Islamic religious education in Europe and the United States | Brookings Institution

2015/04/13 Leave a comment

From the Brookings Institute, an interesting comparative study on Publicly Funded Islamic Education in Europe and the United States:

In Germany and Austria, many public schools teach Islam to Muslims as a subject within a broader religious curriculum in which parents can choose their students’ religious courses. In the United Kingdom and Sweden, public schools teach Islam as an academic subject, and train teachers through comparative religious studies departments in universities. French and U.S. public schools do not teach religion, although students can lean about Islam in subjects such as art, history, or literature.

Despite the diversity of these approaches, Berglund notes three good practices that apply across the board:

  • Establishing rigorous academic standards of training for teachers of religious education courses.
  • Providing factual textbooks informed by academic scholarship, both for Islamic religious education and non-confessional school subjects that teach about Islam.
  • Building upon current curricular and pedagological best practices through international exchange and dialogue of scholars.

By adopting these practices, Berglund argues, governments can further their citizens’ knowledge of important aspects of the human experience and promote inclusive citizenship and respect.

Islamic religious education in Europe and the United States | Brookings Institution.

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Erin Anderssen: Religious beliefs do not make it okay to shame and inconvenience other travellers

2015/04/11 1 Comment

A reminder that fundamentalism and extremism is not unique to any one religion:

According to The New York Times, there has been an increasing number of cases of Orthodox Jewish men refusing to sit next women during flights, and solving the problem by standing in the aisle until a flight attendant asks the woman to move (to the back of the plane, perhaps?) or finds them a more acceptable spot. For ultra-conservative Orthodox Jewish men, making physical contact with a woman other than their wife is prohibited. Their concern is realistic, given how cramped airline seating is these days.

Switching seats is arguably a minor inconvenience in the big picture, but this is only the latest angle on a recurring debate – how far do we go, both personally and as a society, to accommodate religious freedom in public spaces? Let’s say a fundamentalist Christian got on a plane and refused to sit next to an LGBT couple on their honeymoon – would this be okay? The airlines, on the perpetual hunt for more coin, could always offer passengers a “suitable seatmate surcharge” – choose the sex, gender, weight and race of your preference.

In the New York Times piece, one female passenger agreed to move – just to get the flight going when the man wouldn’t take the window seat beside her. In another example, a man delayed a flight for 15 to 20 minutes because he refused to accept the spot he’d been assigned. The situation has become so common, the Israel Religious Action Center has started a campaign urging women not to give up their seats. Anat Hoffman, the group’s executive director told The New York Times, “I have 100 stories.”

After observing an incident on a flight between New York and Israel, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Newberger told the Times, “I grew up conservative, and I’m sympathetic to Orthodox Jews. But this Hasid came on, looking very uncomfortable, and wouldn’t even talk to the woman, and there was five to eight minutes of ‘What’s going to happen?’ before the woman acquiesced and said, ‘I’ll move.’ It felt like he was being a yutz.”

Erin Anderssen: Religious beliefs do not make it okay to shame and inconvenience other travellers – The Globe and Mail.

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B’nai Brith campaigns to stop Queen’s Park Al-Quds rally

2015/04/11 Leave a comment

Interesting to see C-51 being invoked in this way:

B’nai Brith Canada thinks that getting an early start and the introduction of Bill C-51 might give it a real shot this year at persuading the Ontario Legislative Assembly to prohibit an Al-Quds Day anti-Israel rally from taking place at Queen’s Park this summer.

In association with a number of partner organizations, B’nai Brith launched its first “Stop Al-Quds Day” online petition March 25, and by April 1, it had collected more than 1,200 signatures.

Critics of the annual rallies say they promote hatred and anti-Semitism and that a protest calling for Israel’s destruction should not be allowed at Queen’s Park.

Jewish groups have tried unsuccessfully to have the events banned in the past, and they’ve brought comments made there to the attention of police, who also monitor the events, but no hate charges have been laid.

B’nai Brith communications officer Sam Eskenasi said that since 2009, his group has lobbied Ontario’s three provincial political parties to push the Legislative Assembly to refuse a public permit to Al-Quds Day protesters.

He cited the federal government’s recently proposed anti-terror law, Bill C-51, as a reason B’nai Brith’s online campaign could gain traction with the legislature.

“We’re trying to get our voices heard early this year, because in the past, the [Jewish] community only heard about the rally in the news or in a press release just before it happened,” he told The CJN.

