Teaching The Holocaust: New Approaches For A New Generation

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

One of the many approaches to Holocaust education and awareness, building on comparisons and parallels for a more universalist message:

In a conference room recently at the main library at Duke University, middle and high school teachers, many from North and South Carolina, watched a video exploring the parallels between Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic Nuremberg codes and the racist Jim Crow laws in the American south.

“July 1938: Aryan and non-Aryan children cannot play together.”

“In Alabama, all passenger stations shall have separate waiting rooms,” intones the video, “Cause and Effect.” It was created by Centropa with teachers from the U.S. and Europe.

“1938: Jewish children are no longer allowed to attend public schools.”

“In Georgia it shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone but another white person.”

The teachers were not suggesting a moral equivalency between dehumanizing and repressive Jim Crow laws and genocide. But they were looking at how the two racist codes might become teaching tools, to explore what dialogue might be sparked with students.

The teachers trade ideas on reaching kids in their world and through their news feeds.

“That’s awesome. I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s like ‘tweet’ is the new telegram,” one teacher says. “That could be the title of the lesson: Tweets Are Telegrams.”

The teachers gathered at Duke were part of a recent seminar run by Centropa, which is dedicated to preserving stories of Jewish life in 20th century Eastern and Central Europe.

Several prominent Holocaust remembrance and education groups have long used survivor interviews and other first-person accounts and pictures to educate about the genocide of European Jewry. The USC Shoah Foundation and its online visual history archive has taken the lead, along with the United Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other organizations in the U.S. and abroad.

Centropa takes a slightly different approach, centering its work on the wider personal family stories, pictures and memories of a lost era, not just the unbelievable darkness of the Nazi years.

“We’re about searching for human values in the darkest times. It is about showing teenagers there is always a true north,” says Director and founder Edward Serotta.

Teaching The Holocaust: New Approaches For A New Generation : NPR Ed : NPR.

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BUDAPEST, Hungary: Hungary’s premier rejects immigration, multicultural society

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

Not new as his messaging has been consistent but nevertheless alarming for Roma and others targeted:

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban denounced multiculturalism and liberalism Friday and vowed to fight a rising wave of migration that he said is threatening to turn his country into a “refugee camp.”

In his annual state of the nation speech, Orban called a multicultural society “a delusion” and defended his conservative government’s attempts to abandon “liberal social policies” that he accused of rejecting Christian culture.

“(A Hungarian) does not want to see throngs of people pouring into his country from other cultures who are incapable of adapting and are a threat to public safety, to his job and to his livelihood,” Orban said.

He was referring to the torrent of migrants who have entered European Union-member Hungary this year, many of them fleeing poverty in Kosovo and seeking to reach Germany and other western nations.

Orban has been criticized in the West for declaring last year that he wanted his nation to be an “illiberal” state and that he considers Russia, Turkey and Singapore to be models of success.

BUDAPEST, Hungary: Hungary’s premier rejects immigration, multicultural society | World | SanLuisObispo.

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Racism casts long shadow over Canada’s past, present | The Chronicle Herald

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Former Senator Don Oliver, on the persistence of racism in Canada:

But even today, studies continue to show that if you’re a black Canadian, you are more likely than any other ethnic group not to get a job or a promotion. You are also more likely to get pulled over —“driving while black” — or to be discriminated against in the courts. What is more, there are very few blacks occupying the corner offices of Canadian companies or key political roles. That’s because racism still exists — in an undercurrent of apathy and ignorance that continues to impede people’s advancement.

Consider these statistics from Ryerson’s Diversity Leads. In the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s most diverse region, the representation of blacks and other visible minorities in senior leadership roles inched up from 11.6 per cent in 2009 to 12.8 per cent in 2014, yet visible minorities account for 53.7 per cent of the population studied.

It’s not better in Greater Montreal, where only 5.9 per cent of senior leaders are visible minorities when they account for 22.5 per cent of the population. On corporate boards, the numbers are particularly dismal. The 2014 report of the Canadian Board Diversity Council reveals that visible minorities hold only two per cent of board seats when they make up 19.1 per cent of the population.

To change the future of black history in Canada, we urgently need more eminent black role models like Lincoln Alexander, Michaelle Jean, Julius Isaac and others to be appointed to senior government and corporate positions. We need all Canadians to embrace our country’s diversity. Once and for all, we need Canadians to demand an end to racism.

Racism casts long shadow over Canada’s past, present | The Chronicle Herald.

