How the New Atheists Hijacked Secularism After 9/11

2022/01/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

In the English-speaking world today, it is very common for the words “atheism” and “secularism” to be used interchangeably. This is unfortunate because far from being synonyms, the two terms have very different intellectual lineages and refer to very different things. The confusion, as we shall see, has been debilitating for those who yearn for secular governance (among whom are atheists and believers alike).

The most recent knotting of “secularism” and “atheism” can be explained by reference to the history, technology, and intellectuals of the new millennium. Historically, the attacks of 9/11 forced many writers to ponder religious extremism with new urgency. Technologically, this was the moment that digital media was coming into its own. Each passing year of the 21st century exponentially magnified the ability of new social movements to spread their message, mobilize members, and grow their ranks.

Which brings us to the new class of atheist intellectuals that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11. These figures were outraged by the violence of militant Islam. They were also stunned by the growing political stature of conservative Christian political movements in the United States. One important voice was the independent scholar Susan Jacoby. Her 2004 book—notice the subtitle—Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism was among a slew of texts that casually tied the knot mentioned above.

Then there were the New Atheists, i.e., Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens. The so-called “Four Horsemen” published fierce smackdowns of religion—and not just the Fundamentalist variants. In the early aughts, they quickly became digital media sensations. Their books not only sold millions of physical copies around the world, but energized a growing nonbelief community on the internet.

Two themes emerge in New Atheist interventions. First, much of their prose was devoted to proving how senseless, illogical, and violent all forms of religion were. Second, they embraced science as an alternative to faith. Their training in fields like evolutionary biology (Dawkins), neuroscience (Harris), and cognitive science (Dennett) made them worthy ambassadors of one of secularism’s core principles. Namely, the idea that public policy decisions should be based on science, rationality, and data.

Curiously, the New Atheists seldom reflected on political secularism and its many variants. When they did, they showed themselves to be proponents of what is known as “separationism.” As Dawkins approvingly observed in The God Delusion: “The [American] founders most certainly were secularists who believed in keeping religion out of politics.”

The accuracy of that statement notwithstanding, the New Atheists portrayed their activism as defending aggrieved secular people everywhere. “I think it’s us, plus the 82nd Airborne and the 101st,” exclaimed Christopher Hitchens, “who are the real fighters for secularism at the moment, the ones who are really fighting the main enemy.” Joining the fight were countless other nonbelievers, many with digital platforms and training in STEM disciplines.

The result of this intervention, now 20 years on, is that a good deal of the conversation about secularism has been dominated by New Atheist views. This is unfortunate because accusations of Islamophobia, sexism, transphobia, and even a general drift to the alt-right have dogged followers of The Four Horsemen. Yet it is their unyielding animus towards people of faith that has elicited the most anger among religious people across the spectrum. Situated on that spectrum are religious moderates and religious minorities who have traditionally been proponents of secular governance.

The dividend of this all is that, for many, the word “secularism” has become linked with forms of extreme atheism that are hostile to all forms of religion.

How different this is from classical definitions of secularism which center on how a government is to interact with the religious groups under its jurisdiction. In this more traditional understanding, secularism isn’t about metaphysics or anti-metaphysics or God or gods. It’s about how a state is to judiciously govern a polity of diverse believers and, increasingly, non-believers.

Then again, there is no Vatican of secularism. No institution exists which retains the power to decide who is, and who is not, a secularist. If some atheists call themselves secularists, I think there is a moral imperative to respect that self-designation. Media outlets routinely draw this connection, as do conservative religious activists. Accordingly, the equation that prevails in public discourse is “all atheists are secularists,” and vice versa.

For me, the New Atheist embrace of secularism raises an interesting theoretical question: Is there such a thing as a non-secular atheist? I mention this because extreme atheists sometimes advocate ideas that undermine the very secular principles they claimed to be championing.

Toleration has been a staple of secular discourse since the Enlightenment. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris viewed “the very ideal of religious tolerance,” as “one of the principal forces driving us towards the abyss.” The impression that the New Atheists—and hence secularists—were deeply intolerant was widespread among their critics. It led many to wonder what they might do if their “secular” state came into being.

The sharpest contradiction between New Atheism and political secularism had to do with basic beliefs about religion’s legitimacy. Hitchens’ catchphrase in his 2007 polemic, God is Not Great, was “religion poisons everything.” He warned his readers that “people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction.” Harris averred that religious moderates were every bit as dangerous as a suicide bomber. Moderate religious faith, he insisted, posed a “threat” to our survival.

Few observers of the New Atheists, pro or con, believe that their true intent was to eliminate religion. Yet their rhetoric, performative as it may have been, strongly intimated that goal. This put these champions of secularism in a rather tense relation with the political secularism they claimed to be defending.

The latter has always accorded religion a legitimate place within the social body. Political secularism takes the existence of religion as a given. If there were no religion, there would be no need for secularism!

True, there is no Vatican of Secularism. But there are ways for social scientists to define their terms precisely. Given the New Atheists’ rejection of so many secular principles, they might conceivably be referred to as “non-secular atheists.”

What must be stressed, though, is that their position is extreme among atheists. Most non-believers are not bent on the liquidation of religion even in their rhetoric. They request something entirely different from the secular state. And what they request is basically what religious moderates and religious minorities request as well. All seek freedom from a religion that is not their own.

The secular state is tasked with balancing its citizens’ competing desires for freedom of religion and freedom from religion. The New Atheists had a very different conception of secular governance in mind. That conception disillusioned and even frightened the vast religious mainstream–the very constituency whose support is essential for secularism to persevere in a liberal democracy.

Source: How the New Atheists Hijacked Secularism After 9/11

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Raj: Erin O’Toole denounces religious persecution abroad. Why can’t he do it in Canada?

