ICYMI: The Interview: Crime author Ausma Zehanat Khan’s unique lens on Islam

2016/02/19 Leave a comment

Worth reading, have selected the quote below on the contrast between Canada and the USA:

Q: Do you wear a headscarf?

A: I don’t. No one can visibly identify me as a Muslim woman until the moment that I choose to identify myself, so there is a certain level of protection with that—which is not to say that everybody that I encounter is filled with anti-Muslim hatred, just that there are certain situations where you are aware of it. When I’m in Toronto, and I’m out in public with friends, or my husband, I dress any way I want. Sometimes, as when I’ve just been praying, I will still have my scarf on, and I’ll go out and never think twice about it. I don’t feel the pressure of looks or judgment.

But there have been many, many times here where I’ve felt that; that we’re attracting notice. So we’re careful. We don’t talk about issues in public, certainly not when we’re going to the airport. [laughs] We’re careful about what kind of books we have in public. When I want to pray inside my house, I draw my blinds. Those kinds of small accommodations are because you realize that people have heard negative things about Muslims and associate all Muslims with jihadists, and they’re wary and suspicious of them. And I’ve heard about Islamophobic incidents and attacks, so I’m wary and suspicious of other people, so it’s mutually reinforcing—even when I’m sure the majority of people don’t have those attitudes, just as the vast majority of Muslims are not jihadists. It’s a really sad state of affairs.

Source: The Interview: Crime author Ausma Zehanat Khan’s unique lens on Islam

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Luc Portelance and Ray Boisvert: It’s time for Canada to get serious about national security

2016/02/18 Leave a comment

Overview of the security agency perspective from Luc Portelance and Ray Boisvert. Challenge to the rest of government and society lies with counter-radicalization efforts, as they flag below:

Radicalization prevention begins at home, in our communities and across various levels of government. Furthermore, the development of counter-narratives to violent extremism must not be seen as the exclusive domain of security agencies. Counter-radicalization is a long-term battle of ideas that can only be won through collaborative action across society, and more specifically by applying proven commercial marketing strategies.

With the move of the multiculturalism program back to Canadian Heritage, there is an opportunity for the program to play a larger role in such policy discussions and initiatives than was the case recently at CIC/IRCC (as was done previously before the move to CIC/IRCC).

Source: Luc Portelance and Ray Boisvert: It’s time for Canada to get serious about national security | National Post

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Two decades on, too much is the same: Ontario’s anti-racism office is government on syndication

2016/02/18 Leave a comment

A lesson from the past, and how little would appear to have changed (I am less pessimistic, there has been progress, imperfect as it is, and the issues are more widely discussed than before).

But having a ‘race or ethnic origin lens’ (along with gender, sexual orientation etc) should improve policy making and outcomes.

However, there is a real challenge to ensuring that both a ‘race lens’ and a separate office become not merely a paper exercise but rather one that leads to concrete and tangible results:

Spurred on by protests over police violence against minorities, frustrated with an education system ostensibly public but systemically biased against darker skin, faced with a children’s aid society anything but colourblind, an Ontario premier vows to act.

A top academic drafts a report that claims “the soothing balm of ‘multiculturalism’ cannot mask racism.” He finds “a great deal of anger, anxiety, frustration and impatience amongst those with whom I talked in the visible minority communities.” They were filled with a “bitter sense” the exercise was “yet another reporting charade.”

“It was truly depressing.”

And it was 23 years ago.

The premier wasn’t Kathleen Wynne, but Bob Rae. The party loyalist tapped for expertise was former provincial NDP leader Stephen Lewis and his report on racism in Ontario was not written in bureaucratese, but as a poignant, personal letter to Rae. It was sparked by what came to be known as the Yonge Street Riots — protests over police violence against young, black men.

It was a call to action. It touted the newly created Anti-Racism Secretariat as one way to start stitching together gaping wounds between communities.

And for three years it sought to do that, sought to analyze government policies through a “race lens,” pushed for greater equity in legislation.

Then Rae lost power and Mike Harris turned the province Tory blue. Shutting down the secretariat was a key campaign pledge.

Two decades later, and everything that’s old is new again. Wynne announced Tuesday she’s going to create an anti-racism directorate, admitting she didn’t now how that differs from a secretariat. Minister Michael Coteau will tack the responsibility onto his existing files and report back soon with what exactly the office will do and what kind of budget it will require.

Her reasons why are, upon reading Lewis’s decades-old letter, like government on syndication.

