Ten years on, many Yazidis uprooted by Islamic State onslaught struggle to find stable homes

2024/07/30 Leave a comment

Good long read:

When Rihan Ismail returned to her family’s home in the heartland of her Yazidi community, she was sure she was coming back for good.

She had yearned for that moment throughout long years of captivity.

Islamic State militants had abducted then-adolescent Ismail as they rampaged through Iraq’s Sinjar district, killing and enslaving thousands from the Yazidi religious minority.

As they moved her from Iraq to Syria, she clung to what home meant to her: a childhood filled with laughter, a community so tight knit the neighbor’s house was like your own. After her captors took her to Turkey, she finally managed to get ahold of a phone, contact her family and plan a rescue.

“How could I leave again?” Ismail, 24, told The Associated Press last year, soon after returning to her village, Hardan.

Reality quickly set in.

The house where she lives with her brother, a police officer, and his wife and toddler, is one of the few still standing in the village. A school down the street houses displaced families who have nowhere else to go.

Her father and younger sister are still missing. In a cemetery on the village edge, three of her brothers are buried along with 13 other local men and boys killed by IS and discovered in a mass grave. 

Ismail passes it every time she has an errand to a neighboring town. 

“You feel like you’re dying 1,000 deaths between here and there,” she said.

Deep connections persist for a homeland changed by horrors

A decade after the IS assault, members of the Yazidi community have been trickling back to their homes in Sinjar. But despite their homeland’s deep emotional and religious significance, many see no future there.

There’s no money to rebuild destroyed homes. Infrastructure is still wrecked. Multiple armed groups carve up the area.

And the landscape is haunted by horrific memories. In August 2014, militants stormed through Sinjar, determined to erase the tiny, insular religious group they considered heretics. They killed men and boys, sold women into sex slavery or forced them to convert and marry militants. Those who could, fled. 

It has been seven years since IS was defeated in Iraq. But as of April 2024, only 43% of the more than 300,000 people displaced from Sinjar had returned, according to the International Migration Organization.

Some fear that if Yazidis don’t return, the community may lose its identity. 

“Sinjar is the Yazidi center of gravity,” said Hadi Babasheikh, the brother and office manager of the late Yazidi spiritual leader who held the position during IS’ atrocities. “Without Sinjar, Yazidism would be like a cancer patient who’s dying.”

This strategically located remote corner of northwest Iraq near the Syrian border has been the Yazidis’ home for centuries. Villages are scattered across a semi-arid plain dotted with sheep, a cement factory and the occasional liquor store. 

Rearing up from the flatland are the Sinjar Mountains, a long, narrow range considered sacred by the Yazidis. Legend says Noah’s ark settled on the mountain after the flood. Yazidis fled to the heights to escape IS, as they have done in past bouts of persecution. 

In Sinjar town, the district center, soldiers lounge in front of small shops on the main street. A livestock market brings buyers and sellers from neighboring villages and beyond. Here and there, reconstruction crews work among piles of cinder blocks. 

But in outlying areas, signs of the destruction — collapsed houses, abandoned fuel stations — remain everywhere. Water networks, health facilities and schools, and even religious shrines have not been rebuilt. Sinjar town’s main Sunni Muslim district remains a stretch of rubble; the occupants have not returned, facing hostility from their former Yazidi neighbors who view them as IS collaborators. 

The central government in Baghdad and authorities in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region have been wrestling over Sinjar, where each backed a rival local government for years.

That dispute is now playing out in a debate over the displacement camps in the Kurdish region housing many of those who fled Sinjar.

Camp closures loom, leaving Yazidis torn on whether to stay or go 

Earlier this year, Baghdad ordered the camps to be closed by July 30 and offered payments of 4 million dinars (about $3,000) to occupants who leave. 

Karim al-Nouri, deputy minister for the displaced, said this month that difficulties in returning to Sinjar “have been overcome” and that getting the displaced back is “an official, humanitarian and moral imperative.”

But Kurdish authorities say they won’t evict the camp residents. 

Sinjar “is not suitable for human habitation,” said Khairi Bozani, an advisor to the Kurdish regional president, Nechirvan Barzani.

“The government is supposed to move people from a bad place to a good place and not vice versa.”

Khudeida Murad Ismail refuses to leave the camp in Dohuk, where he runs a makeshift store selling eggs, instant noodles, pacifiers and hair henna. Leaving would mean losing his livelihood, and the payout wouldn’t cover rebuilding his house, he said.

If the camps shut down, he said he would remain in the area, rent a home and look for other work.

He acknowledged that if many Yazidis stay away from Sinjar, other groups will likely populate their areas. That saddens him, he said, “but there’s nothing I can do.”

But the camp closure order and relocation payments have prompted an increase in returns. 

On June 24, Barakat Khalil’s family of nine joined a convoy of trucks piled with mattresses, blankets and household goods, leaving the town in Dohuk that had been their home for nearly a decade.

They now live in a small, rented house in Sinjar town. They fixed its broken doors and windows and are gradually furnishing it, even planting geraniums. 

Their old home, in a nearby village, is destroyed. A humanitarian organization removed the rubble, leaving nothing but the foundation, but couldn’t help them rebuild. Khalil had spent seven years building the house, gradually saving money from his work in construction. 

“We stayed in it for two months and then they (IS militants) came and blew it up,” he said. 

Now, “it’s a totally new life — we don’t know anybody here,” said Khalil’s 25-year-old daughter, Haifa Barakat. She’s the only family member who is working, in the pharmacy of the local hospital.

Although life in Sinjar is tolerable for now, she worries about security.