The online petition is addressed to David Joseph Levac, speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who is in charge of the grounds where the rally usually takes place: “We the undersigned… demand that you no longer allow hateful rallies promoting propaganda contrary to Canadian values at the seat of government power.”

It continues: “With the increasing threat of home-grown radicalization, we cannot allow this anti-western rhetoric to continue unabated on the grounds of our legislature.”

International Al-Quds Day, typically celebrated after the fast month of Ramadan, was started in 1979 by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in solidarity with the Palestinians and in opposition to Zionism and the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

Al-Quds Day rallies are held annually in cities across Canada and the United States. Last year’s rally at Queen’s Park was held July 26. Ramadan ends this year on July 17.

According to an International Al-Quds Day website, “International Day of al-Quds is an annual event supporting a just peace for Palestine, and opposing apartheid Israel’s control of Jerusalem.”

The website’s authors are not specifically identified, and the “About us” section says the Al-Quds Day events are “funded through many small, individual private donations within the U.S. and Canada.”

B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn said that “as Canadians, we can no longer tolerate the grounds of our legislature being used for promoting Iranian government propaganda and supporting international terror as can be seen [at past years’ protests] by things such as the waving of Hezbollah flags.”

Partners of the “Stop Al-Quds Day” initiative include the groups One Free World International, Canadian Thinkers’ Forum, Christians United for Israel Canada, Hasbara York and Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights.

B’nai Brith campaigns to stop Queen’s Park Al-Quds rally | The Canadian Jewish News.

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‘Reclaiming Australia’ from Islam is really about reclaiming whiteness

2015/04/11 Leave a comment

Yassir Morsi commenting on “Reclaim Australia”:

Any contest over what is “obvious” about Islam or “real” about Islamism, or whether Muslims need “fixing”, however, misses the point. The Reclaim Australia rallies were never about Islam in the first place, but were a clash of different ideas about being Australian.

Racism is rarely about the reality of the other; the Reclaim protestors, without irony or self-reflection, were able to appropriate the Indigenous flag in their cry to reclaim Australia.

With the presence of swastika tattoos, and the general demography of the rally’s participants, it is obvious that race still remains central to our political culture in a constitutive sense; being “white” continues to play a formative role in how we construct what it means to be authentically Aussie.

For some, Aussie still simply means “white”, a sentiment that itself obscures the mostly forgotten English bigotry against the Irish, Australia’s first other.

These days the un-Australian is commonly a figure of colour, who is easily transmittable from one ethnic identity to another. The foreigner as a “form” always remains a thing to respond to, even as we openly acknowledge that, in Australia’s history, its content has always been interchangeable: Asian, African, Arab, Muslim – and yet, always Indigenous.

The foreigner is a piñata doll, the thing you beat so you can still feel you own a stick. It’s a thing to say “no” to, a thing whose integration is to be always measured against “our” standard and in doing so making that standard feel more real than it is.

In these cacophonies of “no” to foreignness, the foreigner is contradictory, fragmentary by its nature. Its truth is secondary to its function as a crude shorthand for the negating of difference and change.

No sensible adult could think Australia is becoming Islamic, and Reclaim Australia has little to do with halal, sharia, jihad or terrorism. These words are like traumas, a backdrop against which the repressed frustration of losing privilege plays out.

Yet despite official denunciation and celebration of diversity, racism as a concept in this country endures, adapting and readapting, chameleon-like to the changing social and political times. It does so because its aim, in part, is to address the sensitive needs of the dominant white nation’s sense of self.

‘Reclaiming Australia’ from Islam is really about reclaiming whiteness | Comment is free | The Guardian.

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Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation

2015/04/10 2 Comments

Marcus Gee’s take on the reforms to carding practices:

Chief Blair said on Friday that he doesn’t want his officers just hanging around the station “waiting for a radio call to say some catastrophe’s happened” then going out to put yellow tape around the scene. Instead, he wants his officers to hit the streets to make contact with the public, build trust with the community and gather information that might help solve or prevent crimes. That is the essence of community policing, now in use by many police forces around the world.

The compromise struck by the board and the chief is an attempt to come up with a policy that would let police continue to have their interactions with the public but at the same time ensure that people they encounter don’t feel harassed or singled out because of their race.

To that end, police officers are to be explicitly prohibited from using “race, place of origin, age, colour, ethnic origin, gender identity or gender expression in deciding whether to initiate a community engagement” (unless such factors form part of “a specific suspect, victim or witness description.”) On top of that, they will be told to weigh the value of any engagement against an “individual’s right to be left alone” and to consider the issue of “psychological detention” – a person’s perception that he or she has no choice but to comply with police.

