Coren: Islam and Western Society

2024/07/16 Leave a comment

Note: Article dates from 2009 which I should have caught and his views, like most of us, have likely evolved somewhat.

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Surprising to see Coren writing for a more right of centre publication but he raises uncomfortable yet valid questions that his usual outlets might be uncomfortable with:

…Can Islam evolve, as has Christianity and Judaism? In that it is an exclusive monotheistic religion, it can never be as inclusive as Hinduism, but surely, as with Catholic or Protestant Christianity, it can hold to exclusive truth and still be tolerant of others who disagree. The problem is that there is limited evidence that this is happening. The Islamic heartland of the Middle East and Pakistan and even Nigeria and Indonesia evince a severe lack of acceptance for people who leave Islam for another faith, marry outside of the religion or criticize the founder, Mohammad, or the primary text, the Koran. Syria may not be as bad as Iran, Jordan may not be as bad as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia may not be as bad as Egypt, but it is only Turkey – where a militantly secular regime won a Kulturkampf against Islam, where anything resembling Western pluralism exists. It is, however, a pale imitation, and polls repeatedly reveal a personal intolerance of Christians and Jews unparalleled anywhere else in Europe.

In Canada, there have been several cases of so-called honour killings where fathers and brothers murder daughters and sisters who shame the family by becoming too Western. While this does occur outside of Muslim communities, it is overwhelmingly an Islamic phenomenon. Polygamy also occurs in Canada, with multiple and illegal marriages performed by Imams, and the police and judicial authorities are too timid to intervene. There are also cases of violent and hateful sermons delivered in Mosques, death threats made to critics and financial, moral and even physical support for foreign terrorists fighting and killing Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

This makes for depressing reading and paints a bleak picture of the Western, including Canadian, future. Obviously many Europeans already believe this, proved by the increasing support for right wing and sometimes even semi-fascist parties in countries such as Holland and Britain where tolerance is a way of life. We must also be extremely careful not to paint all Muslims with the same brush of suspicion. Most followers of the faith are peaceful people more concerned with paying the rent than preparing a rebellion. What, though, when Islam’s numbers grow and give it something other than cringing minority status? Christians in the Middle East will tell you that there are two radically different Islams: that of the minority and that of the majority.

If this problem is to be solved in a civilized manner, we have to transform the conversation and reform the vocabulary. First, the word “Islamophobia” must be expunged from the debate. It is meaningless, but it is used to silence contrary opinion and to place all critics of Muslim actions on the defensive. Second, there must be a collective show of courage and solidarity from assorted media and a willingness to display pictures and publish articles and books that, while not gratuitously offensive, are as cutting and critical of Islam as are those habitually drawn and written about Christianity. Third, we must hold Muslims to the same standard as anyone else and not indulge in the racism of lowered expectations. It is genuinely patronising to assume that a brown Muslim cannot act according to the same rules of civility and tolerance as a white Christian. Fourth, we must break from self-denial and admit that while we are not at war with Islam or Muslims, our liberal values are in conflict with many of the core concepts and precepts of Islam. We won the Cold War because most of us were prepared to say that capitalism, for all of its faults, was morally superior to communism. Today we are confused about what we believe, frightened to promote what we love and terrified of being seen as intolerant.

If enough people are willing to stand, read, write, act and know, we can carve out a new and successful West that includes the finer points of Islamic culture and history. If we are not – well, the thought is horribly rhetorical.

Source: Islam and Western Society

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Where Germany’s Immigration Debate Hits Home

2024/07/15 Leave a comment

Of note. Incidents like this naturally raise worries and fears:

The leafy market square, ringed by Middle Eastern restaurants in a quiet city where nearly half the residents have immigrant backgrounds, seems like the last place that would spur Germany’s latest explosive wave of nationalist backlash.