Tensions among various militias in Sinjar raise safety concerns

Different parts of the territory are patrolled by the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces, along with various militias that came to fight IS and never left.

Prominent among those is the Sinjar Resistance Units, or YBS, a Yazidi militia that is part of the primarily Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces.

Turkey regularly launches airstrikes against its members because it is aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party’ or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency in Turkey.

At the YBS headquarters near the Syrian border, the group’s then-acting commander, Khalid Rasho Qassim, also known as Abu Shadi, said in an interview last year that his group had fought IS when official forces fled.

“The young people are joining because they saw that we defended them,” he said.

Less than a week later, he was killed by a Turkish airstrike, the same fate his predecessor had met. 

The presence of armed groups has also sometimes complicated rebuilding. In 2022, a damaged school in Sinjar was rehabilitated by a Japanese NGO called IVY, hoping to relieve overcrowding in the area’s few functional schools. Instead, Japanese officials complained that a militia took over the renovated facility.

When AP reporters visited the school last September, no classes were in session, but a few young men and women were in the entry hall, where bookshelves were stocked with revolutionary texts. Staff said the school director was not available.

IVY later said it was told that the building had been vacated. But when an AP team returned this month, it found the same young men who had been there before. They asked the journalists to leave.

This month, the Nineveh provincial council finally voted to appoint a single mayor for Sinjar, but disputes have held up his confirmation.

The would-be mayor, school administrator and community activist Saido al-Ahmady, said he hopes to push for the restoration of services so more displaced will return. 

“Sinjar has always been the center of Yazidis and we will preserve it that way,” he said.

But many of those who have come back say they are thinking of leaving again. 

In the village of Dugure, on a recent evening, children rode bicycles and women in traditional robes chatted at sunset in front of their houses. 

“In the end we have to return” to Sinjar said Hadi Shammo, whose family left a camp last month. “This is part of our identity.” 

But when prodded, Shammo acknowledged, “If I’d had a chance I would have left Iraq a long time ago.” 

Rihan Ismail, who once spent her days dreaming of a return to Sinjar, now wants to get away.

“Even if you went somewhere else, you wouldn’t be able to forget. But at least every time you come or go you wouldn’t have to see your village destroyed like this,” she said. 

A photo of her missing father gazed down from the wall. In the corner was a small replica of Lalish, the most holy Yazidi temple, and a snake, a sacred symbol of protection.

“You can’t forget what happened, but you have to find a way to live.” 

She has now pinned her hopes on joining her mother and other relatives who have resettled in Canada.

Source: Ten years on, many Yazidis uprooted by Islamic State onslaught struggle to find stable homes

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McWhorter: We’re Asking the Wrong Question About Harris and Race

2024/07/30 Leave a comment

From mixed to biracial, as more and more people have blended or composite ethnic and racial origins:

In the wake of Joe Biden’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, a great deal of attention has focused on whether America is ready for a Black female president. Unmentioned is a question of equal complexity: Why is Harris Black? Hear me out.

As she has proudly recounted, the vice president is the product of an interracial, intercultural marriage between a mother who emigrated from India and a father who emigrated from Jamaica. So in terms of her ancestry, she is as much South Asian as she is Black. By widespread convention, however, people refer to her not primarily as a South Asian presidential candidate, nor even a mixed-race candidate, but rather a Black candidate.

It’s not just Harris. Barack Obama, with one Black and one white parent, is called Black. Imagine how strange it would be if someone called him white. Imagine how strange it would be if he called himself white. Harris often mentions the South Asian half of her heritage, but in traditional American discourse, it feels off to categorize her as simply South Asian — like Aziz Ansari or Mindy Kaling — and leave it there. Yet calling her just Black, as a kind of shorthand, feels right. Blackness is treated as blacking out, so to speak, whatever other race is involved. Most people default to this perspective — myself included.

This approach contradicts not just logic, but also itself. In contrast to the centuries-old “one-drop rule” that segregationists have invoked to describe the indelible ancestral stain of so-called Black blood, enlightened people are supposed to believe that race is purely a social construct, with no biological basis. If so, then why does having some Black forebears make you Black, regardless of the rest of the family tree?

People from other countries can find this perplexing. I’ve fielded questions from people from France to Japan about why Obama is considered Black, rather than both Black and white. The question always feels naïve to me at first, but if you imagine stepping outside our particular national framework, it’s the foreigner who is making sense and the American version that is weird.

A teacher from Russia I once had even genially but firmly insisted that I am not Black. Dark-skinned people she knew of, including a few rappers — they were really Black. Not me. My skin tone is brown but not chocolate.

My maternal grandfather was light enough that he could easily have passed for white. My mother was quite light-skinned, too. Yet I have never considered myself anything but Black, nor did my grandfather or my mother. To look at photos of the three of us and see three “Black” people makes perfect sense to me because I have never known anything else.

The conversation with my teacher took place in Russian, a language I spoke with the facility of a 2-year-old. Without access to the nuanced verbal machinery — the buzzwords and dutiful observations — we usually use, I had no way to explain the American way of seeing Blackness as the dominant heritage for any mixed-race people, because it makes no logical sense.

The novel and later musical “Show Boat” dramatized the tragic absurdity of the one-drop idea. The story begins in the Deep South in the 1800s, when laws banned miscegenation and classified people with one-eighth Black ancestry as “octoroons.” At one point a white man married to a woman of mixed race pricks her finger and drinks what comes out, announcing that the drop of Black blood he has inside of him legitimizes their marriage.

