Are Immigrants Prone to Crime and Terrorism? – The Atlantic

2016/06/17 Leave a comment

The evidence and linkages between crime and social exclusion:

But in terms of both crime and terrorism, immigrants are not the problem Trump says they are.

Study after study after study bears out mostly the last part of his remarks: Immigrants largely commit crimes at a lower rate than the local-born population. Those numbers are true even of the children of immigrants. Writing in the Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, Sandra M. Bucerius, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, noted:

“Second-generation immigrants typically have higher crime rates than first-generation immigrants. In the US context, however, most second-generation immigrants continue to enjoy lower crime rates than the native-born population. In stark contrast, research findings in European countries indicate that some second-generation immigrant groups have crime rates that drastically exceed those of the native-born population.”

I asked Bucerius about immigrants and crime (not terrorism), and she told me that though most studies do not differentiate among different immigrant groups, researchers do know there are some “immigrant groups in every Western country that we have data on that [are] more criminally involved than the average.”

“We also know,” she said, “that those groups always experience social, economic and/or political exclusion higher than the average. This does not imply that all immigrants who are socially excluded become criminals. Yet, exclusion and discrimination seem to be a risk factor.”

Bucerius points out that that while studies point broadly toward lower crime rates among immigrants and their children, these studies do not—and often cannot—speak to differences across different ethnic or religious groups. For instance, she says, there are no studies that compare crime rates among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

“What we can say is that—in some European countries— like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, or France, we see a disproportionate number of second-generation immigrants involved in crime who are likely Muslim,” she said. “However, for these groups in particular, we need to take the very problematic history of guest-worker integration into account, and consider the highly problematic relationship between France and Algeria [and] forced secularism.”

Bucerius spent five years studying predominantly Muslim Turkish, Moroccan, and Albanian drug dealers in Germany, and the resulting book—Unwanted: Muslim Immigrants, Dignity and Drug Dealing—examines how different policies and exclusion practices cause and foster alienation among immigrants communities. For instance, she points out, most second-generation immigrants born in German in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s are not German citizens.

“They were born and raised in a country that they could never become citizens of, and constantly live with the fear of deportation,” she said.

Source: Are Immigrants Prone to Crime and Terrorism? – The Atlantic

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Toronto campaign against Islamophobia an insult: Fatah

2016/06/17 1 Comment

OCASI IslamophobiaTarek Fatah over-reacts to the above poster which to my eyes, as a white guy, makes the point regarding prejudice and bias.

Traditionally, virtually all ethnic groups have faced these kinds of attitudes from many ‘old stock’ Canadians, with Canadian Muslims, as the most recent group, along with terrorism events, being the latest ones.

The same poster could have been made many years ago with an ‘old stock’ Canadian and a Ukrainian Canadian, changing the location to somewhere in the Prairies.

None of this to say that Canada’s success in integrating new Canadians from so many parts of the world reflects the efforts of so many ‘old stock’ Canadians, working alongside new Canadians, to achieve this.

In a press release on Tuesday, OCASI revealed, “The City of Toronto and OCASI are launching a Toronto public education campaign to address xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments.”

It quoted Councillor Joe Cressy of Trinity-Spadina saying “OCASI has an extensive history of working with refugees and understand the barriers they face to integration. We appreciate their insights.”

One of the first outcomes of OCASI’s “insights” was a poster that shows a white man confronting a black Muslim woman in hijab, telling her: “Go back to where you come from,” to which the black hijabi woman replies, “Where, North York?”

In one sweep the City of Toronto depicted every white man as a racist bigot and perpetuated the victimhood of Muslims, a goal of all Islamists worldwide who hate the West.

The question to Cressy is this: If you had to show a white male, then why didn’t you put your own face on the poster? Why leave it to an actor?

Or perhaps OCASI could have asked Mayor John Tory to do the honours of being the white racist male?

I am no denier of white privilege in our society and have taken on four white friends in a debate on this subject, so before the allegation of me being Uncle Tom is thrown my way (which I am sure it will), let me state the following: This is the most offensive poster designed by the City of Toronto in years.

Its intention seems to be to cover up the crimes of Islamists and distract Canadians from seeing the real threat to our society — Islamofacism, not so-called Islamophobia.

My son-in-law is white, so are the husbands of three of my nieces. My first boss in Canada was white and my editors at the Sun are white men. This poster is a slap in the face of Tory and all the decent, white males who have stood up for equal rights over the last century.

Bring it down, John Tory, because you are a good man.