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Fighting for more diversity at the top: Hepburn

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

More on DiverseCity onBoard:

And the latest Annual Report Card by the Canadian Board Diversity Council shows the proportion of visible minorities on corporate boards fell from 5.3 per cent in 2010 to 2 per cent in 2013.

So why isn’t there widespread outrage over these troubling statistics? Why do our leaders, especially in public agencies, tolerate such situations?

Is it a question of a lack of talent in minority communities, which is hard to believe? Or are we missing something here?

“We have to see more diversity at our decision-making tables,” Toronto Mayor John Tory admitted this week at an event showcasing a small program that identifies, trains and helps place talented ethnic and minority candidates with boards of public and voluntary agencies.

The event, attended by political, business and community leaders, marked the national launch of DiverseCity onBoard, a successful made-in-Toronto program that traces its roots back to 2005.

This unique project was started by the Maytree Foundation with the goal of addressing the lack of diversity on boards of directors at public agencies, boards and commissions in the GTA.

Operating without much fanfare, DiverseCity onBoard has recruited more than 1,700 candidates, registered 650 organizations and successfully matched some 720 people from visible minority groups and under-represented communities to boards of directors with such bodies as hospitals, museums, local agencies and voluntary community associations.

The program staffers pre-screen candidates, teach them about how governance boards operate, and try to match qualified people with board openings.

Indeed, the program is so successful that it’s now being launched in six other major cities across Canada, including Hamilton, London, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa.

At the same time, the program is unveiling a new online training program that will let residents learn about corporate governance practices at home, at work or anywhere they have access to a computer.

If the program can succeed in Toronto, then there is little doubt it will work in these other urban centres, said Ratna Omidvar, executive director of the Global Diversity Exchange at Ryerson University, which now oversees the DiverseCity onBoard program.

Fighting for more diversity at the top: Hepburn | Toronto Star.

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Islamic Scholars Convene an Anti-ISIS Summit in Mecca – The Atlantic

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Good piece contrasting the US-led CVE summit and the Muslim World League, a Saudi-backed alliance of Islamic NGOs, led summit in Mecca on “Islam and Counterterrorism:”

According to Will McCants, director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, there’s a logic behind the divergence in messaging from Washington and Mecca. “This conversation can’t really happen in the U.S., or in the West, because the [Obama] administration is determined not to frame this [conflict] or have it be interpreted as a religious war,” he told me. “It wants to take that talking point away from its enemies.” McCants added that Muslim leaders may also feel more comfortable speaking openly about an issue that is afflicting their own community. When the U.S. tries to adjudicate theological issues, he said, “it can discredit the people who reach the same conclusions we do. If Muslims and the U.S. government say these guys don’t represent Islam, it makes the Muslims look like pawns of the United States.”

The priorities of the CVE and Muslim World League summits were also distinct. The impetus for the conference in Mecca appears to have been the Saudi government’s belief that Islamist terrorism represents not only a threat to the security of the region, but also an existential threat to Islam itself. It would therefore have been impossible for the speakers to ignore ISIS’s Islamic roots. The conference’s organizers cast their mission as developing a coordinated campaign to promote a moderate, peaceful vision of Islam that disavows the violence and apostasy that ISIS thrives on. The program, above all, emphasized that this is a specifically Muslim issue, and placed the onus on the Muslim community to craft a narrative that overpowers the Islamic State’s.

In comparison, the CVE summit was more concerned with addressing radicalization in all its forms, and emphasized the economic and social conditions in which people tend to become radicalized. The agenda also had a largely domestic focus despite the United States being low on the list of countries contributing foreign fighters to jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.

But whether ISIS’s deeds are labeled “violent extremism” or “Islamized terrorism,” the conversations in Washington and Mecca had at least one thing in common: They deepened the debate over whether ISIS and its fellow travelers are “Islamic,” and whether the answer matters in the first place. That debate is not just academic. It has real consequences for how the Islamic State’s opponents mount their counteroffensive.

Given the somewhat uncomfortable role that Saudi Arabia has played in encouraging the spread of Salafism (albeit non-violent forms), somewhat ironic that they now have to focus on some of the indirect consequences.

Islamic Scholars Convene an Anti-ISIS Summit in Mecca – The Atlantic.

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Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Fair points on the media and bias but there are any number of studies on coverage and portrayal of groups, not only Muslim, that show a particular slant:

However, some of my colleagues, among them Muslims, and the nattering voices of social media jumped immediately to the conclusion that the media were biased in not instantaneously identifying this as a hate crime and in being slow-footed with their reporting. If we believe it is the job of the media to draw conclusions about racism, we are wrong. The reporter’s job is to tell the story. Absent conclusive evidence, reporters did not say that the alleged killer was Islamophobic.

