Surrey imam who misrepresented himself to immigration officials jailed for sexual assault

2020/12/09 4 Comments

Of note, particularly how the British Columbia Muslim Association mishandled the complaint and the community’s shunning of the complainant:

The emotional wounds from a sexual assault at the hands of a Lower Mainland imam four years ago continue to affect the daily life of his victim, who says if immigration officials and the B.C. Muslim Association had intervened sooner, the attack may never have happened.

The woman, whose identity is protected by a B.C. Supreme Court order, says she has received no community support for her turmoil and is being shamed as a victim.

“When people see me, they think I am not good woman,” she said. “I got with priest and put him in the jail.”

Pakistani national, 46-year-old Abdur Rehman Khan, is serving a three-year sentence on one count of sexual assault and will remain a registered sex offender for 20 years.

In 2017 he was convicted for assaulting the woman who he came to know through his work in the Muslim community in Surrey.

His story shows the lengths he went to in misleading immigration officials to stay in Canada and the lack of intervention provided by the B.C. Muslim Association, which described his criminal case as a “personal matter.”

The assault happened in July 2016, three months after he had been ordered to leave the country.

‘Nobody support me’

His victim is outraged that Khan continued as an imam at Masjid-Ur-Rahmah after he was charged and granted bail, as well as after he was convicted and awaiting sentence.

She also doesn’t understand how he was able to avoid discovery by immigration officials for years.

She, in the meantime, has had to give up her job and many activities to avoid being ostracized by some people in the Lower Mainland’s Muslim community.”Nobody support me,” said the woman who has no family in the country.

Multiple names and attempts to immigrate

Abdur Rehman Khan’s attempts to live in Canada span almost three decades.

In 1993, he was included as a dependent in an application by his brother Mohammad Tayyab to sponsor their mother to Canada but when Khan’s application for permanent residency was denied, he appealed but didn’t wait for a decision.

During the appeal process, Khan successfully obtained a visitor visa under the name Abdul Rehman and once in Canada, in February 1999, he made a refugee claim under the name Ibuhuraira Khan.

The claim was refused in October 2000. One month later, Khan tried again to stay here through the sponsorship of a wife. At an immigration hearing, Khan conceded the marriage was not genuine and solely for immigration purposes.In September 2001, he was deported from Canada, under the name Ibuhuraira Khan.

It was only after he’d been removed from Canada that in 2003 he was actually accepted for permanent residency to Canada under the original 1993 application.

Misled officials

Upon his arrival, in Vancouver, in April 2003, as Abdur Rehman Khan, he was asked by immigration officials if he had ever been “convicted of a crime or offence, refused admission to Canada or required to leave Canada.”

Khan said no according to transcripts of his immigration hearings.

Officials did not know he’d been to Canada before, used other names, had travel documents in those names, nor that he’d made a previous refugee claim and had been deported.

In 2014, Khan’s past caught up with him when the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) received word that the information he had provided officers was false.In June of that year when asked directly if he’d ever used any other names, including nicknames, he stated “no.” When asked whether he knew the name Ibuhuraira Khan, he said “no.”

In April 2016, the Immigration and Refugee Board issued an exclusion order against Khan but he appealed the order on the basis of humanitarian and compassionate considerations.

A year later, in April 2017, the Immigration Appeal Division dismissed his appeal and at that point it was up to the CBSA to execute his removal order.

Two months later, though, when Khan was arrested and charged with sexual assault the removal process was stalled.

‘Personal matter’

Khan was granted bail on July 6, 2017 and once released, he returned to his position as imam at the mosque Masjid-Ur-Rahmah where he continued to lead prayers, inter-faith meetings, teach youth and officiate at marriages and funerals.

After his trial and conviction in January 2020, he again went back to work until August when he was sentenced to three years in prison.

BCMA president Iftab Sahib says Khan submitted a resignation letter in August 2020.

The association, however, considered Khan’s reasons for quitting as his “personal matter,” he said and asked no questions.

Sahib declined to be interviewed further about why Khan was allowed to stay on the job after he was charged and convicted.

In an email, BCMA spokesperson Tariq Tayyab said, “at no time was BCMA made aware of the serious allegations and criminal charges brought against the individual.”

His employment with the BCMA ended in August of this year and Tayyab directed any other inquiries to the association’s lawyer.A member of the BCMA Women’s Council also reneged on an interview after initially saying it was important to address the issue and to ensure the community knew what had transpired.

Multiple marriages

Khan’s subterfuge with immigration officials also involved multiple marriages aimed at achieving residency in Canada.

The woman Khan married in the fall of 2000 was the divorced spouse of his brother Mohammad Tayyab. The marriage ended when it failed to secure Khan permanent residency in Canada.

The woman later re-united with Tayyab.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Khan already had a wife and five children which he never disclosed to immigration officials. At his August 2020 sexual assault sentencing, in B.C. Supreme Court, the judge acknowledged Khan visited his overseas family every other year until 2016. The oldest of those children now lives in B.C.

According to Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) documents, it’s unlikely he ever divorced his wife in Pakistan. As well, he remains married under a different name to his brother’s wife.The IAD also says Khan married and separated a third time, in 2014, in B.C., representing himself as single when he got that marriage certificate.

CBC News has learned that in spring of 2016, Khan married again in the midst of his latest Immigration and Refugee Board removal hearing.

The woman was a Canadian citizen living in B.C. The marriage lasted only a matter of months.

Victim shaming

Other people from the province’s Muslim community say the web of lies and deceits and ultimately Khan’s crime of sexual assault should be better addressed.

Yahya Momla, an imam from Masjid-Al-Salaam, in Burnaby, has often spoken out about victims who come forward with their trauma and are further marginalized.

“It would be untruthful to say victim shaming doesn’t happen in certain communities,” he said. “Why this happens? Partly it is a misconstrued sense of honour.”Momla says some people feel they must not speak openly about victims of domestic or sexual abuse happening in relationships. That attitude though, he says, is not faith-based.

His message to the Muslim community is that victims should never be blamed, but provided with support.

‘Open your eyes’

Khan’s victim says as long she continues to be shunned the matter will never be over.

Her message to the community is to, “open your eyes. Don’t look down on [victims] even if [the attacker] is a priest.”

Vancouver Immigration consultant Divya Bakshi Arya says in cases like this one, removal orders are not acted upon until the person has served their sentence.

At that time though Khan could apply to federal court to have his removal order stayed and that could spin into months or years of additional hearings.

His victim says she is afraid of him still living in the Lower Mainland if he is not sent back to Pakistan

Source: Surrey imam who misrepresented himself to immigration officials jailed for sexual assault

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How Did Hasidic Jewry Become a Stronghold of Trumpism?

2020/12/03 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Is American Hasidism in crisis? After successfully rebuilding its institutions after the war, Hasidism in America has flourished. And yet, its response to COVID and its newfound reactionary political populism, leads us to ask the question: is something changing in contemporary Hasidism that’s worth examining more closely?

Much has been written lately about the politicization of the Hasidic world in America, particularly its full-throttled support of Donald Trump. In fact, Hasidic voting patterns now closely resemble those of evangelical Christians. Scholars and pundits have weighed in on this surprising political activism in a community that usually keeps a low profile and focuses on its internal needs. And this activism has become even more visible as Hasidic communities have flouted health guidelines in the COVD crisis and made a public health issue into a political one. While the fact of these phenomena have been well documented, what are some of the underlying conditions that have contributed to a kind of “perfect storm” of populist reactionary Hasidic activism?

