ICYMI – Ray Pennings: Don’t overlook the contribution faith has made to Canada’s first 150 years | National Post

2017/07/05 Leave a comment

More polling data from Angus Reid/Faith in Canada 150:

Beer, beavers, and ketchup chips may be convenient replies to the perennial question “What is Canadian?” but answering with substance takes more than a word. When it comes to Canadian perceptions of the role of faith and faith institutions, new polling conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with Faith in Canada 150, exposes unarticulated Canadian values that contradict the one-word answers most might expect on the subject.

Ask Canadians about their own religious perspectives, and 21 per cent fit into the “religiously committed” category with 19 per cent on the “non-believer” end of the spectrum. The majority is somewhere in the mushy middle. When it comes to the most obvious expressions of religion in a local community — physical buildings such as churches, temples, mosques, or synagogues — the response seems to be shrugged shoulders. Sure, 36 per cent see these buildings enhancing the aesthetic of the community (compared to 9 per cent suggesting they detract) but the majority suggests their impact is neutral.

A different story emerges, however, when Canadians are asked about more specific expressions of faith in their neighbourhood. For example, when it comes to the delivery of healthcare, whether through hospitals, homes for the elderly, health clinics or programs for individuals with special needs, between one-third and one-half of Canadians see a positive connection with religious faith compared to less than 10 per cent who see a negative one. Similarly, when it comes to caring for the marginalized and homeless, providing relief in disaster situations, or assisting in the settlement of refugees and immigrants, the proportion of those who express appreciation of faith’s role is anywhere between 31 and 50 per cent higher than those who are skeptical of it. Even non-believers generally affirm these contributions, although they are the most likely to admit ignorance of them in their communities.

As with any poll, there is nuance. It would be misleading to ignore that on most questions approximately one-quarter of the population sees the role of faith communities in Canada as “a mix of good and bad.” Certainly, the interactions of faith communities with Indigenous peoples are widely perceived to be a black mark on the Canadian faith story. At the same time, the most religious respondents are also the most likely (84 per cent) to believe in the importance of reconciliation.

Consistent with the findings of April’s poll conducted by Angus Reid Institute, Canadians seem to respond more negatively when asked about religious institutions or religion in general. However, when it comes to the specifics, their attitudes and behaviours tell a different story. They recognize that faith communities have been an important part of delivering the Canadian social safety net historically, and continue to play that role today. There is a minority negative perspective, dominated by younger males who profess no faith and express hostility to religion. But for more than two-thirds of Canadians who are quite certain that God or a higher power exists, it is clear that faith communities are doing either “very good” or “more good than bad” in their neighbourhoods.

Source: Ray Pennings: Don’t overlook the contribution faith has made to Canada’s first 150 years | National Post

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Israeli decision to shelve mixed-prayer space draws Canadian anger

2017/06/29 Leave a comment

Some unfordable parallels with other orthodox or fundamentalist elements within different religions:

A decision by Israel’s government to scrap plans for a mixed-gender prayer area at Jerusalem’s Western Wall has left a senior leader of Canada’s Jewish community “disappointed” but determined to fight the move.

Men and women are segregated as they approach the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

The men’s section of the Western Wall is also considerably larger than the women’s section.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a compromise deal last year that would recognize a prayer space where women and men could pray together.

But under pressure from ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition government, Netanyahu and his cabinet shelved that agreement on Sunday, leading to a firestorm of criticism from some Jewish leaders who say the relationship between the Jewish State and Jews who live outside of the Israel is now at risk.

Linda Kislowicz, the president of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said Netanyahu’s decision to back down on the deal “doesn’t make me happy.”

“I’m not sure it really reflects what [Netanyahu] really believes,” Kislowicz told CBC News. “And I think that enough pressure and enough people are going to impress upon him that this was a miscalculation.”

‘We will not stop lobbying’

Kislowicz, who lives in Toronto, is in Israel this week for a series of meetings with Israeli officials. She said those discussions quickly became focused on Sunday’s decision to cancel the plans for the mixed-prayer space. She spent several hours meeting Israeli politicians on Tuesday at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

‘We will not stop lobbying and influencing and pressuring,” until the deal to recognize the egalitarian prayer space is reinstated, she said.

Still, the relationship between Canada’s Jewish community and Israel has taken a hit, she concedes.