But it was in Mannheim where prosecutors say an Afghan man stabbed six people in May at an anti-Islamist rally, killing an officer who had intervened. No motive has yet been determined. But the death and the fact that the man accused had his asylum claim denied years ago set off calls for the expulsion of some refugees. Such sentiments were once viewed as messaging mostly reserved for the far right.

That this could occur in Mannheim, a diverse community of over 300,000 people known for its sensible plotting along a grid as a “city of squares,” has rattled Germany. It has been particularly painful for the longtime Muslim population of the city, where, according to some estimates, nearly one in five people are of Turkish descent.

Overtly, the political discussion concerns refugees, but in the lived experience of German Muslims, many said they felt like they were steps away from becoming a target. That worry has heightened since January, when an exposé revealed a secret meeting by members of the extreme right during which the deportation of even legal residents of immigrant descent was discussed.

Some expressed fears that what happened in Mannheim may have broken a dam.

Source: Where Germany’s Immigration Debate Hits Home

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It’s Time for Corporate Canada to Take Action on Antisemitism

2024/07/15 Leave a comment

Of note with similar need for anti-Muslim bias:

…Geist’s poignant entreaty that “Canadians simply believe us” underscores that Canada needs a new forum for Jews and non-Jews to come together to combat this ancient hatred. This is an issue for non-Jews to address, as Comper wisely noted some twenty years ago, and business leadership can be crucial to progress. With the scourge of antisemitism on the rise, it’s time for today’s generation of CEOs to step up and show real leadership and allyship – not just in their own workplaces, but in the broader community – to ensure that the Jewish community feels not just believed, but supported.

Hon. Kevin Lynch was Clerk of the Privy Council and vice chair of BMO Financial Group. Paul Deegan is CEO of Deegan Public Strategies and was a public affairs executive at BMO and CN.  

Source: It’s Time for Corporate Canada to Take Action on Antisemitism

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Researchers seek to reduce harm to multicultural users of voice assistants

2024/07/15 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis:

Users of voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant know the frustration of being misunderstood by a machine.

But for people who may lack a standard American accent, such miscommunication can go beyond simply irritating to downright dangerous, according to researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, HCII Ph.D. student Kimi Wenzel and Associate Professor Geoff Kaufman identified six downstream harms caused by voice assistant errors and devised strategies to reduce them. Their work won a Best Paper award at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).

“This paper is part of a larger research project in our lab looking at documenting and understanding the impact of biases that are embedded in technology,” Kaufman said.

White Americans are overrepresented in most datasets used to train voice assistants, and studies have shown that these assistants are far more likely to misinterpret or misunderstand Black speakers and people with accents or dialects that vary from standard American.

Earlier researchers tended to look at this problem as a technical issue to be overcome, as opposed to a failure that has repercussions on the user, Kaufman said. But having speech misunderstood, whether by a person or a machine, can be experienced as a microaggression.

“It can have effects on self-esteem or your sense of belonging,” Kaufman said.

In a controlled experiment last year, Kaufman and Wenzel studied the impact that error rates by a voice assistant had on white and Black volunteers. Black people who experienced high error rates had higher levels of self-consciousness, lower levels of self-esteem and a less favorable view of technology than Black people who experienced low error rates. White people didn’t have this reaction, regardless of error rate.

“We hypothesize that because Black people experience miscommunication more frequently, or have more everyday experience with racism, these experiences build up and they suffer more negative effects,” Wenzel said.

In the latest study, Wenzel and Kaufman interviewed 16 volunteers who experienced problems with voice assistants. They found six potential harms that can result from seemingly innocuous voice assistant errors. These included emotional harm as well as cultural or identity harm caused by microaggressions.

They also included relational harm, which is when an error leads to interpersonal conflict. A voice assistant, for instance, might make a calendar entry with the wrong time for a meeting or misdirect a call.

Other harms include paying the same price for a technology as other people even though it doesn’t work as well for you, as well as needing to exert extra effort—such as altering an accent—to make the technology work.

A sixth harm is physical endangerment.