Part of what we’re witnessing in this new Hasidic populism is another stage of Hasidic Americanization in the wake of the loss of the last vestiges of European authority. The great Hasidic figures from Eastern Europe commanded intense devotion and respect from their communities, representing an authentic world destroyed in the Holocaust. Others emerged to take their place but it’s arguable that the weight of authority of these masters was not replicated in their American or Israeli born successors.

This isn’t to argue that these new rebbes haven’t commanded respect; they certainly have. It’s simply to point out that the force of their authority is diminished in comparison to those who arrived in America from prewar Europe. Eastern Europe was the fertile ground of Hasidic aristocracy. America, Mandate Palestine, and Israel, stood in its shadow. The loss of first-hand exposure to those halcyon years diminished Hasidism’s luster and authenticity. It continues, albeit in a different register.

If this is true, it’s worth considering how it contributes to a rise of the Hasidic populism that’s taken to the streets to express disdain for the government and its health mandates. It’s a complicated situation and is certainly the result of many factors. In one sense, this is a classic example of a popular revolution when individuals without much authority somehow evoke a rebellion against authority (think of Castro and Che in Cuba), be it religious or civil, by touching the nerve of a rapidly growing community in crisis coupled with a weakened stature of leadership.

The transformation of COVID from a health crisis to a political movement in the Hasidic world is a phenomenon that merits deeper study. When and why did this happen? Why and how did street protests against mask mandates and synagogue and park closings turn into Trump rallies in Hasidic Brooklyn? It’s true that Trump espouses conservative values that many Hasidim identify with, but so did Ronald Reagan and he didn’t enjoy such passionate support. And Reagan arguably did more for Hasidim than Trump ever did when, in 1984, he granted them “disadvantaged minority status” enabling them to apply for federal funding for businesses.

Whether, in fact, this speaks to a significant shift in Hasidism’s politicization or not remains to be seen. What I’m pointing to here is the rise of a populist mind-set where a rabble-rousing radio talk show host and Hasidic outsider like Heshy Tischler, who has no authoritative role in the community whatsoever, can attract the attention of young Hasidic boys and compel them to take to the streets.

One could view this as a positive manifestation of the growing autonomy of these communities and their increased involvement in public political life. And yet, as I will suggest below, an unreconstructed Hasidism will invariably—and, given theological considerations, understandably—be attracted to a reactionary political agenda and autocratic leadership.

The Americanization of Hasidism 

Hasidism rose from the depths of Jewish traditional society in Eastern Europe during a tumultuous time. The Napoleonic Wars were changing the map of Europe, autocratic rule was slowly transforming into early stages of tolerance and later democracy. Emancipation may still have been decades away, but encroaching modernity from the West was making inroads into the traditional Jewish world, attracting some of its most talented youth.

In some way, Hasidism was both a rebellion against the internal autocracy of the rabbinic elite and the modernizing mind-set of the enlightenment (haskala). It made a play for both power and piety in a very unstable period. Among the challenges of a nascent Hasidic world was one of political alliances; in one case between Napoleon and the freedoms he promised, and in the other, Czar Alexander I and an autocracy that allowed Jewish enclaves to continue their traditional lives.

Similar debates made their way westward questioning whether emancipation was good for the Jews; that is, whether the modernization that accompanied the promise of freedom ultimately threatened the Jewish tradition. As told by Chaim Heilman in his Beit Rebbe, Shnuer Zalman of Liady offered a cogent assessment of the wager: if Napoleon wins, Jews will be materially successful but will suffer spiritually, and if Alexander wins, Jews will be materially impoverished but will spiritually flourish. Throughout its history, Hasidism has lived in the balance of that wager. It arguably filters through Hasidism’s entire negotiation with modernity. Perhaps until now.

America presented another way to understand this bargain. What we may be witnessing today is another layer of the complex process of the Americanization of Hasidism. The first stage may have been propagated by Eastern European Hasidic immigrants, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust, in their initial reconstruction of Hasidic dynasties in America. Schneerson’s (Lubavitch) advocacy of a moment of silence in public school (supporting Jerry Falwell), his campaign to erect Hanukkah Menorahs in public squares, and his Noahide Law campaign to gentiles, all illustrate his deep belief in America.

And Teitelbaum’s attempt to secure public funding for special education in the yeshivot in the Satmar enclave, Kiryas Joel, speaks to the extent he too understood America as holding potential for his own religious vision. The Satmar enclave of Kiryas Joel isn’t a replica of something that existed in prewar Europe. It was, as David Myers and Naomi Stolzenberg write in their upcoming book, Teitelbaum’s American fantasy; an American shtetl.

In the street protests and general political activism in present day Hasidism we may be witnessing yet another iteration of Hasidism’s developing Americanism. While Hasidim have always supported political candidates and voted in relatively high numbers, most of the advocacy was primarily transactional; they supported candidates they thought could maximize their resources. In 2020, impromptu pro-Trump rallies in Flatbush and Boro Park, a pair of Brooklyn neighborhoods with high numbers of Orthodox Jews, illustrates a new kind of political populism seldom seen in communities that often prefer to stay out of the spotlight.

The question as to why Hasidim overwhelmingly supported an immoral, autocratic, and reactionary candidate with such verve and vigor is multivalent. One reading may have to do with a lopsided equation of integration. That is, on the one hand Hasidim are becoming politicized as a result of their developing Americanism, which values public political expression. At the same time, however, they haven’t revised their general worldview, which was built on earlier political realities, a theology and religious ideology founded on chosenness, and historic feelings of exclusion and resentment.

The “us vs. them” mentality that grew over time and the theology that informed traditional Jewish teaching in large part followed suit. In many ways the binary of “friend vs. enemy” plays into the Trump vision of America. Traditional Jews, like the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, have historically been attracted to strong autocratic leaders who shared their binary view of the world. In this sense, their support of Trump is predictable

The challenge of emancipation, or the “liberal social contract” with the Jews in Europe, required Jews to revise those ideological principles to become fully a part of larger society. Non-Orthodox Judaisms, Jewish secularisms, and to some extent Neo- and Modern Orthodoxy engaged this challenge in different ways. But American democracy demanded an even stronger revision.

American rabbi Mordecai Kaplan argued that chosenness simply could not survive American democracy intact. One cannot easily be full members of a democratic society and maintain a theologically exceptionalist status. He was right, until he was wrong. By the 1950s, sociologists talked of the “death of Orthodoxy” in America while Hasidism was just beginning to rebuild in this new land of tolerance—what Rabbi Schneerson called a “medina shel hesed” (a land of kindness). Whether and how Orthodoxy could bear the weight of American integrationism was an open question.

What the sociologists of the 1950s could not have predicted was the rise of the counter-culture that would re-frame America’s conformism into a multitude of expressions of difference, pluralism, and later, multiculturalism. This would not only save Orthodoxy but enable Hasidism to enter the public square with minimal ideological and theological revisions. Schneerson saw this in the 1960s more than any other American Jewish religious leader and his movement flourished, riding the wave of multiculturalism. One of the byproducts of the multicultural turn was the ability of more traditional Jewish communities, Hasidim among them, to maintain strict observance and retain their ideological and theological commitments while increasingly becoming a part of American society. By the 1960s, acculturation was no longer a prerequisite for integration. Hasidim entered the public square without having to pay much of a theological or ideological price. The “liberal social contract” no longer carried the weight it once did.

