The interfaith agreement on the ‘errant weeds’ of Christianity, Islam and Judaism

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Interesting piece by Marc Ellis on extremism in all Abrahamic religions – “errant weeds” as he calls it:

But terror in the name of religion – and religious and ethnic identity – is widespread historically and today. Since most believers are not involved directly in the violence that some partake in, we shouldn’t paint with too broad a brush. The September 11th museum video may indeed walk this disturbing fine line. But to hold Islam as a religion, in its expression and in some of its core principles, innocent of violence historically or in the present is absurd.

It’s like pretending that violence in the name of Christianity contradicts Christianity and some of Christianity’s core values as they developed. Thus any violence done in the name of Christianity represents the “hijacking” of Christianity. Taking this perspective, then, through much of Christian history, Christianity has been hijacked. Perhaps we should distinguish the Christianity many Christians want today from – shall we call it – Hijacked Christianity?

Rather than pretending to an innocent tradition, call it Innocent Islam and Innocent Christianity, perhaps it is better to think of a desired separation from Hijacked Islam and Hijacked Christianity. But then how does religion support itself, go global and play its part in the affairs of the state in a way that benefits them and their followers without being hijacked?

To preserve the sense of innocence, religion’s collusion with power is unannounced and behind the scenes. To put it bluntly, you don’t get mosques or churches in the town square without being fully corrupted and embedded in the state while pretending to innocence.

Nor do you get Passover Seders in the White House without being a power to be reckoned with.

Which means we can’t leave out Hijacked Judaism.

The interfaith agreement on the ‘errant weeds’ of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Filed under Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Western Jihadists in Syria Threaten to Bring Their War Back Home – The Daily Beast

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Maajid Nawaz of the Quillam Foundation on the risks of jihadists currently fighting in Syria and possible blowback upon their return to the West:

We are watching the largest mobilization in a generation of volunteers traveling abroad to join a war. An estimated 11,000 foreign fighters have been mobilized in Syria, according to a just-published study by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (PDF). More than a quarter of those combatants are from Western countries, mostly from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. Australians, Canadians and U.S. citizen also have joined the ranks.

But judging by our complacency, you would be forgiven for not knowing this. Partly, that’s because some on the left in Britain and elsewhere have been busy downplaying the conflict or romanticizing it as something akin to the international brigades during the Spanish Civil War that attracted George Orwell and other idealists. But unlike Orwell in the 1930s, these fighters on their way to Syria are not traveling to fight against fascists. Many are young Western Muslims rushing to join a fascist group that is too extreme even for al-Qaeda: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Members have been known to behead even fellow fighters. And it’s not much consolation that the more “moderate” volunteers are joining, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Western Jihadists in Syria Threaten to Bring Their War Back Home – The Daily Beast.

Within Canada, a RCMP initiative to reduce the number of potential extremists traveling to Syria or other hotspots:

The tactics used to disrupt extremists varied depending on whether they were preparing to leave Canada, were already abroad or had returned after training or fighting, Assistant Commissioner Malizia said.

By working with other federal agencies, the RCMP was able to determine what “enforcement or mitigation action would be most appropriate depending on the circumstances, grounds and the threat,” he said.

“Amongst others, this could include the removal of a passport. If there is a threat to aviation it could involve a referral for the Specified Persons List led by Public Safety. And in cases where the subject of investigation is not Canadian, the cancellation of a visa.”

But the program may not be able to stop determined extremists. After serving a prison sentence for his role in the Toronto 18 terrorist group, Somali-Canadian Ali Dirie was still somehow able to travel to Syria, where he died last August.

RCMP tracking ‘high-risk’ Canadians to prevent radicalized youths from joining foreign terrorist groups

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Canadian Public Service Commission studies on Employment Equity designated groups

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Courtesy of the Community of Federal Visible Minorities (CFVM), summary of the findings of recent studies on employment equity hiring. Main findings:

  • Men who are members of visible minorities have greater chances of promotion than their comparison group, and women who are members of visible minorities have fewer chances of promotion than their comparison group;
  • Men and women with disabilities have fewer chances of promotion than their respective comparison groups;
  • Aboriginal men and women have similar chances of promotion than their respective comparison groups; and
  • Women who do not belong to another EE group have similar chances of promotion to men who do not belong to other EE groups.