“Voice technologies are not only used as a simple voice assistant in your smartphone,” Wenzel said. “Increasingly they are being used in more serious contexts, for example in medical transcription.”

Voice technologies also are used in conjunction with auto navigation systems, “and that has very high stakes,” Wenzel added.

One person interviewed for the study related their own hair-raising experiences with a voice-controlled navigation system. “Oftentimes, I feel like I’m pronouncing things very clearly and loudly, but it still can’t understand me. And I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t know where I’m going. So, it’s just this, this frustrating experience and very dangerous and confusing.”

The ultimate solution is to eliminate bias in voice technologies, but creating datasets representative of the full range of human variation is a perplexing task, Wenzel said. So she and Kaufman talked to the participants about things voice assistants could say to their users to mitigate those harms.

One communication repair strategy they identified was blame redirection—not a simple apology, but an explanation describing the error that doesn’t put the blame on the user.

Wenzel and Kaufmann also suggest that voice technologies be more culturally sensitive. Addressing cultural harms is to some extent limited by technology, but one simple yet profound action would be to increase the database of proper nouns.

“Misrecognition of non-Anglo names has been a persistent harm across many language technologies,” the researchers noted in the paper.

A wealth of social psychology research has shown that self-affirmation—a statement of an individual’s values or beliefs—can be protective when their identity is threatened, Kaufman said. He and Wenzel are looking for ways that voice assistants can include affirmations in their conversations with users, preferably in a way that isn’t obvious to the user. Wenzel is currently testing some of those affirmations in a follow-up study.

In all these conversational interventions, the need for brevity is paramount. People often use voice technologies, after all, in hopes of being more efficient or able to work hands-free. Adding messages into the conversation tends to work against that goal.

“This is a design challenge that we have: How can we emphasize that the blame is on the technology and not on the user at all? How can you make that emphasis as clear as possible in as few words as possible?” Wenzel said. “Right now, the technology says ‘sorry,’ but we think it should be more than that.”

Source: Researchers seek to reduce harm to multicultural users of voice assistants

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Tunisian historian tackles the complexities of 12 centuries of ‘Slavery in the Muslim World’

2024/07/15 Leave a comment

Of interest:

In a dense but succinct new work, Tunisian historian M’hamed Oualdi takes the complex subject of slavery head on, while also examining contemporary traumas.

In his tome L’Esclavage dans le Monde Musulman (Slavery in the Muslim World), published in French by Amsterdam, M’hamed Oualdi, a professor at Sciences Po Paris says he wants to “cut through the endless controversy surrounding this supposedly taboo subject”.

Oualdi, also an associate professor of history and Near Eastern studies at Princeton University in the US, knows his subject inside out, having already published two books and a research project on slavery in the Muslim world.

First, in 2011, came Esclaves et Maîtres (Slaves and Masters), a study of the mamluks, mercenaries and slaves of European origin who converted to Islam and served the governors of the Ottoman province of Tunis from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Then, in 2020 he published Un Esclave Entre les Empires (A Slave Between Empires), which looks at the transition from Ottoman tutelage to French colonisation in Tunisia, based on the life of one of the last mamluks of Tunis, Husayn, between the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the meantime, Oualdi has also published a research project on the narratives of slaves (white prisoners, Black slaves and Ottoman servants) during the abolition era in 19th-century North Africa.

His work is part of a growing interest in the issue throughout the Arab world, including literature, cinema, academic works and museums. So while the “Islamic” slave trade is still subject to censorship under certain authoritarian political regimes and is still relatively neglected by publishers and the media, it is no longer a taboo subject.

Ideological and political instrumentalisation

Slavery in the Muslim World is broader in scope but still concise (237 pages), covering the first slave trades at the end of the 7th century and post-slavery trauma in Arab and Muslim societies. Above all, however, it is the work of a historian, a “rigorous clarification” of the subject, well-documented to quell any myths or other ideological and political issues.