Chief Blair promises that the force will train officers in how to conduct engagements with the public respectfully and within the law; that it will report to the board regularly on the engagement policy; that it will refrain from imposing carding quotas on officers; and that it will take care not to gather or keep masses of irrelevant data.

None of this will be enough for many of the activists, human-rights organizations and community groups that have besieged the board over the carding issue. They don’t like the fact that officers will be able to initiate contact and gather information as long as there is a “valid public safety purpose,” a pretty broad authorization. They don’t like the fact that police will not be required to issue a receipt to those it contacts (instead, officers will have business cards they can hand out) or inform people whom they stop that they have the right to walk away. But the settlement announced on Friday is not a final policy, and its principles form a good foundation.

Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation – The Globe and Mail.

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French losing ground to English, immigrants in Ottawa

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

Not surprising given that most of Ottawa’s growth (and elsewhere in Canada) is driven by immigration, with immigrants largely integrating into the English language milieu:

The federal study, Portrait of Official Languages Groups in the Ottawa Area, is based on an analysis of Statistics Canada census data. It shows that the city’s overall population increased by more than 330,000 between 1981 and 2011.

Ottawa’s French-speaking community — defined as those whose mother tongue is French — grew by 26.1 per cent during that time span. But the English-speaking community enjoyed much more robust growth (45.9 per cent) as did the population of immigrants whose first language is neither English nor French (225.1 per cent).

What’s more, since immigrants tend to learn English after their arrival, the proportion of Ottawa residents who use English has gone up by 2.7 percentage points during the past three decades, while the proportion of those who use French has gone down by 3.2 percentage points.

Jacques de Courville Nicol, leader of a group dedicated to making Ottawa officially bilingual, said the study shows that the city is headed toward a unilingual future unless more is done to secure the place of the French language.

“Sadly, I think we’re on the road to becoming a unilingual capital, which is not a great signal to send to the rest of the country and the rest of the world,” he said.

De Courville Nicol said English and French must have equal status, rights and privileges within the City of Ottawa. Ottawa has a bilingualism policy that commits the city to offering services in both official languages, but it stops short of the kind of official bilingualism that governs federal institutions.

“I get discouraged when I see so little concern outside of Quebec for the French language and the French community,” De Courville Nicol said.

And while not mentioned in the study, Ottawa is growing much more than Gatineau, and attracting more immigrants as well, with greater diversity as a result:

Ottawa vs Gatineau.001

French losing ground to English, immigrants in Ottawa | Ottawa Citizen.

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Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

Interesting reading and good that behind the huff-and-puff of government politicking, there is some serious work:

Of all the approaches being explored by the federal government to prevent radicalization, the one showing the most promise is community outreach and engaging young people in candid conversations about violent extremism, newly released documents suggest.

However, the briefing documents, obtained by the National Post through access-to-information legislation, also point to the need for public safety officials to be careful to choose trusted community leaders as partners in prevention.

“Reaching out to the wrong people — self-styled leaders and spokesmen who have no real credibility — can exacerbate the very tensions that (prevention) strategies are trying to alleviate,” one of the documents states.

Over the past year, public safety officials have visited cities in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, to talk to young people, aged 17 to 30. Participants at the town hall meetings are shown ripped-from-the-headlines narratives depicting radicalized Muslims or converts, right-wing extremists, Sikh extremists or “eco-terrorists,” then they are asked to discuss what could have been done to intervene.

Presented in the first person and in the present tense for maximum effect, the case studies have generated an enthusiastic response from the 500 youth who have taken part.

“Often, audience members expressed knowing someone ‘just like’ the characters from the narratives,” according to the briefing notes prepared by Public Safety Canada last fall.

Most participants said they walked away from the sessions “better able to recognize the signs someone is going down the wrong path.”

But whatever form community outreach takes, it must not be bogged down by complicated legal jargon, the Canadian documents emphasize.

“Material that appears to have been prepared by middle-aged bureaucrats will almost certainly fail to engage.”

The briefing notes indicated other narratives about Buddhist and Israeli extremists were being developed, but a government source said Wednesday those ideas were dropped because they were not deemed to be as relevant.

Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report

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CRRF Launches Directions: Call for Submissions

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

For those interested in contributing, CRRF’s new publication, Directions, opens its call for papers for the Winter 2015 Issue:

Published in print and online December 2015, The Power of Words speaks to the importance of reviewing and evolving science terminology in response to changing demographics and settlement trends. The concept of hyphenated Canadians, terms such as ‘visible minorities’ and ‘newcomers,’ and even the idea of ‘race relations’ require ongoing reassessment, and are being challenged and re-examined in the context of our changing society.