As to perceptions of fairness:

  • Men with disabilities and men who are members of visible minorities have less favourable perceptions than their respective comparison groups;
  • Aboriginal men have similar perceptions to their comparison group;
  • Women who are members of visible minorities have less favourable perceptions than their comparison group;
  • Aboriginal women and women with disabilities have similar perceptions to their respective comparison groups; and
  • Men who do not belong to an EE group have less favourable perceptions than women who do not belong to another EE group

For the complete reports:

Statistical Study – Members of EE Groups: Perceptions of Merit and Fairness in Staffing Activities

Statistical Study – Members of EE Groups: Chances of Promotion

Appointments to the Public Service by Employment Equity Designated Group for 2012-2013 – Statistical Update

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

How to bring theatre to an increasingly multicultural Canada – The Globe and Mail

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Good initiative in terms of recognizing the diversity, and richness of that diversity, broadening audiences and improving cross-cultural understanding and appreciation:

Enter the Gateway Pacific Theatre Festival. This August, Sy and festival producer Esther Ho will bring in three productions from Hong Kong and present them with English surtitles: The Isle, by leading Hong Kong playwright Paul Poon; Fire of Desire, a contemporary Chinese-language adaptation of La Ronde; and Detention, a “non-verbal physical comedy” by Tang Shu-wing.

And this festival is only a pilot project to measure the demand for what Sy plans to roll out in 2016 – the Pacific Series, a year-round, Chinese-language (English-surtitled) alternative to the Gateway’s subscription series of English-language plays.

Rupal Shah, a Toronto producer who holds the Cultural Diversity Portfolio on the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) board of directors, thinks Sy may be on to something. She’s been hired by theatres in the past to do community outreach to the South Asian community, but has given it up lately. She’s disappointed that producers will lure in new audiences to an individual play that may appeal to them, then simply cross their fingers that those new spectators will stick around for the Chekhov and Shakespeare to come.

How to bring theatre to an increasingly multicultural Canada – The Globe and Mail.

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Mahmoud Abbas Shifts on Holocaust – NYTimes.com

2014/04/28 Leave a comment

Some of the background behind Abbas’s statement on the Holocaust. While the article argues the timing is terrible, given yet another Hamas-Fatah reconciliation effort, it is nevertheless significant. And sometimes timing is deliberate to counter other events and decisions, as it is in many countries:

The rabbi who prompted the Holocaust statement, Marc Schneier, is the founder of both the celebrity-studded modern Orthodox Hampton Synagogue and the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, a 25-year-old group that fosters relations between Jews and Muslims, blacks and Latinos. Rabbi Schneier said he met with Mr. Abbas at his West Bank headquarters for about 40 minutes last Sunday to enlist his support against European crackdowns on ritual animal slaughter and human circumcision, and for a program that would establish partnerships between Palestinian mosques and Israeli synagogues.

When he suggested that it would be “very significant, very meaningful” for Mr. Abbas to make a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day, Rabbi Schneier recalled in an interview, the president agreed “before I could finish my statement.”

“It was very heartfelt, very genuine,” Rabbi Schneier said.

“Of course he expressed his frustration on the negotiations, on the peace process — I’ll leave that up to the political leaders,” he added. “I’m a great believer that Muslim-Jewish reconciliation worldwide transcends the Israeli-Palestinian process. We’re working on the spiritual peace process.”

Mahmoud Abbas Shifts on Holocaust – NYTimes.com.

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Anti-Semitism Comparative Statistics

2014/04/28 Leave a comment

Some good comparative stats on antisemitism by country:

On balance, it appears to me that more of these countries show declines than show increases. But that’s subject to statistical argument, and it doesn’t change the fact that the trends in Europe aren’t as clear as the trend in the U.S. As the Ukraine and U.N. cases illustrate, anti-Semitism is sometimes hyped or manufactured for political advantage. And in the U.S., the Kansas shooting is an outlier. But in some countries, the rate of anti-Semitic incidents is holding steady or even increasing. Each country is different.