“The damage is deep. But I hope temporary. I think that we shouldn’t underestimate the fragmentation, the fracture, the disappointment, the anger even,” Kislowicz said.

There about 400,000 Jews in Canada. It’s believed that the number of Reform or Conservative Jewish Canadians — who hold more liberal beliefs than the ultra-Orthodox — is proportionally lower in Canada compared to the United States, where Reform and Conservative rabbis have reacted with anger to Netanyahu’s decision.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s Foreign Ministry was preparing its diplomats in the United States to deal with the “crisis” over the Western Wall decision. There was no mention of the talking points being distributed to Israel’s embassy in Ottawa.

On the forefront of the battle for prayer equality in Israel is a group known as Women of the Wall, who have spent years seeking equal rights to worship.

The group’s early-morning prayer gatherings often turned into protests that sometimes became violent, with clashes between supporters and the police.

Source: Israeli decision to shelve mixed-prayer space draws Canadian anger – World – CBC News

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Islam in Germany: Berlin Mosque Where Burqas Are Banned and LGBT Muslims Welcome Defies Fatwa

2017/06/28 Leave a comment

Says something about the Turkish and Egyptian religious authorities:

The woman who opened a mosque in Berlin where men and women pray together and face-covering headscarves are banned has vowed to defy a fatwa from Egypt’s highest Islamic authority and criticism from the Turkish government.

German-Turkish women’s rights activist Seyran Ates, 54, pioneered the opening of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque in the Moabit neighborhood of Berlin on June 16. Ates said that the mosque was open to all, including LGBT Muslims, and would seek to provide a liberal counterpoint to extremist interpretations of Islam espoused by groups like the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

But the mosque has not been received well by traditional Islamic authorities in Egypt and Turkey, where Ates was born. Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is widely regarded as the world’s highest authority on Sunni Islamic theology and sharia law, issued a religious judgement (or fatwa) criticizing liberal mosques in general, according to The Guardian.

Egypt’s state-run Islamic institution, Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, issued a statement on June 19 heavily criticizing the Berlin mosque, saying that men and women praying side by side was a violation of Islam and stating that such liberalization of Islamic values was not the way to combat extremism.

In Turkey, the criticism has been widespread and virulent. Turkey’s main religious authority, Diyanet, said that the Berlin mosque’s practices “do not align with Islam’s fundamental resources, principles of worship, methodology or experience of more than 14 centuries” and described them as “experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion.”

Turkish media outlets have also accused Ates of ties to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed Gulen for the failed coup in July 2016, which has led to a massive crackdown on freedom of speech and political opposition in Turkish society.

But Ates told The Guardian that she took heart from the criticism. “The pushback I am getting makes me feel that I am doing the right thing,” she said. “God is loving and merciful—otherwise he wouldn’t have turned me into the person I am.”

The mosque is housed in part of an old Lutheran church and is open to Muslims of all traditions, including Sunni and Shiite, as well as people of other religions or no faith. Ates, who is in training as an imam, has led prayers at the mosque; the position of imam is traditionally reserved for men in mainstream Islam.

She also banned the wearing of burqas and niqabs—the former covers the whole face except the eyes; the latter covers the entire face, with a mesh for the wearer to see through—at the mosque as she considered such practices to be “political statements,” Ates said in an interview with German magazine Spiegel.

Ates told The Guardian that the congregation has dwindled since the mosque opened as would-be worshippers stayed away due to the controversy. She said that the mosque had nothing to do with Gulen or his followers, and added that she has been the subject of abuse and death threats herself.

Preaching at the mosque on Friday, Ates called upon her critics to be “brave enough to show their true face” and voice their concerns publicly. “Allah knows their true face anyway. And it is Allah to whom they are accountable, not us,” she said.

On its website, the mosque says that it seeks to promote a “secular liberal Islam that separates secular and religious power” and “strives for a contemporary and gender-oriented interpretation of the Qu’ran and ‘hadith.” The hadith is a collection of sayings about the life and practice of the Prophet Muhammad, which mainstream Sunni Muslims interpret as a normative guide for religious belief and practice.

Ates’ project has defenders as well as critics. Following the statement from Turkey’s Diyanet, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, Martin Schaefer, said that he “rejected all comments that clearly intend to deprive people in Germany of their right to freely exercise their religion and to limit the right to free expression of opinion,” Reuters reported.