“The Black Lives Matter movement, the issue of carding, the debate surrounding the Syrian refugee crisis – these events and many others illuminate and illustrate a systemic racism that runs the length of our shared history right up to this very moment,” Wynne said. She promised a “a wide anti-racist lens” will be used to shape government policy.

Change the date line and one could easily believe Lewis penned his letter this decade. He wrote “there must surely be a way to combine constructive policing with public confidence that to serve and protect is not a threat to visible minority communities.”

He notes all minority communities face discrimination, but anti-Black (his capital B) is the most pervasive: “It is Blacks who are being shot, it is Black youth that is unemployed in excessive numbers, it is Black students who are being inappropriately streamed in schools, it is Black kids who are disproportionately dropping-out.”

‘We haven’t dealt with the problems… and it’s not for lack of good intentions’

The Liberals are acting now, but they also bear responsibility for a decade of inaction, having 10 years ago passed a bill that allowed them to create essentially the same office. But they didn’t.

Those who remember the 90s, the Yonge Street Riots and Rae’s best intentions have what can best be described as a cynical optimism about this latest attempt.

“Every effort should be made but made understanding there are greater chances for failure and disillusionment than there are for real success and improvement,” said Lennox Farrell, a retired teacher who co-chaired one of Rae’s anti-racism secretariat advisory committees. That process also began with the highest of hopes, but he soon found the meetings exhausting, circular, counterproductive. He worries the new directorate will just be “more paper.”

Source: Two decades on, too much is the same: Ontario’s anti-racism office is government on syndication | National Post

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$10 off Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote

2016/02/17 Leave a comment

Lulu_18_Feb

For those interested in the print version of Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, this drops the price down to $29, or about 25 percent.

The direct link to my book page is: My Author Spotlight,.

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Enough inertia. It’s time for gender quotas in the boardroom: Wells

2016/02/17 Leave a comment

Jennifer Wells on the need to legislate diversity in the boardroom (because it’s 2016?):

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas offered a more vibrant take, declaring the legislation “the greatest contribution to gender equality since women got the vote.” In other words, the greatest contribution in 100 years.

Here’s the message: when companies won’t budge, legislate.

Here’s the underlying message: left to their own devices, companies won’t budge.

Germany’s experience is not unique. Of course it isn’t. Watch as jurisdictions introduce voluntary quotas. Observe the snail’s pace of change across a decade or two.

Observe Ontario. Nine months after securities regulators, including the Ontario Securities Commission, adopted their so-called “comply or explain” policy, a toothless bit of silliness if ever there was one, fully 65 per cent of TSX issuers sampled reported that they had not adopted a policy aimed at identifying and nominating women directors.

Let me amend that: it’s not that those issuers had yet to adopt the recommended policy, but that they had made the decision not to adopt.

We are in the dark ages.

In 2002, women in Norway comprised six per cent of the country’s board members. The government of the day initially took the voluntary approach, appealing to publicly listed companies to up their game. That didn’t happen. The solution: amendments to company law. New rules, introduced in 2006, demanded that boards of publicly listed companies be comprised of at least 40 per cent women. That did happen.

France took a two-stage approach, giving publicly listed companies until 2014 to reach 20 per cent representation. As of next year, the requirement jumps to 40 per cent.

Iceland (40 per cent). Spain (40 per cent). Finland (40 per cent). There are too many examples to be documented here.

Some quota skeptics have been brought on board, including an initially resistant Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

One of the arguments against quotas is that board parity, or a move toward parity, hasn’t thus far equated in the research to a significantly higher number of women in top management. Women CEOs remain as scarce as hen’s teeth.

Yet it has been demonstrated, most recently in a report this week by the Washington-based Petersen Institute for International Economics, that the representation of women in the C-suite correlates to improved corporate profitability. “For profitable firms, a move from no female leaders to 30 per cent representation is associated with a 15 per cent increase in net revenue margin,” the authors found. (The report was based on a survey of 22,000 firms across 91 countries, albeit it was a single-year snapshot.)

The researchers qualified their analysis as possibly too crude — their words — to discern the significant positive effects of board quotas. But they did cite a correlation between the presence of women on boards and the presence of women in executive ranks. “If increased gender diversity in corporate leadership contributes to firm performance, if quotas have negligible costs, and if the presence of women in the C-suite enhances the pipeline effect by encouraging more women to pursue these positions, as is often claimed, then some kind of quota system may warrant consideration.”