Source: Toronto campaign against Islamophobia an insult | Fatah | Columnists | Opinion |

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The big problem with calling it ‘radical Islam’: McWhorter – CNN.com

2016/06/16 Leave a comment

Great piece by John McWhorter of Columbia on the semantics of what to call and not to call, terrorism and extremism carried out by Muslims:
Still, the right claims the two are ignoring the fact that a disproportionate number of men who perpetrate acts such as Mateen’s are Muslims infuriated at the West.
They assert further that as long as we say “radical Islam” rather than “Islam” alone, we are suitably specifying that we don’t hate Muslims. But that isn’t how it would appear to Muslims themselves, and — if we break the language down to its structure and meaning — they’re right.
In a sentence such as “We must eradicate radical Islam,” the object of the verb eradicate is technically “radical Islam,” yes, but the core object, the heart of the expression “radical Islam,” is “Islam.” Radical Islam is a kind of Islam. The object of the eradication in the sentence is “Islam,” modified — not redefined into something else — by “radical.”
That truth affects how one processes such a sentence. The adjective can come off as a kind of decoration — it feels parenthetical, even when talking about something innocuous. Take the sentence, “I’m thinking about one of those juicy steaks.” We process the speaker mainly as thinking about steak, not steaks with the particular quality of being juicy.
We must take heed of such qualities of language, especially when the object in question is already loaded with pungent associations. Perhaps if Islam were something most of us had little reason to think about, then qualifying its name with an adjective could qualify as neutral expression. “Restorationist Zoroastrianism” — OK, maybe.
But this is the real world. Let’s face it: These days, most of us need reminding that Islam is a religion of peace. Human beings generalize; we harbor associations. In such a climate, it’s particularly easy to interpret “radical Islam” as a summation of Islam in general. It’s how many of us might guiltily hear it, and how many Muslims would process it. Certainly Islamist terrorists would: Of all the qualities one might attribute to them, subtlety of interpretation is not one of them.
Suppose someone decided to battle “radical Christianity”? Note that whatever justifications that person offered along the lines of “We don’t mean all Christians,” they’d sound a little thin. Note also that in modern American English, “radical” can mean not only “extreme,” but also, by extension, “genuine.” After all, the “radical” Islamist considers himself to be the “true” Muslim just as the “radical” feminist might consider herself more devoted to her cause than someone who would shirk that label. Meanwhile, with the pop-culture exclamation “Rad!” thrown into the mix, there’s an even finer line between its connotation “Amazing!” and the implication “That’s the way it should be!”
There actually is room for terminological compromise here. “Radical Islam” is an unhelpful term because it sounds too much like “Islam” and has been used so much that it practically sounds like “Islam” alone at this point. However, one could get the point across with something like “violent Islam” as some have tried. “Violent Islam” actually sounds like a subset of Islam rather than the thing itself, and “violent” has no alternate connotation of “authentic,” as “radical” does.
It’s important to stress, however, that semantics — used one way or another — will not change any terrorists’ minds. Omar Mateen did not shoot up the Pulse because people said “radical Islam” instead of “Islam.” Accounts of ordinary, seemingly secular Muslims mysteriously but implacably deciding to leave comfortable existences in Western Europe to join ISIS in Syria likewise make it plain that word choice will not win or lose this battle for us.
Rather, we must maintain the cognitive equipoise that refuses to revile members of a worldwide religion because of the actions of a small band of amoral true believers. In doing so, we are embodying a more enlightened worldview than ISIS and its sympathizers.
We must resist overgeneralization — a tendency hardwired into human nature — not because we think it would have restrained an Omar Mateen, but because it makes us better human beings, and possible models for future ones. Virtue, Aristotle called it. And not in the sense of stalwartly refusing to call someone a dirty name a la Dudley Do-Right, but in the sense of cultivating personal excellence simply because, in the end, it’s a perfect foundation for an existence, especially if as many people do it together as possible.
So, the indignant right-wing columnists who yearn for America to express a more direct, religiously inflected contempt for terrorists are missing the strength in what they misread as a sign of weakness. In saying we are battling “terrorists” rather than “radical Islam,” we reveal ourselves as better than the barbarians who wish to harm us.
The alternative that the right would prefer would be a nyah-nyah contest, what we might euphemistically call a competition in the distance one can cover via the act of urination. Make no mistake: I detest what people like Mateen do — the mere thought of that man this week, for example, nauseates me. Neither Sykes-Picot, nor American support for Israel, nor brown skin, nor any other historical or present-day factor justifies actions like his. But that’s why we must do better than they do, including in how we use language. I’m glad that many of us are.
And I, for one, am not against using language that allows us to refer to the painfully obvious fact that so many of these attacks stem from a perversion of the doctrine of a particular religion. Those who feel that the mere observation of this reality constitutes racism or incivility carry their own burden of justification here.
However, I highly suspect that the people who despise the President and Hillary Clinton for not saying “radical Islam” wouldn’t be quite satisfied with “violent Islam.” Why? Because it doesn’t sound like an insult, and that would reveal, again, what these detractors are really seeking — to win a competition, not to solve a problem. Like I said, we can — and must — do better than that.