The problem, however, is that Hasidim entered the public square with their old-world chauvinistic and xenophobic inclinations intact and residual fears of the left stemming from the days when the left meant socialism in Europe and when Russia used communism as a tool to attack and demolish religion. Given Jews’ complicated relationship with race, and African Americans in particular, this fear easily transformed into a belief that the progressive left, in part in the BLM movement, was inherently anti-religious, and antisemitic. Interestingly, the antisemitism of the right seemed less threatening, perhaps more familiar, than the antisemitism of the left. Trump subtly exonerating the marchers at Charlottesville seemed less problematic than Linda Sarsour’s anti-Zionism. Even though they weren’t Zionists, “Jews will not replace us” seemed less threatening to the Hasidim than “Israel is a colonialist state.”

Another paradoxical twist in this story is that the antisemitism of the left today in America is largely targeting Zionism, which the Hasidim largely don’t support either, albeit for very different reasons. Thus, what’s emerged is a kind of Hasidic anti-Zionist pro-Israelism; tacit support for Israel as an act of tribal fidelity rather than any form of Zionism. Ask a Hasidic Jew touting Trump’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem whether he is a “Zionist” and he will think you’re crazy. Anti-Zionism has been part of the very fabric of Hasidic Judaism for a long time, even now in muted form. But somehow without abandoning that, they found a way to support Israel and deem left-wing anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism, while their form of anti-Zionism is protecting Judaism.

The Trumpization of Hasidic Jewry should not be surprising and it can be thought of as the byproduct of multiculturalism’s enabling. When Hasidic groups can enter the public square without compromising their theological and ideological commitments—that is, without a “liberal social contract”—they can easily be attracted to right-wing reactionary movements. They will support the Czar over Napoleon.

In earlier times, as Shneur Zalman of Liady suggested, they had to compromise their material wealth for the sake of spiritual survival. In America that’s no longer necessary. They can have both and in addition they can partner with a segment of the majority (white evangelicals) that has ostensibly found its own tacit acceptance of the Jews through its own version of Zionism. Just as Hasidim can be anti-Zionist and pro-Israel, evangelicals can be antisemitic and pro-Israel. It’s not very provocative to say that when Hasidic ideology, founded on the kabbalistic tradition, becomes politicized, it can easily support a kind of autocracy—as long as they are the beneficiaries.

On this reading, the origin of Hasidic Trumpism may be Schneerson himself. It was Schneerson who believed Hasidic Jews could enter the public square without sacrificing any of their ideological positions. He couldn’t have predicted Trump but he enabled the Hasidic support of a candidate not merely as Jews, but as “Americans,” while holding onto views that reflect a Jewish experience of the old world.

Schneerson’s success is undeniable, but we may be seeing the dark side of that success in Hasidic Trumpism. Chabad has been adept at presenting its Jewish vision in the form of a sweetened Judaism to non-religious Jews and to the world more generally. But the support of a political figure who expresses a different form of chauvinism is telling in regards to how the deep-seated ideological core of Chabad, and Hasidism more generally, remains operational.

Source: How Did Hasidic Jewry Become a Stronghold of Trumpism?

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Interfaith marriage fatwa feeds debate in Egypt

2020/12/01 Leave a comment

Of note, one of the issues of debate between more inclusive or traditional interpretations:

An Islamic scholar has stirred up major debates by backing the marriage of Muslim women and non-Muslim men, an issue always dealt with nervously by the religious establishment and pro-establishment scholars.

Amna Nosier, a professor of Islamic philosophy at Al-Azhar University and a member of the Egyptian Parliament, said there is no text in the Quran that bans the marriage of Muslim women and non-Muslim men. Islam permits Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women, provided that they do not prevent them from observing their faith.

There are many instances of Muslim men, including celebrities, who have married non-Muslim women. Egypt’s former minister of religious endowments, Mahmud Hamdi Zakzouk, who died in April this year, was married to a German Christian woman.

Speaking on al-Hadath al-Youm TV Nov. 17, Nosier added that the question is especially clear if the men are Christians or Jews, which Islam calls “people of the book.”

A day later, Nosier told the state-run Channel One TV that the Quran only forbids the marriage of Muslim women and “idolaters.” She called on religious scholars to study and reconsider the issue.

Nosier’s remarks were met with a round of fatwas from the nation’s religious establishment and pro-establishment scholars.

Al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning, said the marriage of Muslim women and non-Muslim men is not permissible.

“This is an issue on which all scholars agreed in the past and agree in the present,” Al-Azhar said in a Nov. 18 statement.

Abdullah Rushdi, a researcher at the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which oversees the work of the nation’s mosques, described this type of marriage as a form of adultery and “invalid” in a video uploaded Nov. 18.

Ahmed Kerima, a professor of comparative jurisprudence at al-Azhar University, said all Muslim scholars are united against this form of marriage.

“This is a well-established opinion at all times and everywhere,” Kerima told Sada al-Balad TV Nov. 18.

Whether Muslim women should be allowed to marry men who do not follow their faith is an issue that has always been the subject of anxious and acrimonious discussion.

The religious establishment says the Quran speaks against this marriage beyond any doubt, citing verses from the holy book of Muslims that ban the marriage of Muslim women and “idolaters.”

Nevertheless, those calling for sanctifying this form of marriage draw a line between “idolators” and “people of the book.”

Beneath this row lies a need for the reexamination and reinterpretation of religious texts, say religious reformists, especially concerning issues on which the scriptures do not offer clear rules.

“The fight over interfaith marriages is now within Al-Azhar,” said Khalid Montasser, a medical doctor, writer and staunch campaigner for religious reform. “It is between those who want renewal and those who want to keep things as they are with the aim of controlling the public,” he told Al-Monitor.

Historian and researcher Maged M. Farag, one of thousands of people debating interfaith marriages in cyberspace in the past few days, said he knows of dozens of Muslim women who married non-Muslim men.

“They register civil marriage contracts in Lebanon, Cyprus and other countries,” Farag said. “Some non-Muslim men even convert to Islam on paper only. Those living outside Egypt do not care a whit about the fatwas of these sheikhs,” Farag wrote on Facebook.

Nosier says these problems are why there is an urgent need for religious scholars to discuss modern issues and guide believers on dealing with them.

“This is a very serious issue that affects the lives of millions of Muslim women living in the West,” Nosier told Al-Monitor. “Some of these women have to live with their non-Muslim partners without being married to them, as their religion prohibits it. We must renew our understanding of religion to keep up with the changes happening in our life.”

The issue became a hot topic in Egypt after Tunisia overturned a law that prevented Muslim women from marrying non-Muslims in 2017.

Muslim men being permitted to marry non-Muslim women gives rise to accusations that men interpret religious texts in their own interests.

“Men dominate the interpretation of religious texts,” feminist writer and equality campaigner Dena Anwer told Al-Monitor. “Women can no longer be ignored, especially with the major role they play in society.”

TV host Yasmine el-Khateib expressed the view that allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men would be the “correction” of a mistake men make by giving themselves rights they deny women.