What we do know is that any expectations that boards will organically reshape themselves into balanced assemblies of men and women have not, and will not, be met.

In June 2014, Kellie Leitch, then Canada’s minister for the status of women, announced that a reasonable national goal was to “aspire” to 30 per cent representation on boards by 2019. The result: inertia.

I find “aspire” to be a very genderized word. Like “upset.”

Let’s choose instead “anger” and a need to “force” a dynamic outcome.

Quotas are the way forward. We can discuss a range of sanctions for failure to conform, from empty board seats (I agree) to, as in Norway, threatened dissolution for non-compliant companies (a step too far).

A chorus of voices will no doubt rise in opposition here, citing the argument that directors should be chosen on merit. Excellent idea. Move to parity and you just might find that future members are indeed chosen on merit and merit alone.

Source: Enough inertia. It’s time for gender quotas in the boardroom: Wells | Toronto Star

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Toronto’s black history unearthed in excavation of landmark church

2016/02/17 2 Comments

Part of our history:

It has been called “one of the most important blocks of black history in Toronto,” a place where African Americans, fleeing slavery, found refuge to live, work and worship.

On this tract of land, just north of Osgoode Hall, a handful of African Methodists built a small wood frame church in 1845. It served as the spiritual and political centre of the city’s growing black community, which was asserting its voice in the abolitionist movement and welcoming an influx of families seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Eventually, the congregation outgrew the tiny church and replaced it with a handsome brick temple. But after more than a century, membership dwindled, the congregation moved and the temple was sold off. In the late 1980s, the building was demolished to make way for a parking lot and, until last fall, the church was largely forgotten.

Now, with that same lot being prepared for the development of a new state-of-the-art provincial courthouse, the rich history of Chestnut St.’s British Methodist Episcopal Church has resurfaced, along with that of the 19th-century neighbourhood surrounding it.

The British Methodist Episcopal church on Chestnut St. as seen in 1953, around the time the dwindling congregation moved to Shaw St.

J.V. SALMON

The British Methodist Episcopal church on Chestnut St. as seen in 1953, around the time the dwindling congregation moved to Shaw St.

Hundreds of thousands of artifacts have been discovered at the 0.65-hectare site — larger than a football field — near University Ave. and Dundas St. Infrastructure Ontario, the government agency overseeing construction, provided the Toronto Star with unique access to the five-month dig, considered one of the most extensive urban archeological projects in North America.

Unearthed ceramics, tools, toys and remnants of clothing are helping to compose a fascinating and largely untold story of the distant origins of Toronto’s diversity.

“Archeology often becomes the voice for the people without history,” says Holly Martelle, the consulting archeologist for the dig.

Rosemary Sadlier, past president of the Ontario Black History Society, visited the site before the excavation wrapped up in December. “It was an incredibly powerful experience,” recalls Sadlier, whose late relative, Rev. Thomas Jackson, served as a preacher at the church in the 1950s. “I was literally walking on ground that had been walked on by my ancestors.”

Karolyn Smardz Frost, a historian who has written extensively about black settlement in Toronto, describes the location as “one of the most important blocks of black history in Toronto.”

Infrastructure Ontario officials say they fully recognize the importance of the church site and its surroundings. Given the uniqueness of the archeological discoveries, the question now facing the provincial government is how will this history be commemorated, and what sort of stewardship will the artifacts require?

Source: Toronto’s black history unearthed in excavation of landmark church | Toronto Star

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Canadian women give birth to children of ISIS fighters

2016/02/17 Leave a comment

No real surprise here that Canada is not exempt from this trend of some women living in the West, hard as it is to understand why, both objectively and from their families’ perspective.

Decisions have consequences, as other accounts of women who have traveled to Iraq and Syria have found out (‘There’s no way back now’: For female ISIL members, Syria is one-way journey).

These studies are helpful to highlight this (fortunately small) trend, and more important, inform counter-extremism strategies:

Canadian women are helping to grow the so-called Islamic State.

According to researchers at the University of Waterloo, three Canadian women have given birth to children of ISIS fighters, while another two are pregnant. The new details are part of a larger study following foreign fighters who flee to Syria and Iraq. The women travelled separately over the past two years, leaving their families back home devastated.

“They’re quite worried about what is going to happen to their daughter, but also their grandchild,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a co-lead author of the study. “For most of the parents, I think there’s kind of a double reaction. First they’re kind of happy a grandchild is involved, but at the same time, they’re quite devastated that a child was born into a war zone, to somebody they’ve never met.”