2021/12/11 Leave a comment

Good question. And other political leaders need to step up as well:

“I cannot in good conscience keep silent on this anymore,” Conservative MP Kyle Seeback tweeted Thursday morning. “This is an absolute disgrace. It’s time politicians stood up for what’s right. Bill 21 has to be opposed. In court, in the house of commons and in the streets.#bill21mustgo #cdnpoli”

It was an unusual statement from a Conservative MP, and a risky one. This is not Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s position on Quebec’s controversial law, which bars individuals who wear religious symbols from holding certain jobs in public institutions. Since his election as leader, O’Toole has defended Quebec’s right to enact such discriminatory legislation. After his first meeting with Quebec Premier François Legault, back in September 2020, O’Toole pledged not to challenge Bill 21 in court. “We need a government that respects provincial autonomy and provincial legislatures,” he told reporters.

For the MP for Dufferin—Caledon to go out on such a limb publicly, amid a climate of fear and retribution (O’Toole’s team has threatened caucus expulsions to those who don’t toe the party line), is commendable. Behind closed doors, Tory MPs tell me Seeback has been pitching to caucus and to the party leadership that a strong position denouncing Bill 21 is not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart political thing to do.

While his pleas resonate with some of his colleagues, they don’t appear to have nudged his leader.

But Seeback, who declined an interview request, is right. Opposing Bill 21 is a great wedge against the Liberals on an issue where the Tories desperately need to rebrand, and in an area of the country where they need to win.

The Conservatives have a GTA problem and a visible-minority problem. Out of the 56 ridings in the Greater Toronto Area, the Conservatives hold six (although all but two are located on the periphery), while the Liberals have 50. It wasn’t always this way. In 2011, Stephen Harper found his majority in the GTA, sweeping the ethnically diverse areas of Brampton and Mississauga.

But over the past decade, the Tories pursued policies that alienated many of these communities. From immigration minister (now Alberta Premier) Jason Kenney’s niqab ban during citizenship ceremonies, to the barbaric practices snitch-line, to leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch’s values test, to the Tories fervent opposition to M-103, a motion denouncing Islamophobia.

In 2015, Brampton and Mississauga showed Harper the door. Seeback lost his seat in Brampton West. The same happened in 2019, and again in 2021.

Although O’Toole represents a GTA riding, his behaviour suggests he believes the road to government runs through Quebec — where support for Bill 21 remains high. Until the Bloc Québécois craters, however, most francophone nationalists already have a home.

Perhaps O’Toole believes that what works for a francophone Liberal prime minister riding on the coattails of his famous father’s immigration policy will also work for him. Justin Trudeau can get away with much (blackface, a weak position on Bill 21) in part because he’s a known commodity. Few believe he’s racist; fewer, perhaps, believe the leader of the party of multiculturalism won’t eventually step in to defend its prized Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the Supreme Court.

Trudeau’s position on Bill 21 is that he hasn’t ruled out intervening. It’s deeply troubling this is the strongest reaction from a major federal party leader. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who as a practising Sikh wears a turban and would have his rights curtailed in Quebec, has said this is a fight that should be waged by Quebecers in Quebec. O’Toole has had the weakest position.

Thursday morning, he sheepishly stood in front of reporters, massaging that position. He is “personally opposed to Bill 21” and would never bring in such a piece of legislation federally, but he will “try and respect provincial jurisdictions.” “This is an important debate that Quebecers will take themselves,” he told my colleague Stephanie Levitz. “I do think we have to try to have these discussions in a way that is respectful,” he added.

What brought the new-found attention on Bill 21 is the case of Fatemeh Anvari, a Grade 3 teacher at Chelsea Elementary School, a municipality just a short drive from Parliament Hill, near the official residence of the speaker of the House of Commons and not too far from the prime minister’s cottage at Harrington Lake. Anvari told the local paper she was removed from the classroom this month because of her hijab.

Last month, the English Montreal School Board lost its bid for a stay from the application of Bill 21. In the spring, a Quebec Superior Court found the controversial law violates constitutionally protected minority language education rights and exempted English boards from the application of the law, but the Quebec government appealed. Until that case is decided, all schools must comply with its rules.

Bill 21 is in complete contradiction to everything we’ve been taught to believe about who we are as a country. No doubt some future prime minister will apologize that Canada allowed this state-sponsored discrimination to flourish, sending a powerful message about the acceptance of racism.

The Conservatives have gone out of their way to denounce religious persecution abroad. As O’Toole tries to expand his party’s tent, it is time he did so at home, too.

Source: Erin O’Toole denounces religious persecution abroad. Why can’t he do it in Canada?

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A residential school system in China is stripping Tibetan children of their languages and culture, report claims

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

After Chinese officials criticize Canadian residential schools…

Almost 80 per cent of Tibetan children in China have been placed in a vast system of government-run boarding schools, where they are cut off from their families, languages and traditional culture, according to an analysis of official data by researchers at Tibet Action Institute.

The U.S.-based NGO found more than 800,000 Tibetan children between the ages of 6 and 18 “are now housed in these state-run institutions.”

“The colonial boarding school system in Tibet is a core element of the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic effort to co-opt, undermine, and ultimately eliminate Tibetan identity in an attempt to neutralize Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule,” the group said in a report published Tuesday.

For years, Tibetans have been sounding the alarm over what they see as assimilationist policies from Beijing. Scholars agree that the implementation of such policies escalated in the wake of large-scale unrest in parts of Tibet in 2008 and the coming to power of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2012. Spiking repression in Tibet has coincided with a crackdown in China’s neighbouring Xinjiang region in recent years, which has seen an estimated two million ethnic Uyghurs pass through a system of “re-education” or “de-radicalization” camps.

While boarding schools for Tibetan children have been promoted by the state for decades, the scale of the system and its growth since 2008 have not been previously reported. The Tibet Action Institute drew on official data to estimate that 806,218 Tibetans between the ages of 6 and 18 currently attend a boarding school – 78 per cent of the 1,039,370 children attending school in Tibetan regions.