The ongoing debate is likely to continue and deepen, but may or may not lead to social change.

Cases of interfaith marriage often elicit shock and condemnation among a large number of Egyptians. Under this shock is the unwavering stance of the religious establishment that these marriages are unacceptable in Islam, especially if they are of women marrying non-Muslim men.

Mohamed Gamal, a civil servant in his early 40s using a pseudonym, said he married a non-Muslim woman even as everyone around him opposed it.

“My family opposed it and her family opposed it, too,” Gamal told Al-Monitor.

He said he has to hide his wife’s religious identity to avoid trouble. “Everybody is against interfaith marriages, even as Muslim men are permitted to marry non-Muslim women,” Gamal said.

Al-Monitor contacted several Muslim women who have married non-Muslim men, but none were ready to talk.

“Muslim scholars prohibited the marriage of Muslim women and non-Muslim men at all times and everywhere, having based their judgment on strong evidence,” said Osama al-Hadidi, the director of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Center, the website through which Al-Azhar reaches out to Muslims around the world. “They did this for the welfare of families,” he told Al-Monitor.

Source: Interfaith marriage fatwa feeds debate in Egypt

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Religious minorities say Quebec’s Christmas gathering plan shows a double standard

2020/11/24 Leave a comment

Valid critique. I remember when Ontario’s Sunday closing laws (Lord’s Day Act, the Retail Business Holidays Act) were repealed or amended given this discriminatory impact on other religions along with general public pressure in the early 1990s:

Members of religious minority groups in Quebec are decrying the provincial government’s plan to allow Christmas-time gatherings in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling the move a sign of a double standard.

The condemnations came days after Premier Francois Legault offered Quebecers what he dubbed a “moral contract” through an offer to raise gathering limits over a four-day period starting on Christmas Eve.

“It’s disappointing,” said Yusuf Faqiri, a representative of the National Council of Canadian Muslims. “The Muslim community, the Jewish community, the Sikh community, when we had our respective holidays, we were not able to gather.”

Legault announced the terms of the Christmas repreive on Thursday, saying groups of up to 10 could gather between Dec. 24 and Dec. 27. The short-term move marks a sharp reversal from rules currently in place in much of the province, where all indoor gatherings are banned in regions classified as red zones under the province’s pandemic response plan.

Faqiri said his objections to the move aren’t rooted solely in the pandemic. His organization is one of several that is currently challenging Quebec’s secularism law in court. That law bans some public servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols while working, on the grounds that the state must be religiously neutral.

He said it’s “a contradiction” to defend that bill while allowing Christmas gatherings.

“All Quebecers, from all faith groups, from all respective traditions, we’re all proud participants in the society,” he said. “But in order for us to do that, we should all be treated the same and that’s where the fundamental issue lies.”

Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal, said Jewish people have been left out.

“But we’ve been left out of something I wouldn’t want to be included in,” she quipped.

Grushcow said she’s worried that the allowance for gatherings will put vulnerable people and teachers at risk.

“I don’t know that the government’s following the science and the medical wisdom,” she said. “That’s the piece that worries me.”

She said she doesn’t want the government to allow people to gather for Hanukkah, noting that her congregation has already made it through more important Jewish holidays in the midst of the pandemic.

“We made it through Passover, we made it through Rosh Hashanah, we made it through Yom Kippur,” she said. “So if anything, I would hope that our experience can show that it’s possible to be creative and still be connected, even while keeping each other safe.”

Grushcow said there is an inconsistency when it comes to the Quebec government’s approach to secularism.

“You’re saying that you can rearrange the whole school calendar and put a society at risk so folks can celebrate Christmas, but you’re not going to let it teacher wear a hijab or a kippah,” she said. “It is a bit of a challenge.”

When asked about people who don’t celebrate Christmas at press conference on Thursday evening, Legault said he believes allowing for gatherings around Christmas is what most Quebecers want.

Other rabbis echoed Grushcow’s concerns.

“While we appreciate the intent of the Quebec government’s decision to accommodate families and allow them to gather for Christmas, it is unfortunate and disturbing that it does not apply to all faith communities,” Rabbi Reuben Poupko, the co-chair of Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs-Quebec and the rabbi of the Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation in Montreal, said in a statement. “The elevating of one faith community over another is inappropriate, and all faith communities should be treated in an equitable manner.”

At a technical briefing on Friday morning, public health officials said they didn’t specifically choose to centre the moral contract around Christmas but selected the dates because they fell in the middle of the winter school break.

Source: https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2020/11/22/religious-minorities-say-quebecs-christmas-gathering-plan-shows-a-double-standard/#.X7uWei3b23g

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Aykol: France and Macron Aren’t Helping Solve Islam’s Crisis. They’re Strengthening Extremists Instead.

2020/11/23 Leave a comment

Good thoughtful commentary:

“Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today.” That is what the French President Emmanuel Macron said on Oct. 2, while announcing his “anti-radicalism plan.” Just two weeks later, on Oct. 16, a devotee of that radicalism killed and beheaded a high-school teacher, Samuel Paty, in a Paris suburb, merely for showing the infamous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in his classroom. And soon after, three worshippers at a church in Nice were savagely murdered by another terrorist who seemed to have the same motivation: to punish blasphemy against the prophet of Islam.

In return, the French authorities initiated a crackdown on anything they deemed to be Islamism, and also projected the controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad on government buildings in France—only to provoke mass protests in various parts of the Muslim world.

Macron is doing little to resolve this crisis and could actually be inflaming it, because the sort of freedom he claims to defend is full of painful shortcomings and cynical double standards.

All these events have initiated an ongoing debate about France, Islam, and freedom. Some in the West now see France as the beacon of Enlightenment values against the dark forces of religious fanaticism. Others argue that the main problem is Islamophobia, racism and the colonial arrogance of France in a world where—except for a handful of extremists—Muslims are the real victims.

As a Muslim who has been writing about these issues for about two decades, let me offer a more nuanced view: First, France—like any target of terrorism—deserves sympathy for its fallen and solidarity against the threat. Moreover, Macron is largely correct that Islam is facing a “crisis”—not “all over world,” but certainly in some parts of the world—and we Muslims need an honest conversation about that. Unfortunately, Macron is doing little to resolve this crisis and could actually be inflaming it, because the sort of freedom he claims to defend is full of painful shortcomings and cynical double standards.

Many Muslims would find any talk of Islam facing a crisis unacceptable, if not heretical, for they think of Islam as a divinely ordained, perfect, and eternal truth. Yet one can well believe in the divine core of Islam, as I do, while being critical of the many layers of human interpretation built on top of that. It is this human interpretation that gave us much of the Islamic fiqh, or jurisprudence, which has some harsh verdicts that conflict with what the modern world calls human rights and civil liberties—the notions that people should be free to believe or disbelieve in a religion, and free to evangelize or criticize it.

Let’s take the burning issue at hand: What should Muslims do in the face of blasphemy against the Prophet—or sabb al-rasul, as medieval jurists called it. They all agreed it should be severely punished. According to mainline Shafi and Maliki jurists, the blasphemer would be executed immediately, unless he or she repented. According to the stricter Hanbalis, the blasphemer would be executed even if he or she repented. And according to the milder Hanafis, there was no clear ground for execution, but the blasphemer could be jailed and beaten with sticks.