But I have to point out that deliberative and well considered reporting works both ways. If we media were permitted to conclude the UNC killer was a Muslim hater, then the Parliament Hill shooter, who killed Cpl Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, should have been immediately identified by the media as an “Islamic terrorist.” They didn’t do that. The man may have claimed he was inspired by his (faulty) understanding of Islam, but the Canadian reporting more readily identified him as a deranged – even psychotic – “lone wolf,” more likely influenced by drugs. The coverage got it right.

There’s also the matter of simple reasoning that seems to be lacking these days. If all terrorists are, say, men of the Purple religion – and the media simply report that fact – it doesn’t mean they hold a bias.  Logic 101: just because all the terrorists are Purple men, doesn’t mean all Purple believers are terrorists. It doesn’t mean all men are terrorists, either. It’s a simple matter of reason.

But Landau’s recommendation makes sense:

In the media welter, there are some proactive steps you can take to heighten your community’s media profile. Tell your own stories by starting your own website. Contact the mainstream media when you have a story you think others might want to hear (I know New Canadian Media is always listening). Encourage your children to go into journalism. Teach yourself and others media literacy so that you can separate fact from opinion. Wherever possible, make sure that whoever lays claim to speaking for your community is articulate and credible.

Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Pew Study On Religion Finds Increased Harassment Of Jews : The Two-Way : NPR

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Pew_Forum_Religious_Harassment_2015_pdfThe latest report on harassment of religions, both from governments and by individuals:

The Pew report, which is based on data and reports from 2013, finds that Muslims and Christians face comparable levels of hostility, though Christians are harassed more often by governments, Muslims more often by individuals.

One group faces increased hostility: Jews. Each year since 2007, when Pew began these surveys, the targeting of Jews around the world has gotten worse.

European Jews, in particular, encounter intolerance, says Peter Henne, the lead Pew researcher on the report.

“There’s a pretty marked harassment of Jews in Europe,” he says. “They’re harassed in 76 percent of countries in Europe, which is higher than the number of countries in which they’re harassed in other regions.”

The United States does not get off the hook in the Pew report. It ranks the U.S. as having a “moderate” level of religious harassment, on par with such countries as France, Slovakia and Mongolia.

“In terms of what we see in the United States, there are some issues with land use, churches or mosques trying to build or expand their site and being blocked by local governments,” Henne says. “There are some tensions in prisons — limits on prisoners’ ability to convert or to use things like tobacco in religious ceremonies.”

Overall, the level of religious harassment in 2013 is about the same as it was the year before, according to Pew. But with only seven years of data, it’s hard to see any historical trend.

Pew Study On Religion Finds Increased Harassment Of Jews : The Two-Way : NPR.

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‘You are not suitably dressed’: Quebec judge refused to hear single mother’s case because of hijab | National Post

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Outrageous. Has she made the same ruling for men wearing a kippa or turban? Does she not understand what religious freedom means?

A Quebec Court judge refused to hear the case this week of a single mother trying to retrieve her car because the woman would not remove her Muslim head scarf.

“In my opinion, you are not suitably dressed,” Judge Eliana Marengo told Rania El-Alloul Tuesday, according to a courtroom recording obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

“Decorum is important. Hats and sunglasses, for example, are not allowed, and I don’t see why scarves on the head would be. The same rules need to be applied to everyone.”

Ms. El-Alloul testified she was on welfare and the mother of three sons. She was trying to get back her car, which had been seized by the provincial automobile insurance board after one of her sons was caught driving it with a suspended licence.

She told the judge she needed the car to provide for her family. “I’m facing money problems,” she said.

But Judge Marengo refused to hear the merits of the case, citing a regulation governing court decorum that states simply, “Any person appearing before the court must be suitably dressed.”

She noted Ms. El-Alloul had said her hijab was a religious requirement. “In my opinion, the courtroom is a secular place and a secular space,” she said. “There are no religious symbols in this room, not on the walls and not on the persons.”

It seems given the outcry, many feel the same way.

‘You are not suitably dressed’: Quebec judge refused to hear single mother’s case because of hijab | National Post.