Today, those who express different ideas about racial identity often encounter serious resistance. When Tiger Woods, the child of two mixed-race people, announced himself to be “Cablinasian” — as a combination of Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian — he was mocked as not knowing who he is. The writer Thomas Chatterton Williams encountered skepticism when he said he couldn’t see his blond, blue-eyed child as Black.

One objection I hear is that resisting calling yourself Black, or feeling the need to modify your Blackness with some other racial attributes, can give the impression that you are ashamed of who you are.

I do think people make this assumption too quickly, but given how Black people have been denigrated throughout American history, the assumption hardly comes out of nowhere — and I have seen for myself, among people I know, that it is sadly sometimes correct.

Another objection I hear is that however dark-skinned people see themselves, the world will process them as Black. Their complex genealogy will not protect them from the effects of prejudice, discrimination and even possibly police violence. And if so, better that they learn to be realists about it — starting with the racial category they use to identify themselves.

I find this concern genuine but unconvincing. For one thing, should we let other people’s inability to see us plain be the basis of our identity? That would let them win. You can be quite aware of the risk of police violence and yet resist a belief system that says Black blood determines who you are.

And besides, as is so often the case, it’s a matter of degree. My children’s mother is white. One child is about my shade; the other is what used to be called high yellow. In their New York City lives, white kids are the minority. So many of the kids they know are, like them, shades of brown, hybrids of various kinds, that my children have a bit of trouble understanding why I sometimes ask “what” one of their friends “is.” Despite their differences, they all watch “Stranger Things”; the girls, whatever they look like, are all into Sabrina Carpenter.

I know that not all kids live in contexts in which racial distinctions can be so easily shrugged off. But all signs indicate that my children are growing up in a world that’s very different from the one I grew up in. I experienced plenty of passing instances of racism, even as a student at fancy private schools. But it’s been a half century now. Experiences of the kind Harris has recounted, of suburban white kids whose parents told them not to play with her because she was Black, have been alien to my girls so far.

If someday they decide not to define themselves as Black, it will not be because they are ashamed or in some kind of denial. It will be because the world has changed, and we should be thankful for that.

American discourse is, happily, becoming more amenable to the idea that a person who is half Black can be two things rather than just one. It’s been a while now since people started speaking of themselves as biracial, a term that is used with much more pride than its predecessor, “mixed,” used to be. But Kamala Harris will still be commonly described as Black. The talk will be of her having a chance of being the second Black president, when that first one was actually half Black like her.

What is most important is that Harris, Obama and other people of mixed racial heritage can now get as far as they have. As for our habit of processing Blackness as foundational — much as Strom Thurmond did — it will be ever more absurd as the races mix further over the coming generations. On this custom, history will look upon us in puzzlement.

Source: We’re Asking the Wrong Question About Harris and Race

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International review of the Canadian Human Rights Commission can provide limited gains for anti-racism advocacy

2024/07/30 Leave a comment

Realism. More for political profile than substantive:

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions(GANHRI) has decided to conduct a special review of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). A coalition of civil society organizations, including the Black Class Action Secretariat, Canadian Association of Public Employees, and others, requested the review.

As the international body that accredits national human rights institutions, GANHRI will evaluate the CHRC’s level of compliance with the United Nations’ Paris Principles that set minimum standards for national human rights institutions to uphold.

The review may draw attention to issues of racial discrimination at the CHRC and the coalition’s proposed reforms, but GANHRI’s record indicates that it will most likely decide that the CHRC is still complying with the Paris Principles at the highest level.A June 10 press conference by the coalition of organizations publicizing GANHRI’s decision to review the CHRC’s status.

Complaints of racism at the CHRC

Since 2020, the coalition has been raising concerns about racial discrimination in the CHRC’s workplace and how it fulfills its mandate of resolving complaints of discrimination against federally regulated entities. 

Initially, the coalition pursued domestic avenues for change. There were union-based grievance processes for several Black and racialized CHRC employees and a comprehensive Senate Committee on Human Rights study. In 2023, both the Treasury Board Secretariat and Senate Committee found racial discrimination was an issue within the CHRC. 

In response, the CHRC has been introducing a range of initiatives to address anti-Black racism, sexism and systemic discrimination. The coalition, however, wants the CHRC and Canadian government to pursue more sweeping reforms to the CHRC and its associated legislation. Key reforms would amend equity and non-discrimination legislation, and change the complaint procedure so individuals could directly access a tribunal, rather than go through the commission itself.

To generate international pressure for reforms, the coalition wants GANHRI to review the CHRC’s compliance with the Paris Principles, particularly the requirements for pluralism to reflect society and for promoting and protecting human rights without discrimination. It is hoping GANHRI will reassess the CHRC’s top-level accreditation status. 

How reviews of national human rights institutions work

Ironically, and seemingly reflecting its high status, the CHRC prepared GANHRI’s guide to how its accreditation committee works.

GANHRI’s committee gives national human rights institutions grades based on their compliance with the Paris Principles: A for full compliance, and B for partial compliance. The committee also may give them recommendations on how to better adhere to the Paris Principles.

Having A-status allows a national human rights institution to participate in the work of the UN Human Rights Council and other UN mechanisms. A downgrade to B-status indicates compliance issues and revokes those privileges. 

The committee normally reviews national human rights institutions every five years and just gave the CHRC A-status after its routine review in 2023.

Beyond this regular review cycle, civil society organizations can submit information to GANHRI if they feel an institution is not complying with the Paris Principles. GANHRI’s committee then decides whether to conduct a special review.

GANHRI’s committee decided to conduct the special review of the CHRC, planned for its next session in Fall 2024, after the coalition highlighted the Treasury Board Secretariat’s and Senate Committee’s recent findings of discrimination within the CHRC. 