A Malaysian female imam based in the U.S., Ani Zonneveld, hit back at criticism received in her home country after she led the call to prayer at the Berlin mosque, while Mona Eltahawy, a prominent Egyptian Muslim feminist and author, expressed her solidarity with Ates.

Source: Islam in Germany: Berlin Mosque Where Burqas Are Banned and LGBT Muslims Welcome Defies Fatwa

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A Battle Over Prayer in Schools Tests Canada’s Multiculturalism – The New York Times

2017/06/27 Leave a comment

One of the better and more in-depth articles (the Times is certainly increasing the breadth and depth of its coverage of Canada):

The turmoil is one reflection of how Canada’s growing diversity is encountering powerful headwinds, especially in places with significant Muslim populations.

“Although we have a policy of multiculturalism, for most Canadians there is an expectation that immigrants will conform to the mainstream,” said Jeffrey Reitz, the director of the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies program at the University of Toronto. “Religious accommodations have been made to various groups, and you’re going to get a backlash once in a while.”

The problems in the Peel schools are a particular kind of conflict in a diverse society, social scientists say — involving immigrants and minorities who challenge aspects of Canada’s cherished multiculturalism.

In 2015, socially conservative residents in Ontario school districts, some of them Muslim, objected to an updated sex education curriculumbecause it teaches the names of sex organs and broaches the topic of same-sex relationships.

Since 2013, some Muslim parents in metropolitan Toronto have asked schools to exempt their children from mandatory provincial music classes, citing their belief that Islam forbids listening to or playing musical instruments.

Like its neighbor to the south, Canada is a country of immigrants, helping to fuel a national ethos that celebrates diversity. More than 20 percent of the Canadian population in 2011 was foreign born, a figure that is expected to reach nearly 30 percent by 2031, according to government estimates. In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, the proportion of ethnic minorities could top 60 percent.

The demographic changes have been especially pronounced in metropolitan Toronto, a patchwork of cities and suburban towns bustling with an array of languages and faiths.

School boards like the one in the Peel district are at the forefront of the battles over multiculturalism. The district is among the country’s most diverse, with nearly 60 percent of all residents described as “visible minority,” or nonwhite, according to the 2011 census.

It includes large numbers of Chinese, Filipinos and blacks, but nearly half are categorized as South Asian, a group that includes Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. The Peel district is home to about 12 percent of Canada’s Muslim population.

In allowing prayer in its schools, the Peel district relied on a provision in the Ontario Human Rights Code that the Ontario Human Rights Commission has interpreted as requiring government-funded schools — both public and Catholic — to “accommodate” students in observing their personal faiths.

Other provinces in Canada have similar policies.

For Farina Siddiqui, 43, a Muslim activist whose children attend public and Catholic schools in the Peel district, allowing students to worship once a week in school is a matter of religious freedom.

“We’re not asking for schools to provide a prayer hall for everyone to practice a religion,” she said. “We just ask for the right to have a space to pray.” She supported permitting the children to write their own sermons.

Tarun Arora, 40, who works for an outsourcing call center company and immigrated to Canada from India in 2003, said school boards should not be endorsing sermons or allowing prayer in his children’s public schools at all. He wants the schools to be completely secular.

“I’m sending my kids to school for education, but the schools are being treated as religious places, and this is not right,” Mr. Arora said.

He is a member of Keep Religion Out of Our Public Schools, also known as Kroops, a group that formed in January when the board decided to allow the children to write their own sermons. The group has protested outside recent school board meetings and says it plans to bring a lawsuit challenging the policy of allowing prayer in the Peel schools, arguing that the law does not explicitly permit it.

Another group with a similar name, Religion Out of Public Schools, began an online petition to eliminate religious congregation and faith clubs in Canadian schools. It has garnered over 6,500 signatures from people across Canada and the United States.

Many of the petition comments specifically criticize Islam. But in interviews, three members of the group, all of them Indian-Canadian, said they opposed the practice of any religion in public schools, not just Islam.

Renu Mandhane, the chief commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, which is charged with interpreting the Ontario code, said schools had a duty to accommodate religious belief.

“Accommodation doesn’t equal endorsing or otherwise becoming entangled in religious practice,” Ms. Mandhane said. “Whether that requires prayer space in school, we’ve never said. What’s required is we need to reasonably accommodate a person’s beliefs.”