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Chris Selley: NDP and Liberal positions on niqab during citizenship oath are pleasantly surprising

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Chris Selley on the courage of both opposition parties in opposing the government in appealing the niqab ban at citizenship ceremonies:

It’s good news because it does seem unreasonable, as the Federal Court found, to go after veiled oaths when citizenship judges’ marching orders stipulate they should allow “the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization or the solemn affirmation [of the oath].” It does seem unreasonable for Mr. Harper to suggest allowing people to wear niqabs is “not how we do things here” when, like it or not, it plainly is. It does seem unreasonable to spend goodness knows how much appealing the Federal Court ruling on what seem to be highly dubious legal grounds. And it’s certainly unreasonable in a country that has enshrined religious freedom in the constitution — indeed, it’s grotesque — for the Conservatives to fundraise on the backs of someone wishing to exercise a religious freedom that the courts have thus far upheld. It’s one thing to support unveiled oaths; it’s quite another to endorse this approach to the issue.

No doubt fighting the good fight is reward enough for Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau. But the risk they’re running may not be as acute as it seems. With their seemingly popular niqabs-and-anti-terror package, Conservatives are essentially fronting a watered-down version of the Parti Québécois’ “values” campaign with a war bolted on. The values charter was popular in the polls, and so was the PQ. And when it came time for Quebecers to vote, it was no help to the PQ at all — not, it seems, because anyone changed their minds about Islam, but because their identitarian angst simply didn’t rank as a priority. Considering how unpopular the Conservatives are in Quebec on just about every other issue, that has to be an encouraging precedent for the opposition.

Chris Selley: NDP and Liberal positions on niqab during citizenship oath are pleasantly surprising

And on a less positive note, the BQ plays to xenophobic card, even less subtly than the Government:

A new ad from the Bloc Québécois is targeting NDP voters unhappy with NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s comments Wednesday defending women’s right to wear the niqab at citizenship ceremonies.

“Should you have to hide your face to vote NDP?” the ad asks in French.

​The text is superimposed on an image of the House of Commons through the eyeholes of a black niqab, the full-face covering worn by certain Muslim women.

Bloc Québécois anti-niqab ad takes aim at NDP

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Islam and extremism: Looking within | The Economist

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Good piece in The Economist on some of the challenges within Islam regarding radicalization and extremism:

Complicating attempts to shore up traditional sources of authority is the fact that the establishment is precisely what many extremists reject. Salafists (devout Muslims who seek to emulate the times of the Prophet), both of the quietist and the violently jihadist sort, see much of the centuries-old tradition of Islamic jurisprudence as distorting the true religion. When denounced by the emir of Kano, a former central banker who is now Nigeria’s second-most-important Muslim leader, Boko Haram retorted: “We do not practise the religion of Lamido Sanusi…but the religion of Allah.”

And Muslim-majority populations that have risen up against dictators are less willing to trust religious authorities—especially those they regard as captured by political or government interests. Egypt’s government appoints the head of al-Azhar. Members of Dar al-Ifta, Lebanon’s official body for teachings and fatwas (rulings on Islamic law), come from its two main political groupings. Middle Eastern rulers have a history of alternately backing religious groups and denouncing them as terrorists for short-term political gain.

The internet, social media and improving literacy in the region make other sources easier to find. “I think about religion myself by searching and seeing the different opinions,” says Muhammad Gamal, a chemistry teacher at Cairo University. Alternatives are often better packaged and more appealing to young people, too. A region-wide joke says that Mr Baghdadi, in his 30s, is the youngest person to head an Arab organisation.

“You see ISIS videos, all slick Hollywood style, and what a stark contrast with the turbans and robes of the sheikhs of Al-Azhar,” says Raphaël Lefèvre, a French scholar who studies Lebanon’s Sunnis. “Radical groups seem closer to the people. Institutions are seen as bourgeois, stuffy and speaking a language people don’t understand.” Some Muslim scholars compare the appeal of jihadism to that of fundamentalist Christianity: the message is clear and certain.

Firm government action against those who preach violence is probably worthwhile. And traditional centres of Islamic authority could surely do more to explain their interpretations of Islam, and in more appealing ways. But the result of the debate within Islam about the roots of extremism may not be entirely to the taste of liberal Muslims—or Western politicians.

Imposing state-sanctioned creeds has in the past pushed jihadists underground. And these versions of Islam are by no means sure to be more liberal: the Saudi regime uses harsh sharia punishments such as beheading and last year al-Azhar launched a campaign to rid Egypt of unbelief after a survey claimed the country held precisely 866 atheists. But the alternative, attempting to promote liberal doctrines in a free market of religious ideas, has dangers, too. Georges Fahmi, an Egyptian scholar, detects a conservative mood among Muslims: “What is shocking is how many people support IS’s actions even if they would not do them themselves.”

via Islam and extremism: Looking within | The Economist.

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