nor concerning

2017/03/16 Leave a comment

Good observations by Selley:

Of course we can’t empirically test for violent tendencies, misogyny and indolence. There are many good practical reasons not to pursue these policies. The consensus among bien-pensant campaign watchers is that this is nothing more than a populist “dog whistle” appeal to nativists and xenophobes who believe immigrants are more likely to be violent, misogynist and indolent.

But most Canadians aren’t watching the campaign at all, and couldn’t pick Leitch out of a lineup. If you ask them whether Canada should screen immigrants for objectively undesirable traits, then of course most are going to say yes. It’s absurd to hold that up as evidence of a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, especially when the poll in question provides plenty of evidence to the contrary: 78 per cent think immigration makes Canada a better place to live or makes little difference; 83 per cent think we have much to learn from other cultures; 79 per cent have no desire to see a Trump-style figure in Canadian politics.

If you were inclined to worry about anti-immigrant sentiment, there’s plenty you could latch on to in this 61-page poll that’s far more disquieting than support for “values screening.” But that’s the genius of a wedge issue like this: it provokes a level of outrage and condemnation that to those not following closely would seem unhinged, which in turn makes the policy and the candidate seem all the more reasonable by comparison.

“Leitch’s proposal to screen every immigrant and visitor is nothing but Donald Trump’s executive order, disguised as Canadian values, and crafted to keep Muslims out of Canada,” leadership candidate Deepak Obhrai said in a statement last week. He suggested it could incite racists to murder, such as in Kansas last month.

I’m disgusted by Leitch’s campaign and even I think that’s crazy. But more to the point, it won’t help. Fighting populism with hyperbole is like fighting fire with kerosene, and it’s strange how few anti-populists seem to realize this. If Leitch’s proposal weren’t surrounded by a bunch of exploding heads and people screaming “Trump! TRUMP!” at her, it would just be one silly, unpractical and unnecessary idea among dozens in play in this campaign.

At times Leitch’s campaign has seemed less like an actual leadership bid and more like a clinical trial of Trump-brand populism in the Canadian body politic. Perhaps it will yield useful data for its architects to use with a less terrible candidate in future. But moderate Conservatives and others arguing in good faith against her really need to up their anti-populist game. Leitch is an intensely unlikable and uninspiring campaign presence who will probably lose. But some day a populist candidate with an ounce of sincerity and charisma might come along with some truly dangerous ideas.

Source: Chris Selley: Most Canadians support ‘values screening’ — which is neither surprising nor concerning | National Post

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