The impact of reviewing the CHRC

To increase public pressure for action from the CHRC and Canadian government, the coalition has widely publicized its request for, and GANHRI’s decision to conduct, the special review.

In its press conference, the coalition’s spokesperson saidGANHRI’s “landmark” decision puts Canada “among the ranks of nations like Russia, Iraq and Venezuela, who have faced a special review.” The coalition focused on states with weak human rights records to shame the CHRC, but national human rights institutions in states with stronger human rights records, like the United Kingdom, have also undergone special reviews.

The coalition also strongly emphasized how GANHRI could downgrade the CHRC’s status from A to B and, by extension, revoke key privileges. However, those familiar with GANHRI’s past practice will expect that it will maintain the CHRC’s top-level status. 

The vast majority of GANHRI’s members (90 out of 118) have A-status. Also, with the example of the UK’s national human rights institution, two special reviews did not produce any downgrade in status.

The CHRC’s response to GANHRI’s committee could detail how it has undertaken various initiatives on the issues of concern. While those initiatives might be inadequate for the coalition, they will probably be adequate for the GANHRI committee to maintain the CHRC’s A-status. 

Therefore, the coalition’s threats of a downgrade in status for the CHRC are unlikely to materialize. Still, the committee’s review may produce recommendations for improvements, which could more subtly assist the coalition’s advocacy.

Overall, the coalition’s turn to the international level has served its domestic agenda by drawing attention to issues of racial discrimination within the CHRC and the coalition’s desired reforms. However, GANHRI’s review will generate minimal international pressure for reforms if it maintains the CHRC’s top-level status as a national human rights institution, so the coalition will need to once again alter its advocacy strategy.

Source: International review of the Canadian Human Rights Commission can provide limited gains for anti-racism advocacy

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Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad are an important piece of history – here’s why art historians teach them

2024/07/29 Leave a comment

Follow-up to the earlier articles:

Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently reached a settlement in a religious discrimination case with former adjunct faculty member Erika López Prater. She was dismissed in 2022 for showing two historical Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad in her global survey of art history class, which some students described as disrespectful and Islamophobic.

While many Muslims today believe it is inappropriate to depict Muhammad, it was not always so in the past. Moreover, debates about this subject within the Muslim community are ongoing. Within the academic world, this material is taught in a neutral and analytical way to help students – including those who embrace the Islamic faith – assess and understand historical evidence.

As an expert on Islamic representations of the Prophet Muhammad, I consider the recent labeling of such paintings as “hate speech” and “blasphemy” not only inaccurate but inflammatory. Such condemnations can pose a threat to individuals and works of art.

The Prophet Muhammad has been represented in Islamic paintings since the 13th century. Islamic art historians such as my colleagues and me, both Muslim and non-Muslim, study and teach these images regularly. They form part of the standard survey of Islamic art, which includes calligraphy, ornament and architecture.

Comparing prophetic images

The 14th- and 16th-century images López Prater selected depict Muhammad receiving the beginning of Quranic revelations from God through the angel Gabriel. In Islamic thought, it is at that moment that Muhammad became a divinely appointed prophet.

The 14th-century painting is part of a royal manuscript, the “Compendium of Chronicles,” written by Rashid al-Din. It is one of the earliest illustrated histories of the world. The manuscript includes numerous paintings, including a cycle of images depicting several key moments in the Prophet Muhammad’s life.

The one that was discussed in López Prater’s class appears in a section on the beginnings of Quranic revelation and Muhammad’s apostleship. The painting depicts the prophet with his facial features visible as the angel Gabriel approaches him to convey God’s divine word. The event is shown taking place outdoors in a rocky setting that matches the accompanying text’s description.

The second image, made in Ottoman lands in 1595-96, is part of a six-volume biography of the prophet. Over 800 paintings in this manuscript depict major moments in Muhammad’s life, from his birth to his death.

In that painting, Muhammad is seen raising his hands in prayer while standing on the Mountain of Light, known as Jabal al-Nur, near Mecca. His facial features are no longer visible; instead, they are hidden behind a facial veil.

The Ottoman artist chose to depict the prophet’s purity through the use of white fabrics, and his entire being as touched by the light of God via the large flaming nimbus that encircles his body. Jabal al-Nur is shown, as its name suggests, as a radiant elevation. Above it and beyond the clouds, rows of angels hover in praise.

Key study questions

These two paintings show that Islamic representations of Muhammad are neither static nor uniform. Rather, they evolved over the centuries. During the 14th century, artists depicted the prophet’s facial features, while later artists covered his face with a veil.

Islamic art historians ask their students to compare these two paintings while encouraging them to slow down, look carefully, train their eyes to detect pictorial elements, and infer meaning. They also ask students to consider the textual content and historical context accompanying the paintings.

The key question students are prompted to think about through the juxtaposition of these two Islamic paintings is this: Why did the facial veil and flaming nimbus develop as two key prophetic motifs in Islamic depictions of Muhammad between A.D. 1400 and 1600?

The images help a teacher guide a collective conversation that explores how the prophet was conceptualized in more metaphorical ways – as a veiled beauty and as radiant light – over the course of those two centuries in particular.

This prompts a larger exploration of the diversity of Islamic religious expressions, including those that are more Sufi, or spiritualized, in nature. These paintings therefore capture the richly textured mosaic of Muslim worlds over time.

This historically sensitive, pictorial side-by-side is known as a comparative analysis or “comparandum.” It is a key analytical method in art history, and it was used by López Prater in her classroom. Now more than ever, a rigorous study of such Islamic paintings proves necessary – and indeed vital – at a time of sharp debates over what is, or is not, Islamic.