Much of the data are publicly available and supported by other official Chinese documents and pronouncements reviewed by The Globe.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment. In the past, officials have defended education policies in Tibet by saying they are aimed at alleviating poor school standards and widespread poverty in the region and by arguing that “bilingual education” protects and promotes Tibetan languages alongside Chinese.

When Tibet was invaded by the People’s Liberation Army in 1951, the Chinese government promised that the “religious beliefs, customs and habits of the Tibetan people” would be respected.

After an uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama – the spiritual leader of Tibet but also a former political leader, as his predecessors have often been – fled to India, and Beijing took full control over the Tibet Autonomous Region. Since then, Chinese leaders have remained nervous about potential support for independence among Tibetans, which they generally blame on overseas actors, including the “separatist Dalai clique.”

At times China’s leaders have promoted and protected Tibetan languages and culture. This reached a peak with the 1982 constitution, which states that “the people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs.”

Back then Tibet was, as it is now, among the poorest regions of China, and Beijing made considerable investments in education, including the establishment of some early boarding schools.

One Tibetan who attended one of those schools – whom The Globe and Mail is identifying by the pseudonym Tenzin so he could speak freely, without concern for his family back in Tibet – said that while instruction was still largely in a Tibetan language, “the content of what we studied was almost all Chinese.

“The history we studied was all Communist or Chinese-centred, even when we studied world history.”

Kunchok, a Tibetan now living in exile in New Delhi who asked to be identified only by his first name, described being sent to a boarding school in Markam, a town in the east, on the border with Sichuan, in 2000, when he was seven years old.

“We were not allowed to go home on the weekend or holidays – for the whole of [my first year] I did not see my parents,” he said.

Widespread unrest in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as chronic poverty and economic difficulties in Tibet that some officials blamed on the limited use of the Chinese language, prompted Beijing to rethink its policies in the region – just as Mr. Xi was coming to power.

“There was a feeling that education and propaganda work had not been taken as seriously as it could have been, with too much focus on ethnic autonomy,” said James Leibold, an expert on Chinese politics and ethnic minority policies at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Tenzin also connected the policy shift to the events of 2008. “If you look at a map of Tibetan protests and self-immolation protests, they overlap with places where there was a strong cultural identity or linguistic identity,” he said. “Almost all the counties in Qinghai and Gansu [provinces] have been converted to Chinese medium education. There’s a policy to reduce any room for Tibetan language learning or cultural spaces, to clamp down on future potential protests.”

By 2016, even a state media report noted that almost all schools in Tibet were using Mandarin Chinese as the primary language of instruction. It added that some parents and teachers “have taken action, opening Tibetan-language schools.”

Many of those alternative schools, often run or staffed by Buddhist monks, have since been shut down. According to Amnesty International, in 2018 the government urged the public to report groups that organize Tibetan classes, branding them “criminal gangs connected to the separatist forces of the Dalai Lama.”

Mr. Xi himself has overseen this assimilationist shift in policy, according to classified documents leaked to the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent body based in the U.K. that is examining allegations of genocide and other crimes in Xinjiang. Documents published by the group include speeches by Mr. Xi from the mid-2010s demanding that children in western China be sent to boarding schools so they would “study in school, live in school, grow up in school.”

“Numerous other policies designed to assimilate and control the region’s ethnic groups, including a Chinese (Mandarin) language focused education in centralized boarding schools … can be directly linked to statements or explicit demands made by Xi Jinping,” scholar Adrian Zenz wrote in a summary of the leaked documents.

Tenzin, who is now living in the U.S., said “now kids as young as five years old are being taken from their hometowns and environments and put in this school system.

“When you are cut off from your language and culture and history, you lose a sense of who you are, and eventually it feels like you’re losing the very fabric of your humanity,” he said. “You don’t feel complete.”

Speaking at a news conference in 2019, Wu Yingjie, the party secretary for the Tibet Autonomous Region, praised the “centralized school system,” as the boarding school network is sometimes called, saying it could help solve “the problems of Tibet’s large area and sparse population.”

Officials in Sichuan recently published a “10-year action plan for educational development in ethnic minority regions,” which calls on local governments to “advance the boarding school system” with the aim of increasing capacity to 820,000 students by 2030.

In the TAI report, the authors directly compared the situation in Tibet to that of colonial societies elsewhere, including in Canada. This year, researchers in Kamloops discovered the unmarked graves of more than 200 Indigenous children, which forced Canada to reckon with the horrors of the residential school system. More mass graves have since been discovered, prompting calls for further action and reparations.

“There is strong evidence that the colonial boarding school system for Tibetans is designed to achieve the same end as the residential school systems in Canada and the United States,” they wrote.

One of the report’s authors, Lhadon Tethong, said researching the boarding school system resonated with her not only as a Tibetan, but as a Canadian. She was born in Victoria and attended the University of King’s College in Halifax.

“The parallels were very striking,” she said. “We are acutely aware that the situation in Tibet is not the same as for First Nations people in Canada, but what is clear is that the aim of the state in separating children from their families is the same. The fundamental bottom line is about eliminating identity and changing children into something they’re not, taking the language from their tongues, taking the cultural roots out from beneath them.”

When the Kamloops and other unmarked graves were discovered this year, Chinese state media covered the story intensely, while officials used it as an opportunity to highlight Canada’s historic abuse and mistreatment of Indigenous people.

“Indigenous lives matter,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in June. “Canada claims to be a model of human rights and an open advocate of the cause. However, it is reticent and blind to its own crimes and stains in human rights that can never be washed away or justified. Such hypocrisy and double standard is disgraceful.”