None of these verdicts had any basis in the Quran—like most similar verdicts in Islamic jurisprudence—but jurists inferred them from some targeted killings that reportedly took place during the Prophet’s battles with the polytheists of his time.

What is less noticed is that medieval Muslim jurists reasoned according to the norms of their time, where the concept of free speech simply didn’t exist. Indeed, their Christian contemporaries weren’t any more lenient to blasphemers or heretics. The Byzantine Empire, under the Justinian Laws of the 6th century, declared, “Men shall not … blaspheme God,” and gave the death penalty for those who did. Later, in Europe, the Catholic Inquisition took blasphemy law a step further by making this capital punishment just more painful with new techniques like auto-da-fé, or burning people alive at the stake.

We Muslims need this reform not to please Westerners, but to save our own societies from the sectarianism, bigotry, misogyny, and oppression that is being justified in the name of Islam

Yet Christianity has changed immensely in the past four centuries—first with the lessons taken from the horrific Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), and then new ideas of tolerance advocated by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke. Debates on freedom among Catholics continued well into the 20th century, but ultimately all mainline Christians gave up coercive power in the name of their faith.

However, the same transformation hasn’t yet fully taken place in Islam—and that lies at the core of the crisis, that not just Macron but also critical Muslims are talking about. Medieval Islamic jurisprudence is still there, with some violent and coercive verdicts unrefuted by most contemporary religious scholars. Most Muslims are not interested in these verdicts, let alone eager to implement them, but some are. Their zealotry, in the extreme, leads to vigilante violence and terrorism. In the mainstream, it leads to blasphemy laws that are in place in many Muslim-majority states—Pakistan being one of the most ferocious.

A fairly conservative but thoughtful American Muslim, Yasir Qadi, a popular preacher and a dean at the Al-Maghrib Institute, recently admitted this problem in an interesting post “on the French terrorist attack.” Most mainstream Muslim authorities condemn such terrorist attacks, he noted, but “don’t directly address the fiqh [jurisprudence] texts involved.” Especially on the issue of blasphemy, he added, “There are texts and fiqh issues that need to be discussed frankly—hardly anyone has done that (still!).”

Having such frank discussions on Islamic jurisprudence—and the underlying theological assumptions—could open Islam’s path toward its own authentic Enlightenment, the gist of which should be giving up coercive power in the name of the faith. We Muslims need this reform not to please Westerners, but to save our own societies from the sectarianism, bigotry, misogyny, and oppression that is being justified in the name of Islam, and to better reflect the true values of our faith.

In other words, Islam needs its own Enlightenment, but Macron is advocating the wrong sort of Enlightenment. And that’s a problem deeply rooted in France’s own history.

It is worth recalling that the Enlightenment was not a monolithic movement. As the late great historian Gertrude Himmelfarb explained in Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, there was rather a clear distinction between the French and the Anglo-Saxon paths: In France, Enlightenment often implied a combat between faith and reason. In Britain and America, it often implied a harmony of them. Therefore, the French path has been much more assertive, anti-clerical, and also bloody. The French Revolution, lest we forget, was an extremely violent affair, where hundreds of priests were killed—often by beheading—and the Church’s dominance of the public square was replaced, not by neutrality, but an alternative religion called the Cult of Reason.

Having subdued Catholicism long ago with this aggressive Enlightenment, France seems to be reviving it against Islam, especially under the banner of laïcité, its unmistakably illiberal form of secularism.

The French often say foreigners don’t understand laïcité. I do—because my country, Turkey, imitated the French model for almost a century.

The French often say foreigners don’t understand laïcité. I do—because my country, Turkey, imitated the French model for almost a century.

The main problem of this specific form of secularism is its reliance on preemptive intolerance; assuming that religion and its symbols might become oppressive if they are visible, laïcité suppresses them in the first place. The result of such policies is often a simmering grudge among the religious, and ultimately a backlash, if not revenge—which is precisely how Turkey got its great Islamic avenger, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Although Macron says the target of laïcité is not Islam, but only “Islamism,” the latter term is left quite vague in his rhetoric. In practice, it’s not vague at all. In France it has long been obvious that personal Muslim practices are targeted: For many years, Muslim women in France have been banned from wearing headscarves in public buildings, or so-called burkinis on beaches. Last September, a French politician from Macron’s party protested a young French Muslim woman for merely walking into the National Assembly while wearing a headscarf. And, in October, the French interior minister even took issue with halal food aisles in supermarkets—and kosher ones, too, signaling a threat to the religious freedom of just not Muslims, but other practicing believers as well.

In other words, what France requires from its Muslims is not just accepting the freedom of speech of blasphemers, but also giving up a part of their own freedom of religion. This is not only wrong in principle, but also myopic and counterproductive. It just makes it harder for practicing French Muslims to feel respected, accepted, and therefore fully French—precisely the sort of integration radical Islamists would like to avert.

Source: France and Macron Aren’t Helping Solve Islam’s Crisis. They’re Strengthening Extremists Instead.

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Religious Freedom Arguments Give Rise To Executive Order Battle

2020/11/17 Leave a comment

As in so many policy areas, partisan gridlock:

Key government policies on religious freedom and discrimination, once set through legislation, are increasingly dictated by presidential orders, meaning they shift capriciously from one administration to the next.

In 2014, advocates for LGBTQ rights cheered when President Obama unilaterally issued an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating in their hiring practices on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Four years later, the Trump administration weakened that order with another unilateral movedirecting that contractors facing a discrimination claim under Obama’s order should be entitled to a “religious exemption.”

The Labor Department then proposed a rule that would give the directive the force of law and permit faith-based contractors to give hiring preference to individuals with particular religious beliefs, such as an opposition to same sex unions or transgender identities.

That time, it was conservatives who were pleased.

Such back-and-forth executive orders are now set to continue under President-elect Joe Biden, who has promised to reverse President Trump’s hiring directives.

Behind the dueling orders is a deep disagreement over the meaning of the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom. Conservatives say the right to “free exercise” of religion means people and organizations should be able to act on their religious objections to abortion, same sex marriage, or accommodation policies for transgender individuals.

Others say the First Amendment’s prohibition against the “establishment” of a religion means that religion-based arguments should not be used to justify discrimination or the denial of civil rights or basic human services.

Such conflicts in the past have been resolved through legislative remedies. Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. Both measures had bipartisan support, but that consensus has since broken down.

Health care and nondiscrimination became so partisan,” says Holly Hollman, general counsel at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “We’ve kind of lost our shared definition and commitment to religious liberty in ways that make it harder to legislate.”

The prospect of a divided government in 2021, with Joe Biden in the White House and possibly a Republican-led Senate, means that consensus around religious freedom issues may continue to be elusive.

“Given the gridlock, we’re going to see more unilateral action from the executive branch, whether it be regulatory action or executive orders,” says Ryan Anderson, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who writes often on religious freedom issues.

Following his 2014 order barring discriminatory hiring practices by federal contractors, Obama issued guidance in 2016 that required schools to protect transgender students from harassment and to accommodate their identities with respect to pronouns and bathrooms.

That guidance, however, was rescinded shortly after Trump was inaugurated, when his administration told school districts that the relevant policies were more properly established by state and local authorities.