Source: Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad are an important piece of history – here’s why art historians teach them

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Le Devoir Éditorial | Une foi en la laïcité

2024/07/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Dans les années 1960, Dieu en a mangé toute une au Québec. Les hippies et leur révolution contre-culturelle basée sur une réinvention du concept de la Sainte Trinité autour des figures du sexe, de la drogue et du rock’n’roll ne furent pas les seuls responsables de ces bouleversements annoncés par la prophétie de Refus global.

Dans le tome V d’Histoire populaire du Québec, l’historien Jacques Lacoursière décrit avec acuité le contraste entre l’omniprésence de l’Église et son inexorable déclin. L’Église qui « semble partout est en fait nulle part », écrit-il en citant le professeur de l’Université de Montréal et membre du clergé Jacques Grand’Maison.

Le concile Vatican II ne ralentira pas la sécularisation du Québec. Pendant que les curés débattaient encore en 1970 afin de permettre la messe dominicale le samedi soir — ô révolution ! —, la société laïque attaquait par les voies législative et judiciaire l’édifice croulant du contrôle social par soutanes interposées.

Au diable les prescriptions sur le divorce, sur l’union libre, sur la contraception ou sur l’avortement ! Elles voleront toutes en éclats au cours des deux décennies suivantes. Le recul nous permet de constater que les premières lueurs de la laïcité furent indissociables des combats féministes pour se libérer d’un carcan social qui régentait la vie des femmes, de l’habillement jusqu’à la procréation.

Bien sûr, des intellectuels catholiques participèrent aux premières initiatives visant à rattacher Dieu à la modernité, sans parvenir à freiner un mouvement qui fera passer le religieux de la sphère publique à la vie privée. La transformation fut plus longue et moins radicale qu’il ne le semble à première vue. En effet, il faudra quand même attendre jusqu’en 2005 pour achever le projet de déconfessionnalisation des écoles et jusqu’en 2008 pour voir la création du cours Éthique et culture religieuse.

Dans Genèse de la société québécoise, paru en 1993, le sociologue Fernand Dumont constate, dans un bilan du siècle, l’érosion définitive de l’Église comme « organisme politique et instance de régulation des moeurs ». C’est l’un des plus merveilleux accomplissements de la marche permanente vers la laïcité. Ce n’est pas tant un legs de la Révolution tranquille qu’un long parcours d’affranchissement face aux dogmes et aux gardiens de la parole sacrée, qui ne cesseront jamais d’aspirer à la « revanche de Dieu », pour paraphraser le sublime essai de Gilles Kepel.

Pour en revenir à Dumont, celui-ci soulignait aussi dans son essai « le flottement de la culture collective » qui accompagne la laïcité. Dans une nation en constante recherche de ses repères, c’est sans doute la raison pour laquelle l’attachement nostalgique au catholicisme et à ses rituels (baptême, mariage) a persisté bien au-delà de la Révolution tranquille. Il en est de même pour l’adhésion à une « catho-laïcité », qui s’est plu à casser du sucre sur le dos des femmes voilées tout en se portant à la défense de la symbolique du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale. Dieu merci, ce dernier a été remisé lors de la dernière offensive législative du gouvernement Legault.

Aujourd’hui, les Québécois se déclarent parmi les moins croyants et les moins pratiquants de tout le Canada, mais la ferveur religieuse suit également une tendance baissière dans les autres provinces. La ligne de fracture s’observe plutôt entre l’appui à la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État au Québec et sa diabolisation ailleurs au Canada.

Dans La laïcité du Québec au miroir de sa religiosité, les codirecteurs de l’ouvrage collectif, Jean-François Laniel et Jean-Philippe Perreault, soulignent les défis de penser le fait religieux au Québec alors qu’il semble en voie de glisser vers le statut de « corps étranger ou anachronique, en marge de la culture et de la société ». « La laïcité, dans sa volonté de neutraliser la religion, n’est pas neutre », formulent-ils.

C’est une autre façon d’envisager la Loi sur la laïcité. Celle-ci avait son utilité pour parachever l’oeuvre du rapport Bouchard-Taylor sur la crise des accommodements raisonnables, même si elle embrasse trop large en incluant le personnel enseignant. Avouons-le franchement, cette loi a autant à voir avec la marche vers la sécularisation que l’affirmation identitaire d’un groupe majoritaire entretenant une relation historique d’amour-haine avec le catholicisme. Un groupe qui projette désormais cette relation sur d’autres confessions qui n’avancent pas au même pas dans leur rapport évolutif au fait religieux.

Par l’un de ces paradoxes dont le Québec ne détient pas le monopole parmi les sociétés modernes, nous avons tué Dieu, mais nous ne sommes pas venus à bout de l’irrépressible besoin de croire, comme en atteste la montée en force de la spiritualité à base de tarots, de sorcellerie, de chakras ou de roches magiques. Nous aurions tort de penser que nous pourrons légiférer les croyances jusqu’à leur extinction, surtout pas dans une ère numérique où s’effacent les distinctions entre le public et le privé.

Source: Éditorial | Une foi en la laïcité

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Not Everything is about Anti-Semitism: Bella Hadid and Adidas Shoes

2024/07/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

Nostalgia is lamenting over the job you never got, missing the girl you never dated, and holding memories for the trip you never took – or at least never completed. In marketing, it usually leads to inferior products that are sold for skyrocketing prices. I am probably the last candidate to purchase the retro sneakers that Adidas have recently issued for the upcoming Olympics in Parism which are an exact replica of the shoes they have issued in 1972 for the Olympic games in Munich. In am not a sprinter, but even if I were one  – I would have probably preferred modern shoes that come with airbag cushions which boost the performance and add to the comfort at a cheaper price (the nostalgic pair is sold for over 100 Euro!).