Amarasingam said the women are between the ages of 19 and 22, and are from British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. Families agreed to speak to the research team with the promise that specific personal details would be kept confidential. “Because there are so few Canadian women that have gone over, it will be quite obvious… who they are, if I talk (specifically) about where they are from.”

The researcher also said the challenges these women face are quite obvious. Although they have a place to live, it is difficult to find basic supplies like clothing and diapers. Some of the families back in Canada are keen to help their daughters, but are afraid of the legal consequences.

“If you were to send diapers to Syria, I don’t know if that contributes to real support of a terrorist organization, but it does rest on very shaky legal ground, in terms of what you’re allowed to send to a place like Raqqa,” said Amarasingam.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said this is “obviously a very disturbing development,” and recommitted to opening a national counter-radicalization office.

“We will be moving forward shortly, as rapidly as we can, on the creation of this new office for community outreach and counter radicalization,” said Goodale.

“I’m concerned with every dimension about this type of problem, it runs contrary to everything Canada stands for, in terms of values in the world,” he added.

The creation of a new office was part of a mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the public safety minister late last year. The Liberals aren’t saying yet if funding for the office will be included in the upcoming budget, but there are signs this program will be a priority.

Amarasingam said the challenges these women face become more complex because of their age. “These girls are very young,” he added, “they don’t have much experience in how to raise children, but they’re also raising these children under circumstances many others don’t have to worry about.”

Source: Canadian women give birth to children of ISIS fighters | CTV News

Filed under Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

‘We respect Islam and gay people’ …UK: The gay teacher transforming a Muslim school

2016/02/16 Leave a comment

Sharp contrast to some of those opposed to the new Ontario sex education curriculum and their fears that it undermined parent values, as well as a good example of school-parent relationships:

It took one complaint from a parent “as a Christian” to undo all Andrew Moffat’s work teaching children respect for people of different sexual orientation. A meeting of 40 parents followed with calls for an apology and the removal of books he had used in lessons.

Above all, the parents objected that he had told children he was gay. Moffat felt he could no longer continue and resigned. Far from retreating to a safe haven, however, he crossed Birmingham to take up an even greater challenge: assistant headteacher at Parkfield Community school, where 98.9% of pupils are from Muslim families.

The award-winning school is in the heart of a devout area where three inquiries have been held into the alleged “Trojan horse” plot by hardline Muslim governors to take over state schools, though Parkfield was not affected.

That was two years ago. With the backing of Hazel Pulley, the headteacher, Moffat went on to introduce a No Outsiders policy promoting diversity at the 770-pupil school, where 23 nationalities are represented. That includes welcoming people of any race, colour or religion and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

A gay teacher teaching gay rights to pupils from a faith that believes homosexuality is a sin, punishable by death in some countries? It doesn’t seem possible and yet the school’s Muslim parents appear to have accepted that children can be taught about Britain’s anti-discrimination laws without undermining their religious beliefs. Learning from his unhappy experience at his previous school, Moffat has been careful to centre the policy around the Equality Act 2010, to first gain the support of the governing body, and to keep parents fully informed, inviting them in to see the books that would be used.

Now he has published a handbook about creating an ethos where everyone is welcome, regardless of differences: No Outsiders in Our School: Teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools.

Moffat felt he had no alternative but to leave his previous school: “I knew I was letting down any pupil who might in years to come identify as LGBT and remember what had happened to me – if you ‘come out’ you risk a backlash and having to disappear. I was worried about that but in the end I decided that leaving was right for me and the school.

“It was a very difficult time and I was quite damaged by the experience. However, it gave me the opportunity to pick myself up and start again, learning from mistakes. There was no point in going to an area where it would be an easy task. I had to go where I might meet the same challenges in order to find a different way to meet them. I was determined to make LGBT equality a reality in any community. I could not afford to get it wrong a second time.”

Pulley says she appointed Moffat because she already knew of his work, in particular on improving pupil behaviour and on diversity. “I thought his approach was admirable. We already had similar work going on at school but we needed someone to lead it and give all the staff confidence,” she says.

It is possible to teach the law against discrimination in Britain without undermining any religious faith, she says: “Everyone knows we respect Islam here. One parent asked if he could not contradict what the school said. I told him that whatever parents said in the home was their decision but it’s lovely that the children will hear both views.”