The Canadian stats come from B’nai Brith.

Anti-Semitism in Europe: statistics from France, Germany, the U.K., and other countries.

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Parti québécois : l’aveuglement volontaire – Hébert

2014/04/28 Leave a comment

Chantal Hébert on the PQ remaining in denial mode:

Pendant que les ténors du PQ s’entêtaient — sur deux décennies — à vouloir prendre un non pour un peut-être, la majorité des Québécois sont passés à autre chose. Les résultats de l’élection en témoignent : l’écart entre le désir des uns et la réalité des autres est sans précédent.

Depuis le 7 avril, bien des militants souverainistes se consolent en se souvenant que la situation semblait aussi désespérée au moment de la signature de l’accord du lac Meech, en 1987. À l’époque, l’avenir de la souveraineté semblait compromis à tout jamais par la négociation d’un projet de réconciliation constitutionnelle entre le Québec et le Canada. De plus, le gouvernement fédéral de l’époque était dirigé par un Québécois, le progressiste-conservateur Brian Mulroney, disposé à favoriser le retour de sa province dans le giron fédéraliste en faisant une large place à ses compatriotes nationalistes dans la direction des affaires à Ottawa. Trois ans plus tard, l’échec spectaculaire de Meech avait plutôt donné un souffle inespéré à l’option souverainiste.

Les circonstances sont radicalement différentes aujourd’hui. Au bout du vote fédéraliste du 7 avril, il n’y avait aucune carotte constitutionnelle. Pendant la campagne électorale, personne à Ottawa — pas même les rares Québécois qui sont dans les coulisses conservatrices du pouvoir — n’a fait miroiter de grandes perspectives de changement. Le gouvernement libéral majoritaire de Philippe Couillard a été élu sans l’obligation d’obtenir des résultats sur le front des relations Québec-Canada.

Cette fois-ci, le reste du Canada ne viendra pas à la rescousse du Parti québécois.

Parti québécois : l’aveuglement volontaire – L’actualité.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Indo-Canadian Media: Reporter’s Firing Stirs Backlash in B.C.

2014/04/28 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article on some of the challenges facing the Indo-Canadian media, and the role that ethnic media can play – or not – in integration:

The current debate begs this question: If broadcasters wish to air programs that discuss South Asian issues from a South Asian perspective, does that breed ethno-cultural ghettos here?

According to Singh, the conventional media has perpetuated this notion. “If the ethnic media is supposed to play the role of integrating new Canadians into the mainstream, they too have the same responsibility. Diversity of voices is completely missing from mainstream media. All they do is highlight the negative stories emerging from the South Asian community and no effort is made to talk of the positives,” said Singh.

Diversity of voices is completely missing from mainstream media.

Many radio listeners agree. “Debates on topics of religion, Indian politics and other social issues are shallow with the prejudice of the hosts clearly reflected in program content. It is somewhat irritating when you listen in to an open line talk show. There are a handful of people, mostly men, who are on all radio stations giving their opinion without facts on every possible topic,” said a Surrey-based doctor who didn’t want to be named.

According to experts and some broadcast managers, this largely happens because there aren’t many professionally trained journalists in the South Asian media. “I can count on my fingertips how many trained and experienced journalists or radio hosts our community has, and since there aren’t too many available to hire, we have to depend on in-house training, but it’s not the same,” said Dutt.

Reporter’s Firing Stirs Backlash in B.C. – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Anti-immigration flyers single out Sikh community in Brampton | Toronto Star

2014/04/28 1 Comment

Don’t they always state this:

Dan Murray, a spokesperson and co-founder of Immigration Watch, confirmed to the Star that the group produced the flyers but insisted that its message is reasonable and not racist.

“The purpose of the flyer is to say there is a cultural limit to the number of people any part of Canada could accept,” he said from British Columbia, where the group was founded in the late 1990s. He said the group has “tens of thousands” of followers who subscribe to its online newsletters.