Source: https://trk.cp20.com/click/e7a4-2h7l42-qdcp9p-7qf243g7/pmreg33oorqwg5boivugc43iei5cejjsijkhqolri52xqq2ghfjekvjwnnhgyzdki5fhi4cwkvdusvscgnmse7i%3D

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UK, Islam and media: This is bullying, not journalism

2021/12/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Similar to other countries:

Watching and reading news on Muslims and Islam is not always a pleasant experience. At least one-fifth of all articles on the topic pertain to terrorism and extremism. This was among a number of concerning facts and figures that I and others at the Centre for Media Monitoring found when we analysed more than a year’s worth of material from British newsrooms that referenced Muslims and/or Islam.

This included around 48,000 online news articles and 5,500 clips that aired between October 2018 and September 2019, giving us a clearer picture of how Muslims are reported on and where the problems lie.

Certain publications – the same ones that lambaste ‘cancel culture’ – often target individual Muslims or organisations

The right-leaning media, which includes most of the country’s heavyweight publications, fared worst across our rating metrics. Using a methodology designed alongside seasoned academics who have studied how Muslims are represented in the media, we pinpointed everything from the reproduction of tropes, to the misrepresentation of Muslim beliefs, to problematic headlines and imagery.

A disproportionate number of articles were biased on the subject of religion, with discussions around Islam mired in Orientalism. Islam was repeatedly framed as a hostile threat to the West, as right-wing pundits trotted out tropes with impunity, while Muslim characters in fictional dramas were shown as intolerant – and were often played by non-Muslim actors.

Around half of the news articles and clips we examined associated Muslims with negative aspects and behaviours. While this might not seem alarming given that news generally tends towards the negative, we did not discriminate between items that were predominantly about Muslims or those that contained only a passing mention, which is a cause for concern.

Platforming marginal figures

Our study was not just about identifying what was bad; we also found pieces that were fair and balanced, punching up against those in power, rather than punching down against Muslims, as is so often the case. Examples included the BBC’s John Sudworthreporting on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, and the Spectator’s Stephen Daisley opining on the Birmingham schools affair, even as his publication was frequently rated poorly across our metrics.

I am often asked whether reporting on Muslims and Islam is getting better over time. But this is difficult to assess, as much depends on the news cycle and which subjects or events are in focus.

We have, however, seen a return in recent days by British tabloids to platforming marginal and unrepresentative figures as the face of British Muslims. In addition, certain publications – the same ones that lambaste “cancel culture” – often target individual Muslims or organisations, in an attempt to delegitimise and de-platform them.

Our report features close to a dozen instances in which individual Muslims were misrepresented in the media; in some cases, the victims spent years of their lives on a quest for justice and an apology. Some of the cases involved neoconservative organisations feeding information to newspapers who appeared happy to lap it up, targeting Muslims in the public space.

This is not journalism. It is bullying, and it impinges on the civil rights of British Muslims, ultimately aiming to silence them.

Willingness to change

Our report also looked at how words are used to delegitimise Muslims, such as by describing any Muslim organisation or individual in the public sphere as “Islamist” or practicing “Islamism”. Such terms have been used in a scattershot fashion, targeting everyone from Islamic State fighters, to democratically elected leaders, to schoolchildren who eat halal food at lunch.

Muslims cannot, and most do not, expect special treatment from the media. What they do expect is fairness

Producing a report as detailed as ours was an arduous task, and not always a pleasant one. But it was done in good faith, with the hope that it will inform and guide members of the media.

Better reporting on Muslims and Islam is not an impossible task, as shown by Daily Express editor Gary Jones, who in 2018 lamented that past front pages at the newspaper had contributed to an Islamophobic environment. He has worked to change that, setting an example for others.

Another encouraging sign came from the editors of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, who welcomed our report, even though it criticised some of their coverage. This suggests that there is a willingness at the highest levels to produce better journalism – and we welcome that.

Muslims cannot, and most do not, expect special treatment from the media. What they do expect is fairness and to be treated no differently than any other community. As the former chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation pointed out a couple of years ago, Muslims have been treated differently by British newspapers. Our findings would agree with him, and it’s up to news editors and journalists to change that.

Faisal Hanif is a media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring and has previously worked as a news reporter and researcher at the Times and the BBC. His latest report looks at how the British media reports terrorism.

Source: UK, Islam and media: This is bullying, not journalism

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Khan: A quiet revolution: the female imams taking over an LA mosque

2021/11/24 Leave a comment

Of interest:

When Tasneem Noor got on the stage at the Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles, she felt butterflies in her stomach. Facing about fifty women on praying rugs, ready to deliver a sermon – khutba in Arabic – she took a deep breath.

During the prayers, the women would follow Noor’s lead, but several would pray four more times after it ended, to make up for any potentially invalid prayers. That is the result of a 14-century-old disputed hadith, that leads some to believe women are forbidden to lead prayers and deliver sermons.

“I don’t mind,” Noor told me later. “Some people function better with rules.”

Noor, 37, is part of a quiet revolution in America: at the all women’s mosque, she was celebrating its five year anniversary of practicing the female imamat, a rare and often controversial practice in Islam.

Women aren’t even allowed to pray in many mosques across the world. In some mosques in the US, women may enter, but are often forced pray in separate rooms – leading some to call it the “penalty box”. Spiritual leaders that have pushed boundaries – by running mixed congregation mosques or running an LGBTQ mosque – have received death threats.

But at the Women’s Mosque of America, women are using their sermons to cover previously untouched topics like sexual violence, pregnancy loss and domestic violence.

One of Noor’s most memorable sermons happened in 2017 – a surprise, considering it was largely an improvisation. After a scheduling hitch left Noor with less than half of the 45-minutes she should have had, she shortened her talk and changed tack: leading the congregation into a meditation.

