Starting with Robert Sibley’s good account of the debate over Muslim immigration from both the comforting (Saunders) and alarmist (Mansur) angles.
Some of Mansur’s language, however, almost resembles “Elders of Zion” language in its conspiratorial characterizations (for my mini-review of Mansur’s book, Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism, see my other blog, Lymphoma Journey Week 49: Another Good Week):
Mansur pointed out that the long-term subversion of the West is the mandate of the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization not only of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the United States, but also CAIR’s Canadian subsidiary, CAIR-CAN (which now prefers to call itself the National Council of Canadian Muslims). The Muslim Brotherhood “sees immigration as a process of settlement in its strategy of subverting Western civilization from within,” he said
In Mansur’s view, the Islamists think long-term in much the same way as the communists did following the Russian Revolution in the early 1900s. What Canadians are seeing now, he concluded, is “the drip, by drip, by drip” effort to erode the liberal democratic traditions of western countries by means, in part, of mass immigration.
http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2014/03/01/great-debate-mansur-versus-saunders-on-muslim-immigration/
The actual text of the interventions by Doug Saunders and Salim Mansour opening the debate:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/is-muslim-immigration-a-threat-to-the-west/article17302855/#dashboard/follows/
A follow-on column by Sibley, commenting on Irshad Manji’s recent speech and interviews (Q&A: Irshad Manji on Multiculturalism), also building on the “controlling the world” theme:
In a similar fashion to Mansur, Manji warns that if current fear-based multiculturalism continues Canadians will see their country increasingly segregated and cliqueist. And that way lays a fractured society of competing power elites. “By giving rights to cultures, not just to individuals, what we wind up doing, in fact, is not giving more power to the entire community, we wind up giving more power to those who are already powerful within certain communities.”
And therein resides the “threat.” As theologian Mark Durie observes: Islam “classically demands a political realization, and specifically one in which Islam rules over all other religions, ideologies and competing political visions. Islam is not unique in having a political vision or speaking to politics, but it is unique in demanding that it alone must rule the political sphere … Not all Muslims are seeking to implement this vision, but many are.”
In other words, offending people (including Muslims) is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for freedom in a multicultural society.
I agree with his point on being able to offend people as part of a democratic society, and the focus on individual rights, not group rights, but the ability to offend should not be used in a gratuitous manner and criticism should be measured in tone.
Muslim immigration and multiculturalism
And while free speech and debate is to be encouraged, a reminder by Amy Awad that what seems to be considered acceptable discourse with respect to Muslims would not be for Blacks, Jews or other minorities:
Unlike recreational debating societies, MLI is supposed to be providing real policy alternatives. But the resolution being debated tonight is informed by fear: “Muslim immigration is no threat to Canada or the West.” Can you imagine if the word “Muslim” were replaced by any other religious or ethno-cultural group — say “Jewish” or “black”?
Over the past century, Western democracies have held public debates on whether or not blacks ought to be given certain rights, and whether Jews threatened the European societies in which they resided. The debates were based on the problematic premise that blacks, Jews or other minorities were monolithic groups with defined characteristics, and that those characteristics were more important than the humanity they shared with everyone else.
Similarly, can we really start a debate about “Muslim immigration”? There is no such thing. Rather, there is immigration of a large variety of Muslim individuals from a broad range of countries and cultures around the world with a wide range of religious practices. Recall that 20% of the world’s population is Muslim. It is not possible to generalize about the threat they may or may not pose to Canada. We should not accept the very premise of this debate.
But better to have the debate out in the open, rather than being overly polite and avoid discussion.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/02/27/amy-awad-people-immigrate-religions-dont/