However, the story is not about me, not about running shoes consumption, and not even about nostalgia – but about the ongoing attempt to mark even the most indirect criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. According to the very loud Israeli propaganda, the retro Adidas shoes are a disgrace not because they are outdated or too expensive, but since they brutally manifest anti-Semitism. Why? Because they are promoted by Bella Hadid. Let’s examine the proposed connection: The shoes were first introduced for the 1972 Olympic Games, where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist organization, Black September. This organization no longer exists for over 40 years. Most of its commanders were killed by Israel. The remaining, like Amin al-Hindi, surprisingly or not, became collaborators during the golden age of the Oslo Accords.

What does it say about our perception of terrorists? Let’s leave it for another article and go back to the anti-Semitic shoes legend. None of the Israeli athletes who were murdered in the 1972 Olympics wore these shoes. None of them was a sprinter. Nothing connects Adidas to the massacre. As for Bella Hadid – while the famous model is the daughter of an even more famous objectionable real estate mogul and reality TV star Mohammed Hadid, who is a 1948 Palestinian refugee, has always maintained (just like her dad) a critical tone toward Israel – nothing in the family’s history relates to Black September or to any other terror organization. In fact, a cold blooded analysis would determine that the Hadids are in fact victims of Israel because they lost their house in Safed, lost their citizenship, and lost their chances to live in the country where the family has been residing for centuries. No matter how much you slice it and dice it – at the age of two weeks, baby Mohammed Hadid when expelled in 1948 was not a terrorist. It is true that he and his daughter never praise Israel, but do you really expect them to sing hymns to the country that expelled them and confiscated their property?

It is easy to find models with a better fit to Adidas retro running shoes. The world is full of athletes and former athletes who model, but anti-Semitism is the last ground to disqualify Bella Hadid.

Amir Hetsroni was a faculty member at Ariel University in the West Bank. He is emigrating from Israel in order to miss the next war, earn higher wages, enjoy cooler summers, and obtain a living package that is cost-effective. He has three passports and does not feel particularly worried about anti-Semitism.

Source: Not Everything is about Anti-Semitism: Bella Hadid and Adidas Shoes

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Deborah Lyons: Courageous leadership is needed to combat antisemitism in Canada

2024/07/27 Leave a comment

Reasonable recommendations, highlighting the benefits of appointing a former public servant compared to a former activist as is the case with the representative on combatting Islamophobia:

…Lean into a proactive rather than reactive approach:

Leaders often wait for antisemitic incidents to take place before responding. To shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, leaders can establish a relationship underpinned by trust with Jewish individuals in their organizations. This could be a network, an adviser position, or a recurring meeting with a group representing the Jewish community. Combatting antisemitism works best when it is continuous, and not only when a problem arises. Nurturing relationships built in trust with Jewish individuals, actively listening to them and proactively engaging on issues is helpful in preventing antisemitism.

Encourage interfaith and inter-community dialogue:

I have seen a lot of pain in the eyes of Jewish Canadians, particularly after October 7. Much of this pain has come from the loss of friends and allies, and the silence and lack of support they’ve received from other Canadians, including from other faith communities. Community and faith leaders should understand that empathy and understanding for one group should not preclude empathy and understanding for others. Faith and community groups should extend their hands in support, as the Jewish community has so often done for others in past crises. Leaders should remember that we can be pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian at the same time. Leaders should encourage interfaith and inter-community dialogue, by creating spaces for these difficult but important conversations to happen. If done with mutual respect, compassion, and rooted in our shared values as Canadians, these spaces can help bring us back together rather than continuing the divisive dialogue and binary thinking that is destroying our civility.

Advocate for Jewish Canadians through allyship:

As a non-Jewish person, what I have learned most clearly is that antisemitism cannot be solved by the Jewish community alone. Jews did not create antisemitism and as with any other marginalized group, it is not on them to fight it alone. Being an ally means being present, an active listener, and a support system. Most importantly, it means believing Jewish Canadians when they speak. And taking action. A simple way for leaders to demonstrate their allyship is to ask Jewish neighbours, friends or individuals in their organizations: “What does support look like for you” and “How can I help?”

Discover modern day manifestations of antisemitism:

To address antisemitism, we must first define and understand it. In 2019, the Government of Canada formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism as part of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy. The IHRA Definition is the product of a 16-year-long democratic, iterative process, and as of the date of publication, has been adopted by 42 other countries and multiple international organizations. It is a tool for recognizing antisemitic expression, behaviour, intention and impact. The IHRA working definition — particularly through its 11 examples — serves as a helpful tool for leaders to understand the many forms of antisemitism and how to meaningfully address them.

Much work remains to be done. If this vacuum from faith, political and business leaders continues it may become too difficult to find our way back. It is our role as Canadians to stand now with our Canadian Jewish family across our country. It is what our Jewish family deserves. It is what Canada needs, now.

Deborah Lyons is Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. She previously served as Ambassador of Canada to Israel, Ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan, and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Source: Deborah Lyons: Courageous leadership is needed to combat antisemitism in Canada

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France’s ban on athletes in hijabs makes a mockery of the Olympic charter

2024/07/27 Leave a comment

Of note (I am generally cynical about the IOC stated values, ethics and behaviour, but not the athletes):

The International Olympic Committee touts the 2024 Olympic Games as the first to nearly achieve gender parity. While six countries have no female athletes who qualified, gone are the days when the IOC repeatedly acquiesced to Saudi Arabia’s insistence on excluding women from its Olympic team. In advance of the 2012 Olympic Games, Saudi Arabia relented to prolonged international pressure and included female athletes for the first time. Since then, the country’s female participation rate has tripled, from roughly 10 per cent in 2012, to 30 per cent this year, including its first-ever female swimmer, 17-year-old Mashael Al-Ayed.