Source: A quiet revolution: the female imams taking over an LA mosque

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Khan: Muslims can improve our communities on our own. We just have to be willing to speak out

2021/11/19 Leave a comment

Indeed. And good initiative to address equality and equity issues:

Some years ago, I learned that our local mosque refused to allow women to serve on the board. This sexist practice was also entrenched in the bylaws of the British Columbia Muslim Association for nearly four decades. Only Muslim men, it turned out, could be elected to the board, and only by Muslim men. When I asked the mosque and the BCMA if they would change their policies, they unequivocally refused.

But when I began to prepare a column about the issue, a lawyer reached out, asking me to refrain from speaking out. Why? There was concern that then-prime minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government would use this information to go after mosques. “Not now – give us time,” came the plea.

“So, once the Liberals are elected, mosques will open their boards to women?” I asked. We both knew the answer.

Rather than address the discrimination within, some organizations have found it easier to simply ignore internal criticism, while silencing whistle-blowers with emotional blackmail: You’ll hurt the community by airing dirty laundry. The problem is that the laundry is piling up and the stench is getting unbearable, while those who can access the washing machine continue to refuse to do their chores.

The situation is especially acute for victims of violence and abuse. They are often pressed to keep matters quiet, and not file charges, so that the community won’t look bad in the eyes of the public. Meanwhile, there is little accountability of perpetrators. Those who do speak out are shamed as traitors, enablers of Islamophobia, or worse, as self-hating Muslims. Often, it is the voices of women that are silenced by these heavy-handed tactics. Consequently, justice is thrown under the bus of community self-censorship.

It’s why well-meaning institutions overreach in their attempts to stamp out a quantum of Islamophobia. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), for instance, has yet to decide whether it will allow teenaged girls to participate in a book club event featuring Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was enslaved, tortured and raped by members of the Islamic State. This courageous young woman refused to remain silent, and has even won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to seek justice for her people. That she was assaulted by sadistic individuals acting under the cover of an inhumane interpretation of Islam is part of her truth, as is the fact that Muslims worldwide repudiate the Islamic State. The TDSB apparently fears that impressionable teens may not be able to distinguish between an extremist group and ordinary Muslims who are their friends and neighbours.

But here’s a thought: The Muslim community can simultaneously fight Islamophobia and address the ills within it. It is not, and should not be, a zero-sum game. Just as Muslims desire from others safety, freedom from discrimination, access to justice and the opportunity to thrive, they should work hard to ensure the same principles apply to those who are themselves Muslims. One cannot make demands and then plead indifference when asked to fulfill those same demands. As the Quran states in the chapter titled “Women”: “Oh you who believe. Stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even though it is against yourselves, your family, the rich or the poor.”

Here’s another thought: Muslim women have the agency to improve their own lives. Their own history is replete with illustrious paradigms, including that of Khawlah bint Tha’labah, who challenged a cruel marital custom in 7th-century Arabia when no one else dared; her courageous stand led to its abolition. She is known as “al-Mujaadilah,” or “the woman who pleaded,” in the 58th chapter of the Quran. For 14 centuries, Khawlah has been a model for unwavering commitment to justice within.

In the coming weeks, the Mujaadilah Centre – founded on the noble example of Khawlah – will be launching. Its goal is to unapologetically address harms faced by Canadian Muslim women within their communities. This will include an in-depth analysis of the gender make-up of mosque boards across the country. And in 2022, the centre will address the controversial practice of polygamy here in Canada, by providing new legal research of the Criminal Code along with documentation of harm suffered by women and children.

There is hope on the horizon. A new generation of Muslims is demanding greater accountability of leadership. They will not turn a blind eye to discrimination and abuse within, since they understand that wrongdoings left unaddressed will only lead to worse outcomes. Too many lives have been destroyed for this to continue. This cohort is taking the lead on addressing taboos head-on. They will make a difference for the better.

In the meantime, let’s all strive for a better society – standing up for what is right, and forbidding what is wrong, across all communities.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-muslims-can-improve-our-communities-on-our-own-we-just-have-to-be/

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Coren: Religion and politics shouldn’t mix when it comes to COVID-19

2021/11/10 Leave a comment

Another good commentary by Coren, with any number of political commentators pronouncing on the impact on the CPC and its leader:

Anybody who assumed that the struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic would be purely medical and humanitarian clearly didn’t quite grasp the dark depths of politics and religion. From the moment we knew that a deadly plague was smothering the world, those with warped agendas were as animated as a squirrel in a peanut store.

Enter the conspiracy theorists and the paranoid hysterics, claiming that the virus was either a hoax, a plot to reduce and control the population, or the beginnings of the “great reset.” And that vaccines are weapons of Satan, the mark of the beast, and developed from fetal stem-cells and thus — in their words — “the product of the abortion genocide.”

These Christian fundamentalists and libertarian fanatics are dismissed by almost every responsible religious figure, from the Pope to the Chief Rabbi, and by all political leaders worth the name. But not by all, and not everywhere — including Canada.

A small but galvanized set of right-wing church leaders resist vaccines and masks, and their activism has bled through into Canadian conservatism. Federal Tory leader Erin O’Toole and most Conservative provincial leaders may disagree with these people, but they also know that their base is swamped in denial lunacy. If they’re too bold in condemning anti-vaccine zealots, or in any way supportive of vaccine mandates, they could see their leadership challenged and even defeated.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s refusal to demand vaccinations for those working in health care, in spite of the advice of experts, is an obvious case. Ford is more secure than O’Toole, but he has long relied on the Christian right and owes them far too much to risk their anger, especially with an election so close.

Erin O’Toole’s decision not to require that all Conservative MPs be vaccinated against COVID-19 has annoyed many of his caucus, but placated those who see him as far too liberal on their chosen obsessions. Yet he still hasn’t gone far enough for many. At the end of last week it was announced that a group of 15 to 30 Conservative MPs and senators intended to start a “civil liberties caucus.” Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu says that it will speak for those who may be losing their jobs for refusing to be vaccinated.