Oualdi shows that the clichés about the “Islamic slave trade” are a way “for certain writers” to exonerate European slavery (particularly the Atlantic slave trade) by pointing the finger at “Muslim slavery”.

Two specific points support the historian’s argument. First is the very notion of the “Eastern slave trade” or “Islamic slave trade”, which in reality encompasses disparate trades (the Saharan slave trade, the East African slave trade on the Swahili coast, and the Red Sea slave trade), and which fails to take into account the enslavement of Muslims by other Muslims (Berbers, Circassians, Shiites) within the Muslim worlds, but which is also linked to global trade.

Millions of victims

This homogenisation leads to a second point: the famous battle of statistics between the “Islamic slave trade” (which spanned more than 12 centuries) and the Atlantic slave trade (four centuries). French historian Olivier Grenouilleau has put forward the figure of 17 million victims of the Eastern slave trade compared with 12 million slaves who were victims of the Atlantic slave trade, while claiming to want to avoid falling into a “competition of remembrance”, but suggesting all the same that, after all, Westerners are less evil than Arabs.

While there were indeed millions of victims on both sides, precise estimates are difficult to obtain. M’hammed Oualdi argues that the “slave trade organised by Europeans in the Indian Ocean” has never been added to the Atlantic slave trade.

However, the author does not play down the Eastern slave trade. Rather, he aims to show the complexity and heterogeneity of this practice, which originated in different regions and was regulated differently according to political and sociological systems and Islamic legal schools of thought.

White slaves and ‘racialisation’

Oualdi also identifies three main types of slaves in the Muslim world:

  • Domestic servants
  • Concubines (or so-called royal slaves)
  • Agricultural slaves

It was among the “royal slaves” that the highest number of Europeans or Caucasians who had converted to Islam and joined the Ottoman harems as well as the administration and military apparatus (mamluks) could be found.

Some of these mamluks had extraordinary destinies: there was the concubine who became the mother of a sultan and a sultana herself (Chajarat ed-Or, who ruled Egypt and Syria in the 13th century); or those who became sultans in medieval Egypt. Via this group, Oualdi also examines the origins of “racialisation”, in which white slaves – very much in the minority – were differentiated from Black slaves, who were in the majority.

While reviewing at length the process that led to the abolition of slavery, both by Muslims and Europeans (which in part fuelled their imperialist conquests), the historian studies the traumas left by slavery, and its persistence, in Arab-Muslim societies. He establishes a direct link between contemporary anti-Black racism and slave trade and suggests that the slave trade is one of the sources of the region’s political authoritarianism. It’s a fascinating, informative and uncompromising read.

 L’esclavage dans le monde musulman (The Slave Trade in the Arab-Muslim World), by M’hamed Oualdi, published in French by Amsterdam editions, 256 pages, €19).

Source: Tunisian historian tackles the complexities of 12 centuries of ‘Slavery in the Muslim World’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Avi Benlolo: University of Windsor shamefully caves to anti-Israel protesters

2024/07/13 Leave a comment

Sigh….. But rather than a preference for pro-Israel or pro-Palestine students, preference should be given to those with a more balanced approach to any number of issues, whether in social media or elsewhere:

…The university could have employed a multitude of measures to clear the encampment without succumbing to the terms set by radical students. It could have immediately dismantled the encampment, as York University did. It could have filed for a court injunction without agreeing to any terms, as the University of Toronto did. It could have launched a lawsuit against the organizers, as the University of Waterloo did, resulting in the removal of the encampment. Or it could have finally convinced law enforcement to clear out the encampment, as McGill University did.

All these measures and more were available to the University of Windsor. Instead, it appears to have signed a perilous agreement that undermines academic freedom and Canadian values. Universities are supposed to be about preparing young people for the workforce. UWindsor has promised to protect students involved in the encampment. But in the real world, where these pro-Palestinian students will one day seek employment, such protections will vanish.