Source: The big problem with calling it ‘radical Islam’ – CNN.com

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Making a mass murderer — the meaning of Orlando: Jebara

2016/06/16 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Imam Jebara of the Cordova Centre:

When I heard of the massacre in Orlando and learned something about the background of the gunman, I knew — before hearing any details — what the story was about. The young man evidently was struggling with a conflicted sense of identity. He was, apparently, gay himself. He felt ashamed of who he was and struggled to reconcile the conflicting — yet undiscussed — duplicity inherent in the ultraconservative religious culture of his family’s native Afghanistan.

His religious or political views may have had nothing to do with the tragedy; the professed vehement homophobia of his family’s culture most certainly did. When the father claimed that he was shocked by his son’s appalling act of violence, it was apparent to me that he — like too many other parents — had ignored how his son’s self-hatred had been the catalyst for his so-called “radicalization”.

It’s important to separate Islam, the faith, from the tribal systems that tend to be intertwined with it — tribal systems which consider their particular culture and habits to be indistinguishable from Islam itself. (It’s really not much different from the case of Americans affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan who consider their world-view and ideology as vital parts of their ‘Christian’ identity.)

I have witnessed several cases of young men coming from the same background as Mateen who had homosexual inclinations — young men who came from families that publically supported extremist groups, spewed anti-Western rhetoric online, in public and in the community, and supported extremist interpretations of Islam that embrace the execution of homosexuals, rampant misogyny and other self-destructive and violent forms of behaviour.

These families espoused these views because of the tensions created by the clash between their native cultures and their adopted one. Luckily for those young men, they learned to reconcile their religious identity with a candid assessment of their cultural identity, helping them divert themselves from the sort of mental and psychological breakdown that might have led them to violence.

Many cultural factors influence how we behave — and religion is interpreted as reflection of the culture in which it is observed, not the other way around. Most known extremists and terrorists are anything but spiritual and devout individuals. They tend to be broken people — empty shells with weak personalities and low self-esteem, carrying emotional baggage from childhood, from growing up in unbalanced families.

So what’s the solution? Rather than supporting generalizations against all Muslims, we should treat the various manifestations of violent extremism as we would any other mental health problem or crime. Steps should be taken to train and equip parents to recognize signs of mental illness, as well as the subtleties of unstable behaviour patterns, and to take the proper measures to have their child’s condition diagnosed and treated.

Fearmongering and victimization are counterproductive — they amount to sticking our heads in the sand regarding the effect of cultural pressures and alienation. Recognizing the influences of the various cultures from which we come can circumvent the development of more fringe psychotics and prevent future acts of heinous violence.

Source: Making a mass murderer — the meaning of Orlando

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Memo to the Oscars from the Tonys — this is what diversity looks like

2016/06/16 Leave a comment

Stark contrast with Hollywood:

This is not to say that Broadway has solved racism. In fact many of this year’s most-lauded actors say there’s more work to be done. Speaking with the Hollywood Reporter, Leslie Odom Jr., who won for his role as Aaron Burr in Hamilton, has said the lack of complex roles for black actors is so acute he plans on focusing on his music career following Hamilton. Looking into 2017, few expect the range of plays and musicals for the year ahead to rival this season. The real question is what comes out of the seeds that Hamilton is sowing — perhaps a new generation of actors and writers inspired to tell their own stories.

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The cast of The Colour Purple accepts the award for Best Revival of a Musical onstage. (Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

Meanwhile, when it comes to diversity, the hip-hop history lesson is just the beginning. From Spring Awakening, where actors perform American Sign Language, to the Latin rhythms of the Gloria Estefan-inspired On Your Feet, Broadway is breaking boundaries and wooing new audiences. While Hollywood is busy arguing about who should direct the inevitable Hamilton movie, executives should be taking notes. Instead of playing it safe with familiar faces and bland remakes, shake things up. As Kevin Costner once said: “Build it and they will come.”

Source: Memo to the Oscars from the Tonys — this is what diversity looks like – Arts & Entertainment – CBC News

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Apple’s WWDC 2016 onstage lineup was more diverse than it has ever been – Recode

2016/06/16 Leave a comment

Changing the public image:

Like virtually all of Silicon Valley, Apple is both extremely white and extremely male in its upper ranks. And for many years, it has been mostly white men onstage at Apple keynote events.