Directions provides a space for established and emerging scholars, community organizations and race relations practitioners to publish their research. It also offers a forum for important dialogue and debate on race-related issues and best practices, and practical recommendations for policy development and change. Directions is curated to promote social cohesion amongst all individuals and groups living in a harmonious Canada.

Research Questions

How do language and lexicon in policy, in the media, and in daily interactions influence our experiences, identities, attitudes, and relationships? How can discourse create and perpetuate unbalanced power relations, marginalizing certain groups and individuals? How can we use language to promote positive race relations in a harmonious Canada?

These dynamic questions represent the types of issues that CRRF intends to explore in the upcoming issue of Directions in Winter 2015.

Yours truly is one of the members of the Editorial Advisory Board so I, along with the others, have a vested interest in encouraging thoughtful and provocative submissions.

Directions Journal.

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Is the Divisive Bill on Vietnamese Refugees All About the Election?

2015/04/09 1 Comment

“Shopping for votes” and micro-targeting among Vietnamese Canadians, along with a mix of ideology:

Some observers say the bill is a textbook case of targeted political pandering for ethnic votes ahead of what is shaping up to be a close-fought federal election.

Alberta-based political strategist Stephen Carter says, “This is being done in essence to gather support from those people in the first generational subset. It absolutely is being done for votes, there is no other way around it.”

Veteran poll analyst Paul Barber says that, among multiple strategies that parties use to woo ethnic votes is the use of “overarching symbolic things that are connected to their homelands.”

Senator Ngo’s office refuted the accusation that the Senator’s intent with this bill was to play into ethnic politics, and said that he only wanted to have a day to commemorate the Vietnamese boat people’s saga and pay tribute to Canadians who assisted them.

But a former Liberal strategist told iPolitics that this scenario is typical of the Conservatives, who he says have a history of targeting subgroups within larger ethnic communities. “I think of Hong Kong Chinese versus mainland Chinese, I think of Sri Lankans, or people of Indian descent; Conservatives are good at targeting subgroups within immigrant communities.” he says.

Phil Triadafilopoulos, a professor of Political science at the University of Toronto who has researched the Conservative Party of Canada’s “ethnic outreach” strategies, also says that Canada’s electoral system facilitates these types of approaches. “With our electoral system, you don’t need everybody, you just need enough to win. Some of our communities have upward to 40, 50, 60% people who are on board. Never mind second generation.” he says.

As to those who wonder how the Conservative government is threading the thin line between courting communist Vietnam as a trade partner and commemorating those who fled its brutal communist regime, Carter says “You do it very carefully.”

Is the Divisive Bill on Vietnamese Refugees All About the Election? – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Reza Aslan explains why it’s fine to blame ISIS on Islam — and why Islamophobes still have it wrong

2015/04/09 Leave a comment

Reasonable words and reminders:

“But that’s not very helpful,” he added, “and it’s also not true. A Muslim is whoever says he’s a Muslim. A Christian is whoever says he’s a Christian. A Jew is anyone who says he’s a Jew. If you are saying that this is your identity, and you are acting according to your identity, then we should probably take your word for it. Because it’s not helpful to say ‘no, that has nothing to do with religion,’ because like it or not, these actions are being done in the name of a specific religion.”

“How do we confront that?” Aslan asked. “The knee-jerk response is just to blame religion. If ISIS is killing in the name of Islam, then it’s Islam’s fault. But that’s just a very simple and unsophisticated way of thinking.”

“Listen,” he continued. “I am totally fine with you blaming Islam for ISIS. If you want to place the responsibility for ISIS on Islam, that’s fine with me — as long as you also credit Islam for the people who are fighting ISIS. For while it is true that ISIS are Muslims, it’s also true that so are the tens of thousands who are battling them, and the tens of thousands of victims of ISIS. They’re all Muslim too.”

“So if ISIS is Muslim, and the people they are killing are Muslim, and the people who are fighting ISIS are Muslim — what does that say about Islam?”

“Not much, actually,” he said, answering his own question. “Nothing much, nothing you can make some grand generalization about. If you want to blame religion for all of the bad things that religion does, fine. As long as you are willing to credit religion for all the good things religion does.”

“Of course, that’s usually not the case.”

Reza Aslan explains why it’s fine to blame ISIS on Islam — and why Islamophobes still have it wrong.

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