In New York this week, a top law firm (Sullivan & Cromwell) announced it’s hiring policy will exclude anyone involved in anti-Israel campus protests. I would encourage all companies to adopt similar policies, lest they too fall victim to an encampment in their boardrooms. Preference should be given to hiring pro-Israel university students. They are courageous defenders of democracy and need our support and encouragement.

Source: Avi Benlolo: University of Windsor shamefully caves to anti-Israel protesters

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

More than half of recent Senate appointments have ties to Liberal Party

2024/07/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Haven’t done a political linkages analysis but the table below contrasts senate appointments by PM from a diversity perspective:

Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to rid the Senate of partisanship and patronage, most of the senators appointed to the upper house over the past year have ties to the Liberals.

Since July 2023, Trudeau has nominated 12 senators, eight of whom — 66 per cent of the total — have donated money to the federal Liberals or have worked with the federal party or a provincial Liberal party.

That’s a significant jump in the number of Senate appointees with partisan Liberal ties — up from about 30 per cent of all senators appointed between January 2019 and July 2023.

“I think it is a disturbing trend,” said Emmett Macfarlane, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo who wrote a draft document that became the basis for the advisory committee on Senate appointments.

“The appointment of the occasional partisan or person with a partisan history is completely, I think, valid,” he said. “What is troubling is to see a slew of partisan appointments, particularly those that match the government stripes. This actually goes against the whole spirit of the reform.”

In 2014, as the Senate was mired in an expenses scandal, then-opposition leader Trudeau expelled senators from the Liberal caucus.

As prime minister, he created an independent and nonpartisan advisory board for Senate appointments in 2016. Since then, he’s named only senators recommended by the board. Trudeau has named more than 80 senators since taking office.

Source: More than half of recent Senate appointments have ties to Liberal Party

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Ottawa strengthens vetting after officials failed to pass on new human-rights chief’s alias to RCMP, CSIS

2024/07/11 Leave a comment

A possible general rule, avoid appointments to those who have used aliases and, of course, if they have used aliases, check them out. Remember when working in multiculturalism on grants and contribution funding, we were shocked when Minister Kenney’s staff would check social media of those applying. But seeing what they uncovered, recognized the merit of doing so:

…Mr. Dattani disclosed his alias Mujahid Dattani in the process of applying for the role. The federal government’s background check consent form includes a line for applicants to provide any other names they have used.

But the Privy Council Office (PCO), which is responsible for background checks on government appointments to senior positions, says it failed to pass on Mr. Dattani’s alias for security checks to CSIS, the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency, which helps with screening.

The PCO also did not search under Mr. Dattani’s aliases using open sources on the internet, before he was appointed. The PCO “regrets its error,” Daniel Savoie, a PCO spokesman, said in a statement Monday.

It also failed to tell the Justice Minister’s office and the Prime Minister’s Office about the aliases….

Source: Ottawa strengthens vetting after officials failed to pass on new human-rights chief’s alias to RCMP, CSIS

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LILLEY: Trudeau’s Black Justice plan just far-left politics

2024/07/11 Leave a comment

Good indicator of how a future conservative government will reverse some of the more ideological language and positions in multiculturalism and diversity policies and programs. Given Jivani’s profile in the party, likely he will play a role in formulating policies:

The report starts by stating that Canada’s criminal justice system was never meant to serve black Canadians but to harm them. When that’s the starting point, you know the report you are about to read is coming with a heavy political bias.

Last week the federal Department of Justice published A Roadmap for Transformative Change: Canada’s Black Justice Strategy. It amounts to a rehashing of far-left ideology on justice issues dressed up in the clothing of racial justice and equality.

Jamil Jivani, Conservative MP for Durham, a lawyer and a Black man, is quite vocal in opposing the recommendations of this strategy.