Last year, that began to change. And at today’s Worldwide Developers Conference, it changed some more.

Of the 10 people onstage at WWDC today, there were six men and four women, including one African-American woman. According to 2015 figures on Apple’s website, the company has a 70/30 gender split, and is 54 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 11 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black. At last year’s WWDC, there were two women onstage for the event.

The women onstage were Apple Music’s Bozoma Saint John, Apple Watch software exec Stacey Lysik, software engineering VP Cheryl Thomas and iOS software exec Bethany Bongiorno. Imran Chaudhri, on the Apple design team, was the one nonwhite guy. (Apple iTunes executive Eddy Cue — a regular presenter at Apple events, including today’s — is Cuban American.)

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Has the activist left decided #antisemitism doesn’t exist?: Neil Macdonald

2016/06/15 Leave a comment

Another good piece by Neil Macdonald:

The conflation of all supporters of BDS with Jew-hating is as scattershot and sweeping as the conflation of all Jews with Israel.

It ignores the inconvenient truth that some pro-Israeli Jews are embarrassed by that country’s current government, as well as the fact that some of the strongest proponents of BDS are Jewish.

But it is all of a piece with the scorched-earth nature of modern political discourse.

There is us, and them, and no-man’s land in between. Detail and nuance and history are just annoyances, to be marched past, or over.

Source: Has the activist left decided anti-Semitism doesn’t exist?: Neil Macdonald – Politics – CBC News

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Multiculturalism can foster a new kind of Englishness: Modood

2016/06/14 Leave a comment

Good and interesting account of how the multiculturalism reality of UK and identities have and continue to evolve by Tariq Modood:

Yet over the last couple of decades a new set of challenges have become apparent, initially in Scotland but increasingly throughout the UK. In none of the nations of the union does the majority of the population consider themselves British, without also considering themselves English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish first.

The 2011 census is not a detailed study of identity but it is striking that 70% of the people of England ticked the “English” box and the vast majority of them did not also tick the “British” box, even though they were invited to tick more than one. This was much more the case with white people than non-whites, who were more likely to be “British” only or combined with English. Multiculturalism, then, may actually have succeeded in fostering a British national identity among the ethnic minorities.

Multiculturalism in this case, then, offers not only the plea that English national consciousness should be developed in a context of a broad, differentiated British identity. But also, ethnic minorities can be seen as an important bridging group between those who think of themselves as only English, and those who consider themselves English and British.

Paradoxically, a supposedly out-of-date political multiculturalism becomes a source of how to think about not just integration of minorities but about how to conceive of our plural nationality and of how to give expression to dual identities such as English-British. It is no small irony that minority groups who are all too often seen as harbingers of fragmentation could prove to be exemplars of the union.

The minimum I would wish to urge upon a centre-left that is taking English consciousness seriously is that it should not be simply nostalgic and should avoid ethnic nationalism, such as talk of Anglo-Saxonism. More positively, multiculturalism, with its central focus on equal citizenship and diverse identities and on the renewing and reforging of nationality to make it inclusive of contemporary diversity, can help strengthen an appreciation of the emotional charge of belonging together.

Source: Multiculturalism can foster a new kind of Englishness

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Toronto 18 may have been shock for Canada, but it was not harbinger of a path to ruin: Gurski

2016/06/14 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski’s reflections on what we learned from the Toronto 18:

The event was a seminal one for me as a CSIS analyst and I’d like to reflect on what this meant then as well as what is means now. Much has happened in the intervening decade and much of that has been good in Canada. Firstly, the Toronto 18 investigation proved—or rather should have proven—to skeptical Canadians that terrorism was real and not just something that happened ‘”over there.” Truth be told, there were significant doubts about the real nature of the threat in June 2006 and whether this cell was that dangerous: many believed that CSIS and the RCMP had exaggerated the plot. I am happy to say that 10 years later most Canadians accept the fact that we have terrorists in our midst. This turnaround in public opinion may have had a lot to do with the attack on the National War Memorial and Parliament on Oct. 22, 2014, but in any event it is a step forward in our collective understanding and acceptance of the issue.

Secondly, the RCMP advised Muslim leaders of the impending takedown just before it took place to allow them to prepare their communities for the news. This was an outstanding decision at the time and the relationship between Canadian government officials and these communities has only gotten better since then (albeit with an unfortunate downturn at the end of the Harper years). All this shows that we do things differently in Canada and I know that many countries have sought our input as they seek to learn from our model. Are we perfect? No, but we are in a much better position than most Western countries on this issue.