It’s a tangible threat to the leader, already in a precarious position, and there are a number of potential rivals waiting in the shadows. One of the more prominent and ambitious is Leslyn Lewis, the newly minted MP for Haldimand-Norfolk. She did extremely well in the party’s leadership contest, and her candidacy was supported by a number of socially conservative groups who now oppose vaccines. She’s the darling of religious conservatives, with some “interesting” opinions on many of the issues that the Tory base in rural Ontario and Western Canada still consider vital. When I mentioned her views in a column more than a year ago she immediately blocked me on social media, and I was harshly attacked by some of her supporters. In other words, she’s not someone to take lightly.

One of the ironies of all this is that for a party that boasts of its patriotism, this new conservatism is far more American than Canadian. The progressive Toryism of former years, one that had far more in common with conservative parties in northern Europe and Britain, was abandoned long ago, and Canadian conservatives now look south to the U.S. Republicans. That party, in turn, has had to bend to the Christian right, because without that vote no Republican can ever hope to become president.

The conservative Christian world is much smaller in Canada, but it’s far from insignificant and punches well above its weight. It’s also become more energized and organized in the last 15 years, largely because it sees what has been achieved in the U.S. Canadian right-wingers witness the victory of Donald Trump and other hardline leaders and regard it as a triumph. The truth, however, is that the crisis faced by modern Christianity is largely due to its perversion by the very people so revered by the Canadian conservatives who are currently influencing policies on vaccines and public health.

Religion and politics. Pray, and pray hard, that in this case they stop mixing.

Source: Religion and politics shouldn’t mix when it comes to COVID-19

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Study: Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019

2021/10/29 Leave a comment

Interesting findings from the GSS. Census 2021 will include religious affiliation data which will allow for detailed socio-economic analysis:

A new study finds that Canada’s religious landscape has undergone significant changes in recent decades, including a decline in religious affiliation and a decrease in participation in individual and group religious activities.

The study “Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019” uses data from the General Social Survey to profile different patterns of religiosity in Canada and examine how they have changed since 1985.

A clearer understanding of how Canadians’ relationships with religion have evolved provides better insight into the country’s cultural and social history of the country and the diversity of today’s population. New data from the 2021 Census will soon update the portrait of religious diversity in Canada by providing detailed information on religious affiliations and the people with these affiliations.

Around two-thirds of Canadians report having a religious affiliation

In 2019, just over two-thirds (68%) of the Canadian population reported having a religious affiliation, and over half (54%) said their religious or spiritual beliefs were somewhat or very important to the way they live their lives. 

More than one-third of Canadians (37%) reported engaging in religious or spiritual activities on their own at least once a month, and almost one-quarter (23%) reported participating in a group religious activity at least once a month in the previous year. 

Women were more likely than men to report having a religious affiliation (72% compared with 64%) or to consider their religious or spiritual beliefs somewhat or very important to how they live their lives (61% vs. 47%). They were also more likely than men to participate in religious or spiritual activities on their own at least once a week (36% vs. 24%) and in group religious activities at least once a month (26% compared with 21%). The same types of results are found by gender and age. Women are more likely than men to report having a religious affiliation, to participate in group or individual religious or spiritual activities, and to place a high value on their religious or spiritual beliefs, regardless of age.

Dynamics vary across regions

The diversity of regional dynamics has long been a fundamental characteristic of Canada’s religious landscape. For example, high proportions of non-affiliation have distinguished British Columbia for several decades and still characterize the province, with 40% of the population reporting no religious affiliation from 2017 to 2019.

In Quebec, religious affiliation is relatively high. However, more often than elsewhere, it goes hand in hand with low importance given to religious or spiritual beliefs. From 2017 to 2019, 40% of Quebec residents reported both a religious affiliation and low importance of religious or spiritual beliefs, compared with 15% to 25% in other provinces.

Trends in religion in the Atlantic provinces have generally been more stable than in other regions, particularly with respect to religious affiliation. However, the most recent data show particularly sharp contrasts between generations, suggesting that significant changes in the religious landscape have begun in these provinces. For example, from 2017 to 2019, those born between 1940 and 1959 were twice as likely to report both having a religious affiliation and considering their religious or spiritual beliefs somewhat or very important (74%) than those born between 1980 and 1999 (37%).

Participation in religious activities varies widely across religious affiliations 

Among those who reported having a religious affiliation between 2017 and 2019, nearly one-third (32%) had participated in group religious activities at least once a month. However, the frequency of participation in religious activities varied widely across religious affiliations.

For example, a majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses (86%), Latter Day Saints (80%) and Anabaptists (75%) participated in group religious activities monthly. In contrast, Buddhists (15%), Anglicans (19%) and those affiliated with the United Church (19%) had proportions of monthly group participation well below average.

There is also some variation in the importance given to religious beliefs by religious affiliation. Nevertheless, a majority of people of each affiliation reported that their religious or spiritual beliefs were somewhat or very important, ranging from 62% for Catholics to 98% for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Declines in religious affiliation and participation in religious activities

Both religious affiliation and frequency of participation in group religious activities have trended downward in recent decades. For example, the share of people who reported having a religious affiliation fell from 90% in 1985 to 68% in 2019. Meanwhile, the share of those who attended a group religious activity at least once a month fell by almost half, from 43% to 23% over the same period.

Similar trends were also observed with respect to the practice of individual religious or spiritual activities and the importance given to religious and spiritual beliefs. For example, in 2003, 71% of people reported that their religious or spiritual beliefs were somewhat or very important, compared with 54% in 2019. Finally, the proportion of people who engaged in religious or spiritual activities on their own at least once a week fell from 46% in 2006 to 30% in 2019.

Chart 1  
Evolution of the different religiosity indicators, 1985 to 2019

Chart 1: Evolution of the different religiosity indicators, 1985 to 2019

Religious affiliation and participation are less common among younger generations

In general, recent generations were less likely than the generations that came before them to report a religious affiliation, to participate in group or individual religious activities, or to place a high value on religious and spiritual beliefs in how they live their lives.