Three months later, Trump issued a sweeping order “promoting free speech and religious liberty.” The order called for weaker enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt religious groups from endorsing political candidates. It also instructed government agencies to consider new regulations to address “conscience-based objections” to the provision of certain health care services, and it directed the Attorney General to issue guidance to all federal agencies on what religious liberty protections require.

Among the agencies responding quickly to the order was the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where a conservative activist, Roger Severino, was put in charge of a “conscience and religious freedom division” under that department’s Office of Civil Rights, which Severino directs.

“Every agency has a civil rights office in the federal government,” Severino noted last month in a video presentation. “Not every agency, until now, had a religious freedom office. And now we do.”

Over the course of his term in office, Trump has taken a variety of unilateral steps to promote a conservative view of religious freedom, many of which a Biden administration might be inclined to reverse.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) have both issued detailed lists of the executive actions they expect to see Biden take in the area of religious freedom, perhaps beginning with a broad order similar to the one Trump issued.

“We would like to see the Biden administration sign an executive order to restore and protect religious freedom for all Americans,” says Rachel Lazer, the AU president, “and make clear that religious freedom should operate as a shield to protect us and not as a sword to license discrimination.”

Some of Trump’s executive actions will be easier than others to reverse. The directive to weaken enforcement of the Johnson Amendment could be countered simply by mandating strengthened enforcement. Other issues could be settled through the courts.

An HHS-issued “conscience rule” that would allow health care workers to refuse to provide medical services that conflict with their moral and religious beliefs has faced several court challenges and is now on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The AU’s Lazer says a Biden administration could simply decline to defend the rule.

“We would expect that the Biden administration would not carry forward with any type of appeal,” Lazer says. “[That] would cut that off at the knees.”

Some of Trump’s directives would be vigorously defended by outside groups, however, particularly where they concern sexuality and marriage.

“There are a variety of religious traditions that hold viewpoints on this question,” says Ryan Anderson, of the Heritage Foundation. “Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, evangelicals, Latter Day Saints, Muslims, and various people who accept the Genesis creation story are going to have strong convictions about male and female.”

Under President-elect Biden, Anderson says, “the government might be asking us to violate those convictions. If we’re going to be pluralistic, how do we navigate those disagreements?”

Even if a Biden administration manages to undo some of the government directives that reflected conservative interpretations of religious freedom principles, other groups could go to court with similar claims, using the same arguments.

“The undoing would give rise to legal challenges,” warns Louise Melling, the deputy legal director at ACLU.

Such challenges are likely to get a more favorable hearing, given the installation of more conservative judges in federal courts across the country and a newly powerful conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The court is clearly in the midst of reconceiving some of our religion statutes and the constitution, I think,” Melling says.

With that prospect, battles over religious freedom are likely to continue, no matter the presidential administration.

Source: Religious Freedom Arguments Give Rise To Executive Order Battle

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Religion is under assault in China. But Canada may not have the moral high ground it needs to defend it

2020/11/10 Leave a comment

While I agree with David’s critique of Chinese government repression of religious (and other) minorities, I think he overstates the impact and influence of the Office of Religious Freedom canceled by the Liberal government and makes a false equivalence between Chinese government repression and the relatively minor but not unimportant measures of Liberal government he mentions:

When I arrived in China as ambassador in the late summer of 2009, I came armed with a personal belief that supporting religious freedom in the country would be a central objective of the human-rights program at the embassy. I was encouraged in this by the very welcome priority that the government of the day brought to the issue, which made it clear that religious freedom is a Canadian value and a human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – one that belongs to everyone, everywhere.

This policy clarity upset some people in the department who were unhappy about the inclusion of religious belief among the human rights that they were being called to defend. They criticized support for religious freedom as an unfair and partisan intervention on behalf of one of two perspectives that deserved equal respect from an impartial Canada. The other perspective was typically described as the “freedom not to believe.” It was as if we were trying to impose on countries like China a specific religious perspective, rather than simply trying to ensure that people in China weren’t tortured or imprisoned simply for having a religious perspective.

Having seen how ruthlessly China suppresses both faith and the faithful, I’ve never been particularly worried about whether the freedom not to believe is imperilled there.

My work supporting religious freedom in China exposed me to a form of Chinese diplomacy that was, at times, even more combative than it is now. I saw how tense and insecure officials in China were when it came to matters relating to faith, and how little understanding – much less sympathy – Communist bureaucrats have for matters of the spirit. This profound gulf in understanding and experience, widened by decades of anti-religious propaganda, has bred ignorance, intolerance and even fear of religion.

I had to struggle tenaciously to visit even a few temples and monasteries when I was finally and grudgingly allowed access to Tibet. When I visited Xinjiang, in China’s far west, I was followed for an entire day by a car full of thugs. This effort at intimidation was triggered by my meeting, without first seeking permission, with members of China’s Ismaili Muslim community, who are cut off from their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan. I was given a public dressing-down by my Chinese government handler when I insisted on keeping my appointment at a Catholic seminary that was being harassed by Communist Party officials. I avoided such theatrics when I later attended a service at a Protestant house church, but only because I didn’t bother to seek permission beforehand, since I knew it wouldn’t have been granted anyway.

I endured a number of lectures from officials from the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) – long-winded “opening” statements that often absorbed 55 of the 60 minutes allotted for our meeting. These sessions only served to reinforce my sense that the professional formation of Chinese officials renders them incapable of understanding religion as anything other than a superstition, but one that has sufficient motivating power to be a threat to the party.

This perception is reinforced if the religion in question is Christianity, despite roots in China that are 1,000 years old. Often, Christianity is referred to as foreign, colonial and sinister. Yet Christian missionaries played a role in introducing health care, education and other modern social services in China in a period extending from the late 19th century to the beginning of the Communist era in 1949. Canadian missionaries helped establish universities and medical schools, and cared for those injured in natural disasters and from violence inflicted by warlords and the invading Japanese. They even helped organize resistance to the cruel practice of foot binding, something that had been inflicted on generations of young Chinese women.

While China’s official antagonism to religion has been fairly consistent, its approach has not been uniform over time. The anti-religious extremism of the Cultural Revolution was followed by a gradual increase in tolerance broadly across many aspects of Chinese life, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s. The notable and tragic exception was the party’s bloody 1999 campaign against Falun Gong, a spiritual practice whose growing popularity caused communist officials to initiate a violent crackdown and propaganda campaign that led to waves of persecution, arrests, and reported torture and death.

A major rationale behind Beijing’s decision to relax controls on religion was its belief that it needed foreign support to power its economic revolution. But when Western countries were laid low by the economic crisis of 2008, that belief was dramatically diminished. After that recession, former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s administration became notable for its growing hostility to religion. This was tragically illustrated by a brutal government response to demonstrations in Tibet in 2008, and in the wake of communal violence in Xinjiang in 2009. Unrest in both places was triggered by legitimate local fears of religious and cultural assimilation; in both cases, the crackdowns targeted belief and believers.

When I visited Xinjiang, just after those 2009 riots, I was appalled by the formidable Chinese military presence: a ring of armed troops and military vehicles surrounding the great Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar. When I visited Tibet, I encountered menacing armed patrols forcing their way against the flow of pilgrims circling the Jokhang Temple, the holiest site in Tibetan Buddhism.