Thirdly, the case demonstrated clearly that a group of Canadian Muslims can radicalize to violence entirely at home with no significant foreign input. This was not an al-Qaeda-led or—directed plot (Islamic State did not exist back then) but rather a terrorist act planned based on what is known as the al-Qaeda (or single) narrative—the notion that the West was at war with Islam and that “true” Muslims (self-defined) had to fight to defend the faith. The Toronto 18 sought to punish Canada and Canadians for their decision to send soldiers to Afghanistan back in 2001. In an era where we obsess about IS and their involvement in organizing attacks abroad, it is important to remember that most plots in the West are homegrown.

Fourthly, the case showed that CSIS and the RCMP could work hand in glove to successfully stop a terrorist act from occurring. The investigation started with CSIS and was handed over to the Mounties when it was clear a criminal act was being planned. CSIS sources became RCMP agents (not always an easy thing to do) more or less seamlessly and a serious terrorist attack was averted. There is little doubt that the CSIS-RCMP relationship has had its ups and downs but the two do work together well and Canadians are safer as a result.

Lastly, despite more foiled plots and two successful ones in the interim, Canada remains in a good position when it comes to homegrown terrorism. We are not in the same league as France or Belgium or the U.K., or even the U.S. Our government has done a much better job at understanding the threat and putting measures into place, both soft and hard, to deal with it. We had the five-year $10-million Kanishka research project which, although many thought it under-delivered (I am among that group), set the stage for a more robust and more mature academic environment to look at terrorism where none existed before. Public Safety Canada’s Citizen Engagement branch developed a community outreach program that was the envy of all our allies and the creation of the new Office of the Coordinator for Counter Radicalization and Community Outreach will hopefully enhance this effort. There is more work to be done but these are all enviable achievements.

The Toronto 18 may have been a shock to the system for Canada, but it was not the harbinger of a path to ruin. We are still a relatively safe country and while we must remain vigilant and ensure that our security and law enforcement agencies enjoy the necessary resourcing and public trust, we will likely remain so.

Source: Toronto 18 may have been shock for Canada, but it was not harbinger of a path to ruin |

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Prisons pay more for native spiritual services than all other faiths combined

2016/06/13 Leave a comment

While the issue may be more underfunding of chaplain services for other religions than overfunding of Indigenous spiritual services, it is nevertheless an interesting disparity, particularly given that relatively few Indigenous peoples according the 2011 NHS practice Aboriginal spirituality (less than 5 percent).

The previous government’s cut to chaplaincy services and subsequent restoration may also have played a part (Corrections Canada reverses course on chaplains | Toronto Star):

Canada’s federal prisons are paying significantly more each year for indigenous spiritual services than for all other religions combined.

Indigenous populations are grossly overrepresented in the prison population, a systemic issue. But statistics show that only five per cent of offenders identify as having “native spirituality.”

Still, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is spending $8 million annually on sustaining spiritual services for those offenders — versus its $6.75 million ceiling for other religions.

Spokesperson Avely Serin said Elder services help offenders follow a “traditional healing path” and provide advice to the heads of institutions about “access to ceremonial objects and traditional medicines within the institution.”

As of last October, 85 per cent of indigenous offenders in custody, or 3,156, had undergone an “Elder review,” which requires multiple meetings, according to Serin.

Meanwhile, in the 2015-16 year, chaplaincy services registered 407,639 individual contacts with offenders. That number includes attendance at religious services and faith-based educational sessions, along with individual counselling.

The correctional service takes “a lot of criticism for the overrepresentation of First Nations people in the prison system,” said Catherine Latimer, executive director at the John Howard Society. She suggested that could be one reason for the extra funding.

Indigenous people make up a quarter of the prison population versus 4.3 per cent of the general population, according to Canada’s Correctional Investigator. And 31 per cent of female prisoners are indigenous.

Latimer questioned the fairness of offering different amounts of spiritual support based on ethnicity.

Indigenous offenders do have better outcomes when “reconnected with their spiritual and cultural traditions,” said the Correctional Investigator of Canada’s annual report for 2014-15.

But spiritual services help offenders of other religions, too, said Kate Johnson, a former chaplain at Joyceville Institution in Kingston, Ont.

Almost half of offenders are Christian, a majority of those Catholic, and just over five per cent are Muslim. About 15 per cent report having no religion.

“Chaplains generally are the people who provide that kind of bridge from institution to community,” said Johnson, now chaplain at Queen’s University after leaving corrections three years ago. “The better care we provide for somebody, the less likely they are to reoffend.”

Source: Prisons pay more for native spiritual services than all other faiths combined | National Post

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