For example, at the same age, when they were 20 to 30 years old, those born between 1960 and 1969 were significantly more likely to report a religious affiliation (82%) than those born between 1990 and 1999 (54%). They were also more likely to participate in group religious activities (24%) than their counterparts born between 1990 and 1999 (14%). Similar trends were also observed for participation in individual religious or spiritual activities and the importance of religious beliefs.

The succession of generations displaying these forms of religiosity less and less often accounts for much of the decline in religious affiliation, practices and importance among the Canadian population over the past few decades.

In terms of religiosity, people born outside Canada differ more from those born in Canada among the younger generations

In general, people born outside Canada are more likely than those born in Canada to report a religious affiliation, to consider their religious and spiritual beliefs important to how they live their lives, and to participate in group or individual religious activities. However, this difference is more pronounced among members of younger generations.

For example, among those born between 1980 and 1999, those born outside Canada were much more likely than those born in Canada to report a religious affiliation (71% vs. 59%) or to consider their religious beliefs to be somewhat or very important (62% compared with 39%). In comparison, those born outside Canada between 1940 and 1959 were about as likely as their Canadian-born counterparts to report a religious affiliation (85% vs. 87%) and only slightly more likely to consider their religious beliefs to be somewhat or very important (74% compared with 66%).

Given that immigration is an important factor in Canada’s population growth, these trends could have an impact on the evolution of the various religiosity indicators examined in this study.

In addition, information from the 2021 Census will soon provide an updated picture of religious diversity in Canada. This information will provide a more detailed picture of religious affiliations and the people with these affiliations.

Source: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/211028/dq211028b-eng.htm?CMP=mstatcan

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Canadian Muslims have given Justin Trudeau a mandate to eliminate Islamophobia

2021/10/05 Leave a comment

Summit recommendations are just that and mandates are less categorical. More reduce than eliminate.

While the government needs to provide a response, the nature of the response will need to consider broad public policy issues as well as responses to other forms of xenophobia, discrimination and prejudice:

Progress has been made, such as the addition of right-wing extremist groups to Canada’s terror lists. The attacks on the Afzaal family in London and on Mohamed-Aslim Zafis outside an Etobicoke mosque, on the other hand, underlined the need for stronger action.

In reaction to the rise of anti-Muslim hate, the Liberal government convened the July National Action Summit Against Islamophobia shortly before the federal election. Many community organizations submitted recommendations with the expectation that the government would take concrete action. The government listened intently to people’s lived experiences and demands for reform, but only a few first steps were proposed.

Following the 2019 federal election, Canada’s Muslim community outlined four priorities that the Liberal government should address immediately: the rise in Islamophobia, Bill 21 in Quebec, Islamophobia’s presence in Canada’s national security regime, and a foreign policy committed to speaking out against human rights violations.

Progress has been made, such as the addition of right-wing extremist groups to Canada’s terror lists. The attacks on the Afzaal family in London and on Mohamed-Aslim Zafis outside an Etobicoke mosque, on the other hand, underlined the need for stronger action.

In reaction to the rise of anti-Muslim hate, the Liberal government convened the July National Action Summit Against Islamophobia shortly before the federal election. Many community organizations submitted recommendations with the expectation that the government would take concrete action. The government listened intently to people’s lived experiences and demands for reform, but only a few first steps were proposed.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a strong message: “There’s no question that there is work to be done within government to dismantle systemic racism and Islamophobia. Because from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to security agencies, institutions should support people, not target them. We hear that.”

If anything, the July summit meeting successfully established the mandate of Canada’s newly elected government to combat Islamophobia, giving the Liberal party a second chance to get this right.

Systemic Islamophobia in government institutions is among the most serious aspects of anti-Muslim hate. Hatred and violence against Muslims will never be eradicated as long as anti-Muslim sentiment persists inside our agencies and institutions.

The top of the list is the Review and Analysis Division (RAD) of the Canada Revenue Agency, which has been targeting Muslim groups with biased audits and unjust sanctions for more than a decade.

Before the election the Liberal government announced a review by the CRA Ombudsperson’s office. This is simply not enough. RAD’s biased audits are rooted in a broader government problem based primarily in the national security regime, over which the Ombudsperson has no control.

The next minister of National Revenue must take a number of immediate actions. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency should undertake its own investigation. The 2015 National Risk Assessment, a government directive to the CRA that contributed to the targeting of Muslim charities, should also be re-evaluated. Most importantly, the CRA should declare a moratorium on RAD audits until these reviews are completed.

The Canada Border Services Agency for years has profiled Muslims and targeted refugees from Muslim countries. The Liberal government has ready-to-go CBSA oversight legislation, Bill C-3, that died when Parliament was prorogued last year. Re-introducing this bill should be a top priority for the government.

Many communities, including Muslims, have urged the government to adapt regulations to the changing social media environment, which has allowed online hate to spread and provided a platform for white supremacist groups to thrive.

The Liberal Muslim caucus highlighted the top five priorities for Prime Minister Trudeau following the National Summit, which include the above. Muslim leaders reinforced these during the election.

If we want to fight Islamophobia “we need to bring Canadians together with us,” Prime Minister Trudeau said as he addressed the national summit. He was indicating that Canadians should support him as he heads back to Ottawa with a new mandate.

With their votes, Canadian Muslims have shown their faith in the Prime Minister’s sincerity and willingness to solve these challenges. Community members hope he will make addressing systemic Islamophobia in Canada a major priority when he issues mandate letters to his ministers outlining the goals for this government’s tenure.