Canada has been taking in 250,000 immigrants a year for two decades, but Ottawa has never provided justification for that policy, he said.

Murray said the group’s Brampton members had distributed the same flyers several months ago and placed hundreds this week. The photo showing Sikhs was used because they make up “the majority of the population in Brampton,” he noted.

…

Murray characterized people who criticize the flyer’s message as offensive and racist as “cowards.”

“For long-term Canadians to say that, they are cowards. They are trying to be politically correct,” Murray said. “They are afraid to express criticisms over our immigration because they are conditioned to respond to immigration only in a positive way.”

But definitely a minority view as all political parties support immigration and cultivate relations with ethnic communities. One can have an informed debate about immigration levels but these kinds of pamphlets are similar to the failed PQ strategy on the Charter of Values and identity politics.

Anti-immigration flyers single out Sikh community in Brampton | Toronto Star.

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Laïcité : les libéraux en mission réparation | Related Commentary

2014/04/26 Leave a comment

A reminder of some of the challenges Minister Weil and the Couillard government will face as they develop their Charte de laïcité, but also some indication they that intend to use the previous Bill 94 of 2010 under the Charest government as the basis:

Au lieu d’une interdiction du port de signes religieux, le rapport Ouimet [an earlier parliamentary committee study on fundamentalism] propose une approche basée sur les demandes d’accommodement, avec des balises permettant de déterminer ce qui est raisonnable ou non.

Conçu comme une réponse du gouvernement Charest au rapport Bouchard-Taylor, le projet de loi 94 n’a jamais été adopté — même si les libéraux étaient majoritaires. La Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse avait critiqué ses « effets pervers dommageables » pour les musulmanes, à cause des dispositions sur le visage découvert. D’autres avaient au contraire dénoncé le principe de la « laïcité ouverte », jugé trop peu contraignant.

Quatre ans plus tard, il n’est pas dit qu’un projet de loi établissant le principe du visage découvert passerait plus facilement… ni qu’il réussirait le test des chartes. En novembre dernier, Mme Weil avait elle-même reconnu avoir reçu en 2010 des avis juridiques indiquant que l’obligation du visage découvert n’était pas conforme aux chartes.

Jeudi, elle soutenait toutefois que le projet de loi 94 aurait passé la rampe des tribunaux. « C’était une limite raisonnable, pas au nom de la neutralité, mais au nom de la sécurité, de la communication, de l’identification », a-t-elle expliqué.

Laïcité : les libéraux en mission réparation | Le Devoir.

Chris Selley has one of the more sensible commentaries on Premier Couillard’s intent to have a Charte de laicité and related issues to help have a more informed discussion of the issues:

Mr. Couillard’s pre-election pledge to release the legal opinions the PQ solicited on the secularism charter is an excellent start: Polls showed that while Quebecers supported the values charter, they also wanted it to pass constitutional muster. For the PQ, which was counting on it not passing constitutional muster — the better to foment grievance with Ottawa — that discussion was out of bounds. But with a majority government and no political capital invested in the issue, the Liberals can invite a far more intelligent discussion of how far, if anywhere, they need to go to protect secularism.

In the end, that would probably be healthier than walking away, or quickly passing some watered-down, mostly symbolic reaffirmation of Quebec’s secular nature. And it’s a debate I suspect the Rest of Canada would watch intently. In its opinion on the charter, Quebec’s Human Rights Commission warned that privileging gender equality over religious freedom in the dispensation of accommodations “would run counter to the individualized and contextualized approach that should prevail.” But a lot of people don’t like that approach. As we’ve seen in recent educational clashes between religious belief and sexual orientation — in Ontario’s and Alberta’s publicly funded schools, and at British Columbia’s Trinity Western University — many Canadians inside and outside of Quebec think religion holds too much sway in modern society.

There is no reason not to have such discussions, as long as you’re having it for the right motives. And there are few better motives than trying to convince Quebecers that there is nothing in their open, tolerant, diverse and perfectly secular society that necessitates the curtailing of anyone’s rights.

Chris Selley: Quebec’s values debate isn’t over | National Post.

Filed under Charte de la laïcité, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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