Religious persecution has only deepened and darkened today under Xi Jinping. Even as the decades-long assault on Tibet continues, and as Christian churches topple, China is showing us something new in Xinjiang: the awesome power of the 21st-century surveillance state. It is chilling in its scope, ambition and efficiency, as Muslim holy places, scripture, music, cultural practices and even traditions of family life are methodically eradicated, while Xinjiang is itself transformed into a vast prison camp. China is effectively writing the textbook for religious persecution in the 21st century.

Not surprisingly, China’s response to COVID-19 has also created new opportunities for surveillance and control of religious institutions. According to The Globe and Mail, Beijing has effectively enlisted faith leaders in a broader campaign to promote the party’s patriotic agenda.

Party-cultivated fervour for Mr. Xi has verged on the religious. He has been inserted into religious liturgy and iconography in Xinjiang and elsewhere, mirroring his growing cult of personality in the broader party and society. Not so long ago, a more moderate party – one that was embracing consensus-based decision-making and a predictable, peaceful process for leadership transition – had tolerated a degree of ambiguity about who occupies the holy of holies in churches, mosques and temples. But as Mr. Xi consolidates his unquestioned personal authority, the pressure grows to enshrine him in the mysterious space at the pinnacle of each religion – the place reserved for God alone.

There is almost certainly an overseas dimension to Mr. Xi’s efforts to suppress religious freedom. The party seeks to infiltrate and corrupt any activity, cause or belief system, at home or abroad, that attracts target communities. When shared religious belief brings members of the Chinese diaspora, or Tibetans, or Uyghurs together in Canada, it offers the party an opportunity for infiltration, for surveillance, for influence operations and for intimidation. And our government fails these groups by being less than resolute when it comes to speaking up about religious persecution in China.

Part of the reason is bad diplomacy, plain and simple. There is a pervasive notion in Ottawa circles that you can advance a cause by not speaking honestly about it – that China will somehow moderate its behaviour in exchange for our silence, rather than shrewdly equating our silence with consent. But the silent treatment never works with China: It only emboldens Beijing.

Indeed, it is precisely this colossally naïve diplomacy that is at the heart of the Vatican’s disastrous but recently renewed agreement with China, in which the Catholic Church has obtained modest concessions relating to the appointment of bishops and, in return, has remained silent about China’s human-rights abuses, including attacks on the religious freedom of Chinese Catholics and other believers.

But there is more to Canada’s disinclination to speak out. I believe our present government has been indifferent, at best, when it comes to religious freedom here at home.

In 2016, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government eliminated Global Affairs’ Office of Religious Freedom, a standalone initiative created by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2013 to monitor religious persecution around the world. That announcement was delivered with a hint of secular disapproval: “We believe that human rights are better defended when they are considered, universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, as set out in the Vienna Declaration,” said Stéphane Dion, who was foreign minister at the time. What’s hardest to understand is that he was saying this as violence was increasing against religious believers in China, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

Then, in 2017, Governor-General Julie Payette delivered an inexplicably offensive anti-religious rant. “We are still debating and still questioning whether life was a divine intervention or whether it was coming out of a natural process let alone, oh my goodness, a random process,” she said in a speech at the Canadian Science Policy Conference, mocking the idea that faith and reason could possibly intersect. Strangely, when the Prime Minister finally addressed the controversy, it was to defend his appointee, and not the millions of Canadians she had insulted.

That same year, we also witnessed the government’s clumsy attempt to require organizations applying for summer jobs funding to attest that their core mandate respects the right to abortion. Although this failed, religious organizations continue to worry, justifiably, about respect for conscience rights. They watch anxiously as the Canadian government broadens the availability of what it refers to as assisted dying by redefining promised safeguards as impediments before steadily sweeping them away.

This is deeply troubling. Perhaps those in power in this country can no longer summon the required reserves of understanding, tolerance and mutual respect that allow religious belief to flourish. But what is certainly clear is that Canadians are unlikely to champion religious freedom in China, or anywhere, if we don’t respect it everywhere – Canada included.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-religion-is-under-assault-in-china-but-canada-may-not-have-the-moral/

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Macron wants to fix France’s social ills – but he won’t do it by ‘reforming’ Islam

2020/11/05 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Art Goldhammer:

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, minced no words in his recent diatribe against his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. “Macron needs mental treatment,” Erdoğan said. This blast from Ankara came in response to Macron’s announcement of a series of measures intended to “reform” the practice of Islam in France and end “Islamic separatism” – proof, to Erdoğan, that Macron had “a problem with Islam”.

Then, just five days later, on 29 October, a newly arrived Tunisian immigrant killed three Christians at prayer in Nice. France had yet again been the victim of “an Islamist terrorist attack,” Macron proclaimed. He did not need to remind his countrymen of the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by another immigrant, this one of Chechen descent, in broad daylight two weeks earlier, or of the prior stabbing of two people outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The execution of Paty, the murders in Nice, and the Paris stabbings are just the latest in a series of attacks that have claimed the lives of 260 French citizens since 2012. No one can deny that France has a terrorism problem.

Source: Macron wants to fix France’s social ills – but he won’t do it by ‘reforming’ Islam

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New Zealand ranked the most ‘Islamic country in the world’ in annual index

2020/11/02 Leave a comment

Never heard of this index before and no detailed explanation of methodology used to assess “implementing Islamic ideals” rather than religious practise and observance:

New Zealand has been named the country that most fits Islamic ideals for the second year in a row, but the area of everyday finance is still difficult for Muslims, says a financial commentator.

In the 2019 Islamicity index, released earlier this year, New Zealand is ranked first overall, followed by Sweden, Iceland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland. The top Muslim-majority country is United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 44.

New Zealand ranks 3rd in terms of its economy, 4th for legal and governance, 5th for human and political rights, and 8th for international relations.

According to Islam, the use of money for the purpose of making money is forbidden, meaning the concept of interest is not allowed. Wealth must be generated from legitimate trade and asset-based investment, and investors are also required to invest in things with social and ethical benefit.

Financial commentator Janine Starks said that despite the high ranking, the New Zealand system was not helpful to Muslims in terms of their everyday personal finance needs.

“Basic mortgages, insurance and savings accounts are non compliant and mean they need to make decisions against the protocols of their faith,” Starks said.

“Many KiwiSaver funds are ethical but not to the standard required, as even things like companies in the alcohol sector are banned.”

Amanah Ethical was the only KiwiSaver provider which purified its investments.

Anjum Rahman, a founding member of the Islamic Women’s Council New Zealand, was not surprised New Zealand had the highest ranking.

”In terms of basic Islamic values – integrity, consensus, and all of those things – New Zealand has done really, really well, and it was not surprising to me when I heard about it in terms of religious freedoms, human rights, all of those things that are so important,” Rahman said.

She said the index challenged the notions that Islam was incompatible with the West, and that Muslims could not thrive in Western environments.

“Of course we want to do some things our own way but that doesn’t make us any less part of this country, and I think our dreams and aspirations for it are similar to most people’s here.”

Speaking truth to power was a fundamental aspect of Islam, she said, and not all Muslim-majority countries allowed that. Some governments did not translate Islamic values to the political and social realm as they should.

“So in that sense in terms of New Zealand, we’ve always felt like we’ve been able to live the life that we want to lead here, I think most of the Muslim community would say that.