The good relationship between governors, teachers and parents has helped, she says, and the fact parents have confidence in the school’s high standards – 97% of 11-year-olds reached or exceeded the expected standard for their age in both maths and English last year.

Last week parents, collecting their children before taking them to madrasas, the religious classes, spoke of their support. The school is “shedding light” on the minds of children, said one mother. Parents’ initial response had been “How dare they? How can the government make this law?” But their anger had abated once they learned more about the approach, they said.

“If they don’t learn about gay, lesbian and transgender people in society from school they will learn it from the outside world and they could hear things like ‘that’s disgusting’. I don’t want that,” said another. “I agree,” said a third. “I’d rather my children hear it at school. When they are at home we teach them that in our culture gay is not allowed but we respect people who are different from us and hope they too will respect us and the boundaries of our religion.”

The parent of a 10-year-old admitted her views differed from her husband’s: “My husband is a strict Muslim and my son asked him about the difference between what the school says and our religion. He did not give him a good reply. My reply was that God has created us and he is the only one who can judge us. I have told my son that it wouldn’t matter if he came home to me and said he was gay, you are my son and I will love you no matter what.”

Source: ‘We respect Islam and gay people’ … The gay teacher transforming a Muslim school | Education | The Guardian

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Europe Organizes, Rationalizes, and Industrializes Hate (Again) – The Daily Beast

2016/02/16 Leave a comment

Maajid Nawaz on Europe’s challenges:

Between xenophobia and xenophilia, a solution to Europe’s cultural wars lies in facing up to a few uncomfortable home truths first. Some of the right’s critique of immigration is correct. Some of the left’s concern with hosting refugees is correct. Some of the Muslim concern with racism and bigotry is correct. But the old world models of Populism, multiculturalism and Islamism—of divisive identity politics—are not the answer. They cannot be the answer. They are tearing us apart.

Candor, consistency, leadership and integrity are the only ways to cut a liberal, secular and humane path through this polarized political mosaic. As the left-of -center columnist Nick Cohen has noted, making a distinction between economic migrants and genuine refugees would be a start. But the debate must go further.

The mass sex attacks in Cologne over New Year highlighted that even after striking a middle ground on a sensible migration policy, once refugees are in Europe there is little excuse for neglecting a policy that focuses on integration and language skills. New arrivals must adapt to the liberal culture they have sought to make their own.

The Populist Right, Islamists, and the Regressive Left share a bigotry: they insist that Muslims, Islam and Islamism are one and the same. They either attack, or defend all three as one and the same thing. Simple minds require a simple world. Simple right-wingers need Islam to be the only evil. Simple Muslims need Islam to be the only true faith. Simple left-wingers need Muslims to be the only victims.

In between these simplifications, intelligent debate is lost. Liberalism provides freedom of religion and from religion. Free speech allows for the advocacy of ideas like Islamist theocracy, but it also means that others can advocate their own ideas, in the form of cartoons. Bigotry can exist against minorities and also by minorities.

Human rights is a double-edged sword of justice. It works both for and against people, including for and against minorities. We should be able to hold two thoughts at the same time. And to those vested in dividing our communities along narrow identity lines, a plague on all your houses.

Source: Europe Organizes, Rationalizes, and Industrializes Hate (Again) – The Daily Beast

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Liberals insist not interfering in House committee chair selections, despite lack of secret ballots | hilltimes.com

2016/02/16 Leave a comment

While we do not yet have the full list of Committee chairs (will know by end week), we do know that women are under-represented (21.2 percent) and visible minorities are represented close to the proportion who are Canadian citizens (14.6 percent compared to 15 percent):

As for the gender breakdown on committees—due to there only being 26 per cent women in the House, and the Liberals appointing 26 of their 50 female MPs to either Cabinet or as a parliamentary secretary—only one of the House committees has more than four of 10 members that are female, and that’s Status of Women, which has nine women on the committee. There are also two committees—Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics, and Industry, Science, and Technology—that have no women at all.

When questioned about this on Feb. 3, Liberal Whip Andrew Leslie (Orleans, Ont.) said, “we’ve literally run out.”

This predicament could be further complicated as a result of a successful NDP motion in the House to create a special committee to study pay equity and propose a plan to adopt a “proactive federal pay equity regime.” Party whips have been given until Feb. 17 to name members of this committee. It is possible this committee will determine that more female MPs will have to double up on committee duty, which is already happening in some instances.

Source: Liberals insist not interfering in House committee chair selections, despite lack of secret ballots | hilltimes.com

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