Heading into the Paris Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach has effusively declared the Games as “the youngest, most inclusive, most urban and most sustainable.” But he didn’t mention the situation some athletes from France are facing.

You see, Olympians from across the world are welcome in Paris. Except French athletes who are Jewish, Sikh or Muslim and choose to wear religious apparel as part of their faith. These women and men are banned from the French Olympic team, in accordance with the French interpretation of laïcité (secularism). While Olympic athletes from other countries are permitted to wear religious apparel in Paris, French athletes cannot because of the religious “neutrality” of the state, which dictates that civil servants are forbidden from all religious expression. According to the French government, Olympic athletes are technically civil servants.

Not surprisingly, this ban disproportionately affects Muslim women. This was made clear last September when France’s Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra announced that French Olympic athletes “will not wear the head scarf,” thus ensuring “the prohibition of any type of proselytizing and the absolute neutrality of the public service.”

Compare the French position to the Olympic Charter, which states: “the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have access to the practice of sport, without discrimination of any kind in respect of internationally recognized human rights within the remit of the Olympic Movement.”

And here we are: France has unequivocally banned its Muslim female hijabi athletes, while hosting the Olympic Games under the auspices of the IOC, whose very charter bars such discrimination.

The IOC’s response to the French position – “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states” – is like the waters of the Seine: murky at best. By justifying discrimination, the IOC has rendered basic human rights meaningless. No Mr. Bach, you shouldn’t be boasting about how inclusive the games are. With its “move along, there’s nothing to see here” attitude, the IOC has shamefully abandoned French Muslim hijabi athletes who aspire toward the Olympics. It has made a mockery of its own charter.

Let’s not forget the role of France’s sports organizations, whose intransigence against hijabs has expanded over the years. As Anna Błuś, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Gender Justice in Europe writes: “Even at amateur levels and in regional competitions, several sports federations have banned sports hijabs. So, after training for years, excelling in their sport, coaching young girls and considering sports as a professional career, young Muslim women athletes are told to remove their hijabs or give up on their dreams.” A Muslim cannot play organized soccer, basketball or volleyball anywhere in France – even at a recreational level – if she wears a hijab. This, even though FIFA, FIBA and FIVB have authorized sports hijabs. No other European country has such draconian bans.

The ban extends to the opening ceremony. Sprinter Sounkamba Sylla was initially barred owing to her hijab, but worked out a deal with the French Olympic Committee to wear a cap instead of a head scarf as a compromise.

Les Hijabeuses, a group of soccer players, has challenged the French ban before the European Court of Human Rights. In June, they organized an “alternate Olympics,” which was more inclusive than the IOC’s version. Co-founder Founé Diawara captured its essence: “Our fight is not political or religious but centred on our human right to participate in sports.”

As Ms. Błuś states, “the Olympics should be for all women, including Muslim women.” This should be obvious in 2024, but it’s not. In the past, such challenges have sparked women to mobilize in solidarity with their sisters. In 2012, we raised our voices demanding the IOC sanction Saudi Arabia for excluding women on its Olympic team.

Today, only two countries immediately come to mind where I cannot play amateur sports, nor swim in my burkini: France and Afghanistan. France is not Afghanistan. But it is a G7 nation that is a signatory to international human rights treaties. It purports to be a champion of women’s rights. We must raise our voices again to demand the inclusion of all women in sports.

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.

Source: France’s ban on athletes in hijabs makes a mockery of the Olympic charter

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Australia: A major multiculturalism review has recommended bold reforms. How far is the government prepared to go?

2024/07/26 Leave a comment

Jakabowicz on the review:

A year ago, the government instigated an independent review of the national multicultural framework.

As more than half of Australia’s population is either born overseas or has one parent who was, this policy is important. It underpins how multiculturalism works in almost every part of life. It aims to ensure equity and inclusion for people from minority groups, and attempts to whittle away at structural racism.

Now the review report has been released. This comes against a backdrop of growing antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia, as well as the fallout from the failed Voice to Parliament referendum and the vicious racism many communities experienced during the COVID crisis.

The report includes 29 recommendations for improving Australia’s multicultural society. The government has committed $100 million over the next four years to implement the recommendations, though it is still working through the details and timeline. Here’s what it found.

Some of the recommendations are symbolic and have appeared in every multicultural review over the past 50 years. But other recommendations are far more concrete.

Firstly, it suggests there be a federal Multicultural Commission (a proposal the Greens have had on the parliamentary agenda without Labor support for some years). This body would be empowered to provide leadership on multicultural issues, hold opponents of human rights to account, and promote close collaboration between stakeholders at all levels.

Secondly, the panel proposes breaking up the Department of Home Affairs. This would be an attempt to reverse the surveillance and punishment approach that many believe the department to have towards migrants, refugees and some ethnic groups.

Instead, it suggests a new-look, nation-building, Cabinet-level Department of Multicultural Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship.

And from a policy perspective, the report recommends:

  • better ways to protect people’s languages
  • a citizenship process that is less about learning cricket scores and more about appreciating diversity and the importance of mutual respect
  • diversifying our media sector so it more effectively reflects and involves our minority communities
  • and ensuring the arts and sports sectors are spaces for intercultural collaboration and cooperation.

Overall, the report shows how marginal multicultural affairs have become in government – these ideas would go a long way toward refocusing the government’s attention where it is needed.