“The main problem with this Black justice strategy is that it’s only exacerbating the bad policies that the Liberal government has already brought in, and at a time where crime is going up, and Black Canadians are suffering from that increase in crime,” Jivani said in an interview on Tuesday.

Jivani calls the policies in the publication radical and is calling on the Liberal government to reject the proposals. If you read it for yourself, it will be clear that this is a highly political document pushing a radical agenda.

On page 39 the report calls for the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to be amended, “to remove all criminal penalties for possession offences of up to a 30-day supply of a controlled substance.” On the same page, the report calls for dropping whether a firearm was used or the severity of the crime at hand as a reason in determining whether bail should be granted.

Time and again, this report calls for bail to be made easier to obtain even though under the Trudeau Liberals it is the default option in all but the most extreme exceptions. That they want bail made easier to get is due to the philosophy the authors approach the criminal justice system with, it isn’t about race.

“The reality is as a Black Canadian, as a Black man, it is especially frustrating that these very radical, harmful policies are being recommended as if they’re good for Black Canadians,” Jivani said.

“When over one out of 10, over 13% of homicide victims in Canada are Black men and Black women and the idea that you would make crime worse and say that it’s good for Black people is insane.”

On the issue of sentencing, the report calls for the elimination of all mandatory minimum sentences and making conditional sentences available for all offences — that would include murder. The ultimate goal of the report is to bring about changes that make sure as few people as possible go to jail in Canada and that those already in jail are let out.

“Canada must aim to reduce the overall current rate of persons incarcerated relative to the population by 30% by 2034, and given levels of overrepresentation, incarceration rates for Black and Indigenous people must be reduced by 50% of the current rate, relative to their proportion of the population, in this time,” the report states.

Jivani points out that the push for reducing the prison population fails to consider the severity of the crimes committed or whether those involved are repeat offenders.

The authors of this report are all accomplished people with impressive resumes, yet they are clearly and heavily political all at the same time.

Taking far-left political theory and repackaging it as racial justice doesn’t mean that it’s still not far-left political theory. The authors, though, have made clear they don’t accept any criticisms.

Zilla Jones, a lawyer and one of the lead authors of the report, replied to Jivani’s criticism on X by saying her goal with this report was to change discussions about crime away from the conservative point of view.

“This is one goal of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy — to transform the conversation around the justice system from being held hostage to small-c conservative talking points people repeat without thinking, such as those below, to one that actually responds to public safety needs,” Jones said.

It’s a nice summary of her view of the current judicial system, held hostage to conservative viewpoints which are held by people who don’t think. Read her statement and tell me that this report isn’t primarily about politics.

That’s why we can expect the Liberal government to not only accept this report but embrace it and implement the policies. They are all about the politics, even if that means bad policies.

Source: LILLEY: Trudeau’s Black Justice plan just far-left politics

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Oreopoulous and Skuterud: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled

2024/07/10 Leave a comment

Another good sophisticated critique of current immigration policy:

…Labour market earnings are our best indicator of the value of workers’ skills to the economy. Studies of earnings reveal that not all skills are valued equally and not all schools are equally good at attracting and producing skills. Yet in screening applicants, our current immigrant selection system ignores the schools, fields of study and academic grades of applicants.

We’re completely ignoring the lessons of history. 2001 saw the introduction of a new Immigration Act that doubled down on the human capital model of economic immigration. Canada’s annual immigration rate was kept at a steady and predictable 0.8 per cent of the population, mandatory premigration language testing and credential assessment were introduced, and a new selection system regularly selected applicants with the highest predicted future earnings.

The result? After decades of deteriorating immigrant earnings, research from Statistics Canada and a separate study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer shows unambiguous improvement in the average earnings of new immigrants up to 2019.

Why are we now undoing everything we learned?

Philip Oreopoulous is Distinguished Professor in Economics of Education Policy at the University of Toronto and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mikal Skuterud is a professor in economics at University of Waterloo, director of Canadian Labour Economics Forum and the Rogers Phillips Scholar of Social Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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