“Of course it was marred by the Christchurch attacks, and of course we have our share of racism, Islamophobia, bigotry, so it’s not to say that it’s perfect, but it’s a scale and on a relative scale it’s doing well.”

There were a number of areas that were incompatible with Islam, particularly around financial matters.

“In terms of alcohol and gambling, that rugby, racing and beer part of the culture, we won’t fit into that – well, maybe the rugby.

“That is an area of incompatibility if all the social aspects are happening in the pub, and we’re not going to be going to the pub. But I feel like people are willing to be accommodating around that.”

Islamicity Foundation founder economist Hossein Askari was born in Iran and has lived most of his life in the United States. He has a PhD in economics from MIT, taught at US universities, and been on the executive board of International Monetary Fund.

The index was a way to bring about change in the Muslim world, he said.

“What has happened is even from the beginning the corrupt rulers and corrupt clerics banded together, they hijacked this religion, and they used it for their own enrichment, for their own wealth, for their own power.

“When you look at Muslim countries, and I say this openly, they’re despicable. There’s no freedom, there’s enormous inequality – look at Saudi Arabia, the inequality there is phenomenal.”

He combined with experts in the Quran to come up with the most important teachings of Islam, and then put numbers on those aspects to create the Islamicity Index.

“I think my index shows which countries would look like a Muslim country that did the things that Islam says you should do,” he said.

“I’m leaving out the praying and all that kind of stuff. And if you look at that list, the Muslim countries do miserably.

“The thing they do worst at is in political and human rights. Islam is very, very clear, God gave mankind freedom. If God gave us that freedom, what right has a political dictator to take that away?”

Fundamental to Islam was Sharia, which meant ‘the way’, Askari said.

“Islam tries to give you a path, if you choose to take it, of becoming a better person and creating a better society.”

At 75 years old, he dreams of coming to New Zealand, a place he has not yet visited. He calls it a gentle country, “except on the rugby field”.

Source: New Zealand ranked the most ‘Islamic country in the world’ in annual index

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Glavin: On the death of Samuel Paty – Shouldn’t freedom of religion mean freedom from religion too?

2020/10/30 Leave a comment

Two articles responding to the reaction in many Muslim countries to French President Macron’s comments following the beheading of Samuel Paty, starting with Terry Glavin’s pointing out the hypocrisy of those who criticize Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate in the West while being silent on Chinese repression and arguably genocidal policies against the Uighurs:

Samuel Paty was a quiet 47-year-old middle-school civics teacher at the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the suburbs of Paris. He would walk to and from school from his second-floor apartment in nearby Eragny, where he lived alone with his five-year-old son. After class, he liked to play tennis. By all accounts passionately devoted to teaching, Samuel Paty was otherwise a man of temperate disposition, well-regarded by his students and by his colleagues.

That was just three weeks ago. Now, Paty’s name is coming up in blood-curdling slogans shouted in the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in arguments and imbecilities erupting in Ankara, Riyadh, Islamabad and Tehran. Ambassadors have been summoned. Diplomats have been recalled. Tuesday this week was officially International Religious Freedom Day. If there was anything worth observing about it, it’s that religious freedom must mean freedom from religion, too, or it means nothing at all.

Source: Glavin: On the death of Samuel Paty – Shouldn’t freedom of religion mean freedom from religion too?

More temperate commentary by Konrad Yakabuski along similar lines:

The beheading this month of a middle-school teacher by an 18-year-old Islamic extremist, upset that his victim had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to his students, was a crime so horrific that it shocked even France’s most-hardened anti-terrorism experts.

In a country permanently on high alert since a wave of terrorist attacks took the lives of hundreds of French civilians in 2015, the gruesome decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty was unanimously condemned by French politicians as an assault on the Republic itself.

“Samuel Paty was killed because the Islamists want our future and because they know that, with heroes like him, they will never have it,” President Emmanuel Macron declared at an Oct. 21 ceremony in honour of the slain teacher held outside the Sorbonne. “We will defend the freedom you taught and raise up secularism. We will not renounce caricatures, or sketches, even if others step back. We will offer all the chances that the Republic owes to its youth without discrimination.”

The caricatures that Mr. Paty had shown his adolescent students, as part of a lesson on freedom of expression, were the same ones that had led to an attack on the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in 2015. That attack left 12 people dead and sparked the global “Je suis Charlie” movement in support of free speech. But Mr. Macron’s defence of the freedom of the press earned him nasty epithets throughout the Muslim world and exposed once again the clash in values between France’s secularist majority and its growing Muslim minority.

French police have rounded up dozens of suspected accomplices to the attack on Mr. Paty by a Chechen refugee who had been alerted to the teacher’s actions by French Muslims who denounced it on social media. Mr. Macron and hardline Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin have vowed further crackdowns on imams accused of promoting Islamic “separation” within France.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led the foreign charge against Mr. Macron with weekend diatribes questioning the French President’s mental health and accusing him of “leading a campaign of hate” against Muslims akin to the pre-Second World War treatment of European Jews. On Monday, Mr. Erdogan joined growing calls for a boycott of French products. Anti-Macron protests erupted in several majority-Muslim countries.

While other Western leaders expressed solidarity with Mr. Macron in the wake of Mr. Paty’s killing, it took Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 10 days to even acknowledge the incident – and only after the Bloc Québécois brought forward a House of Commons motion condemning the attack “on freedom of expression” in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northeast of Paris.

Questioned by journalists on Tuesday, Mr. Trudeau did condemn Mr. Paty’s killing, but declined to express his solidarity with Mr. Macron. “I’m going to take the opportunity to talk to world leaders, community leaders, leaders of the Muslim community here in Canada, to understand their worries, their concerns, to listen and to work to reduce these tensions,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Unfortunately for Mr. Trudeau, there is no middle ground in this debate. If he does not stand with Mr. Macron to defend freedom of expression, he automatically stands with Mr. Erdogan as an apologist for Muslim extremists. A listening tour will not cut it.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne also failed the grade with a Monday tweet in which he expressed “solidarity with our French friends.” He referred to “Turkey’s recent comments” as being “totally unacceptable” but did not rebuke Mr. Erdogan personally. He promised to “defend freedom of expression with respect.”

There is no other way to interpret Mr. Champagne’s tweet except as a repudiation of Mr. Paty and Charlie Hebdo. The caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed were anything but respectful. That was their whole point. No religion is off limits to satirists. And thank God for that.

The right to freedom of speech is meaningless if it is subject to conditions such as “respect.” The Constitution protects freedom of speech precisely because speech that is meaningful is often controversial. It is up to the courts to determine what constitutes hate speech under Section 319 of the Criminal Code. But the bar is set mercifully high. Democracy depends on it.

This is the second time in as many weeks that Mr. Trudeau’s government chose to trample on the Charter in the name of political correctness. After a University of Ottawa professor was suspended for using the n-word as part of an educational online lecture, Mr. Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland made banal pronouncements about fighting systemic racism rather than standing up for academic freedom. It was a facile cop-out on their part.

“We will not give in, ever,” Mr. Macron tweeted on Sunday, in French, English and Arabic. “We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and [we] defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values.”

Canadians should stand with Mr. Macron, even if their government will not.

Source: Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadians-should-stand-with-macron-even-if-trudeau-wont/

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , , , , ,

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