Why was this review needed?

The review was tasked with assessing how effective Australia’s institutions, laws and policy settings are at supporting a multicultural nation, particularly one that’s changing rapidly. This included looking at the challenges of refugee and immigrant settlement and integration, as well as the impact of world events on Australia’s multicultural society.

There’s also an economic element. The review looked at how we can ensure the wide-ranging talents of Australia’s residents are fully harnessed for personal and broader societal benefit.

These questions point to the need to bring together political, economic, cultural and social priorities in our government programs and policies. They also recognise the deeper challenges of racism, social marginalisation and isolation, which are often compounded by other factors, such as age, gender, class, health and disability.

These are not new questions. What is new is the recommendation for a strategy to engage in a sustained and interconnected way with the causes and consequences of our current failures. It is very unusual for a government to ask a review to do this.

The findings also bring together the perspectives and insights that many advocates in this space have long championed, but which have been swept aside and neglected for over two decades.

Importantly, the report stresses that a national commitment to multiculturalism demands bipartisanship.

I made an argument for a research strategy element in the review in 2023, and was later commissioned to develop a paper on research and data for a multicultural Australia.

The panel has now recommended that a national multicultural research agenda be developed by the new Multicultural Commission, taking account of my recommendations.

What will the government do?

There is still a long row to hoe – none of the recommendations have been publicly accepted (nor dismissed) by the government, and as yet no specific resources have been committed (despite the $100 million commitment overall). Significant action, however, is likely over the coming months and in future budgets.

While it is unlikely Home Affairs will be broken up immediately, some major moves to upgrade the capacity of the public service to deliver on the government’s commitments are likely. The courage of the government to advance these priorities in the election will depend in part on public reactions to the report and its implementation, as well as the stance of the Opposition.

Will the panel’s extensive work improve cohesion, enable better community relations, and unleash the social and economic benefits of a more collaborative society? The first test will be in how a proposed Multicultural Commission would be structured, led and resourced. We may not have long to wait.

Source: A major multiculturalism review has recommended bold reforms. How far is the government prepared to go?

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Austin Harper: The Emerging Bipartisan Wokeness

2024/07/25 Leave a comment

Of interest:

…Underlying left-wing wokeness, even at its most performative and excessive, is a series of partial truths about American society: Even if die-hard progressives are wrong and anti-Black racism does not explain every problem in this country, it does explain quite a few of them. And 2020’s summer of reckoning did draw much-needed attention to entrenched and structurally reinforced racial inequalities in the United States, despite the movement quickly getting derailed by “elite capture”—the tendency of radical social movements to get co-opted by corporate and other rarefied interests.

As someone who became a professor in August 2020, at the incandescent height of progressive wokeness, I have watched higher education around the country become ever more outwardly progressive. But the social-justice rhetoric that now suffuses academia has done absolutely nothing to stop the relentless pace of gigification. More and more academics every year are employed as contingent laborers rather than as tenure-track professors. In fact, a good case can be made that wokeness greases the skids for this trend by allowing universities to appear like benevolent actors, hiring greater numbers of women and people of color, even as they pull the rug out from under labor by placing those new hires in adjunct roles.

It’s easy to argue that we should have known better, that the progressive ideas championed by CEOs and elite-university presidents were probably not that progressive after all, but the reckoning of 2020 happened for a reason. The Great Awokening was so galvanizing for so many precisely because it always had one foot in reality. The same can be said of conservative wokeness.

The right’s renewed focus on anti-white racism, its opportunistic seizing of the anti-Semitism debate, and the broader anti-DEI craze it has stirred up are also appealing to the masses precisely because they have some truth in them. For example, although it is not true that white men are unemployable in academia, the subject of a recent high-profile social-media culture-war battle, it is obviously the case that efforts to diversify the faculty at many universities mean that white candidates are viewed less favorably. The rise of racially themed cluster-hire initiatives—which allow universities to gerrymander diverse candidate pools by writing job ads for minority-majority subfields such as “decolonial theory”—are a way for academic institutions to skirt antidiscrimination laws. Likewise, although the right’s attempt to portray university students as hardened pro-Hamas, bike-lock-wielding terrorists is plainly ludicrous, it is just as plain that anti-Semitism within the progressive movement is real, however fringe these elements may be. If the ways the right characterizes these issues are often disingenuous and overexaggerated, they are not wholly fabricated either.

But as with left-wing wokeness, conservative wokeness preys on people moved by these legitimate issues to sell them on a hyperbolized politics. Woke conservatism leverages reasonable concerns about a range of issues—the plight of working-class white men, anti-Semitism, misandry, and the like—only to foment a hysteria that distracts from the fact that its principal champions are also the causes of many of the problems it allegedly seeks to solve. The primary threat to the job prospects of many working-class white men in America is not “reverse racism,” affirmative action, or pesky minorities, but accumulated decades of deindustrialization, market fundamentalism, and anti-union efforts that sent blue-collar jobs overseas and gutted the ones that remained. As for the loud warnings about left-wing anti-Semitism, the sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi has demonstrated that “liberals are consistently the least antisemitic ideological group in the US, and white liberals—the Americans most likely to embrace ‘woke’ ideology—are the least antisemitic people in the country by far.”

Wokeness is now the air we all breathe, a noxious miasma of bad faith, hysteria, and shameless opportunism that is animated by not ultimate principles but ultimate convenience. It has not peaked, and it is not peaking. Wokeness has become the status quo, a bipartisan lingua franca, the ruling style of American politics.

Tyler Austin Harper is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Source: THE EMERGING BIPARTISAN WOKENESS

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