Sharaf Sharafeldin is executive director of the Muslim Association of Canada, a national non-profit organization providing religious and educational services for the Muslim community in Canada.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/10/04/canadian-muslims-have-given-justin-trudeau-a-mandate-to-eliminate-islamophobia.html

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How the world’s biggest Islamic organization drives religious reform in Indonesia – and seeks to influence the Muslim world

2021/09/29 Leave a comment

Of interest:

After its return to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban are again imposing their religious ideology, with restrictions on women’s rights and other repressive measures. They are presenting to the world an image of Islam that is intolerant and at odds with social changes.

Islam, however, has multiple interpretations. A humanitarian interpretation, focusing on “rahmah,” loosely translated as love and compassion, has been emphasized by a group I have studied – Nahdlatul Ulama, which literally means “Reawakening of the Islamic Scholars.”

Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, was founded in 1926 in reaction to the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina with their rigid understanding of Islam. It follows mainstream Sunni Islam, while embracing Islamic spirituality and accepting Indonesia’s cultural traditions.

Functioning in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, Nahdlatul Ulama is the world’s biggest Islamic organization with about 90 million members and followers. In terms of membership, the organization hugely outstrips that of the Taliban – yet this face of Islam has not been sufficiently recognized on the international stage.

In 2014, NU responded to the rise of the Islamic State group and its radical ideology by initiating an Islamic reform. Since then, it has elaborated on this reform that it calls “Humanitarian Islam.”

Humanitarian Islam

During the past seven years, NU’s general secretary, Yahya Cholil Staquf, has organized several meetings of the organization’s Islamic scholars with a reformist agenda. They made public declarations for reforming Islamic thought on controversial issues, including political leadership, equal citizenship and relations with non-Muslims.

The Nahdlatul Ulama declarations include crucial decisions that differentiate “Humanitarian Islam” from other interpretations. First of all, they reject the notion of a global caliphate, or a political leadership that would unite all Muslims. The concept of a caliphate has been accepted by both mainstream Islamic scholars, such as those in Al-Azhar – Egypt’s world-renowned Islamic institution – and radical groups, such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.

Moreover, the NU declarations emphasize the legitimacy of modern states’ constitutional and legal systems, and thus reject the idea that it is a religious obligation to establish a state based on Islamic law.

Additionally, these declarations stress the importance of equal citizenship by refusing to make a distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims as legal categories.

They call for a deeper cooperation among Muslims, Christians and followers of other religions to promote world peace.

Nahdlatul Ulama has taken practical steps for realizing these aims. For example, it has established a working relationship with the World Evangelical Alliance, which claims to represent 600 million Protestants, to promote intercultural solidarity and respect.

These NU declarations may sound insufficient from a Western liberal point of view, since they do not touch upon some issues such as LGBTQ rights. To better understand the importance of NU’s perspective and its limits requires an examination of the Indonesian context.

Indonesia’s tolerant Islam

My research on 50 Muslim-majority countries finds that Indonesia is notable because it is one of the few democracies among them.

Indonesia’s foundational credo, Pancasila, means “five principles” and basically refers to the belief in God, humanitarianism, Indonesia’s national unity, democracy and social justice.

About 88% of Indonesia’s population of 270 million are Muslim. Both Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the country’s second-biggest Islamic organization, have been respectful of these principles. Like NU, Muhammadiyah also has tens of millions of followers, and these two organizations often cooperate against radical Islamist groups.

Robert Hefner, a leading expert on Indonesia, documents in his 2000 book “Civil Islam” how NU and Muhammadiyah made important contributions to the country’s democratization in the late 1990s. During this process, the leader of NU, Abdurrahman Wahid, became Indonesia’s first democratically elected president in 1999.

Wahid, who died in 2009, left a religious legacy, too. During my conversations, senior NU members repeatedly referred to Wahid’s reformist ideas as the main source of inspiration for Humanitarian Islam.

Indonesia’s intolerant Islam

Not all Islamic theories and practices in Indonesia are tolerant toward diversity. The country’s Aceh province has enforced certain rules of Islamic criminal law, including the punishment of caning for those who sell or drink alcohol.

Another example of religious and political intolerance is the country’s blasphemy law, which resulted in the 20-month imprisonment of the capital city Jakarta’s Chinese Christian governor, Basuki Purnama in 2017-2018, for a statement about a verse in the Quran.

In January 2021, the story of a Christian female student being pressured by the school principal to wear a Muslim headscarf went viral on Facebook. In two weeks, the Indonesian government responded with a decree that banned public schools from making any religious attire compulsory.

In short, there is a tug-of-war between tolerant and intolerant interpretations of Islam in Indonesia. Even within NU, there exist disagreements between conservatives and reformists.

Nonetheless, Nahdlatul Ulama reformists are becoming more influential. One example is the current minister of religious affairs, Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, a leading NU member and the younger brother of NU’s reformist general secretary. He was one of the three ministers who signed the joint decree banning the imposition of headscarves on students in February.

NU’s Humanitarian Islam movement might be crucial to promote tolerance among Indonesia’s Islamic majority. But can it have an effect beyond Indonesia?

This reform movement’s reception in the Middle East, the historical center of Islam, is important if it is to have a global impact. Humanitarian Islam has been mostly ignored by scholars and governments of Middle Eastern countries, who generally see it as a competitor of their own attempts to influence the Muslim world. As a nongovernmental initiative, Humanitarian Islam is different from Middle Eastern efforts to shape the Muslim world, which are mostly government-led schemes.

With its reformist emphasis, Humanitarian Islam may appeal to some young Middle Eastern Muslims who are discontent with their countries’ political and conservative interpretations of Islam.

In order to reach a Middle Eastern audience, the Humanitarian Islam movement is launching an Arabic-language version of its English website. Whether this Indonesian initiative can have an impact in the Middle East and become a truly global movement for Islamic reform remains to be seen.

Source: How the world’s biggest Islamic organization drives religious reform in Indonesia – and seeks to influence the Muslim world

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