In an interview, she disputed the argument made by many protesters that the policy benefits only Muslims. She noted that Jews and Christians were already accommodated because their most important days of worship fall on the weekend, when schools are closed.

“In many ways, what we’re seeing in Peel is the edge where human rights and hyperdiversity connect,” Ms. Mandhane continued. “What Peel shows is that even in places with huge racial diversity, you can have people who identify with different communities but disagree about human rights issues.”

To the Peel school board and many Muslims in the district, the strife over religious accommodation is little more than Islamophobia.

At board meetings, protesters have screamed anti-Muslim epithets, while attacks against Muslims who speak out publicly have spread on social media, leading to the stationing of police officers at the meetings and outside schools. The imam who received the death threat also got an online message calling for his mosque to be burned.

During one fraught school board meeting, a man tore up pages of the Quran, stunning a community that had long prized its tradition of tolerance.

“These are people trying to fuel the fire and brew our ignorances,” said Rabia Khedr, executive director of the Muslim Council of Peel, which lobbied the school board in support of the students’ right to pray. “Religious accommodation is not at the exclusion of everybody. It’s at the inclusion of everybody.”

Anver Saloojee, a political-science professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, has another explanation. He noted that many of those speaking out against the religious accommodation policy were members of the Indian diaspora, including some vocal Hindu nationalists, suggesting that in some ways the battle in Canada mirrors South Asia’s historical Hindu-Muslim conflict.

But the groups opposing accommodation, which include people from a variety of races and religions, deny that. Indian-Canadian members of the groups say their concern has nothing to do with a country they left years and in some cases decades ago.

“My religion is Canadian; that’s what gives me the strength to stand up and fight now,” said Ram Subrahmanian, a founder of Keep Religion Out of Our Public Schools.

Shaila Kibria-Carter, 42, a finance manager of Bangladeshi descent, was born and raised in Canada and lives in the nearby town of Brampton. She said that as a Peel district high school student in the 1990s, she prayed in school on Fridays. So did her college-age son. There were never any class disruptions or complaints, she said.

“What these folks are doing is preaching hate,” she said. “We’ve lived in harmony with Sikhs and Hindus and white people all our lives, and now all of a sudden someone is in meetings ripping up a Quran.”

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ICYMI – ‘You can’t just pick and choose’: Alberta Christian school fights board request to remove ‘offensive’ scripture

2017/06/22 Leave a comment

Would Carpay defend a Muslim school that used some of the Koranic versus that endorse violence? He appears to argue for no limits:

CCA — a public K-12 school in Kingman, a hamlet with a population of 103 about an hour outside of Edmonton — has retained the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom (JCCF), a conservative legal organization dedicated to “defend(ing) the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through litigation and education.”

“Trustees enjoy the legal right to send their own kids to various schools that align with the parents’ beliefs and convictions. But these trustees have no right to impose their own ideology on schools they disagree with,” John Carpay, president of the JCCF, said in a statement.

Skori sent an email earlier this year asking Wargel to remove a bible verse on immorality from the school’s statement of faith. She also asked that they remove the word “quality” from the phrase “CCA offers quality educational programming.”

CCA agreed to remove “quality” and the passage from 1 Corinthians, which states: “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

“The specific reference and the word quality were not a big issue,” Margel said. “Out of respect of the relationship we’ve had with them, we can say ‘okay, this isn’t the key point here.’”

But Skori followed up, saying that “any scripture that could be considered offensive to particular individuals should not be read or studied in school.” She clarified in a separate email, “For example: any teachings that denigrate or vilify someone’s sexual orientation.”

“That’s a completely different directive, and it was shocking. Absolutely shocking,” Margel said.

BRSD spokesperson Diane Hutchinson said the board felt compelled to make the request after protections for gender and sexual minorities were added to the Alberta Human Rights Act in late 2015.

“In our province there is a heightened awareness and a heightened sensitivity” around LGBTQ issues, she said, downplaying concerns of censorship.

“It appears that someone who was involved in the conversation had taken a small piece of the conversation and used it to raise an alarm about the potential for interference,” she said.

CCA approached JCCF a couple of months ago for advice on the situation, after which the JCCF sent an eight-page letter to the school board outlining what it says is an “unwarranted and unrealistic” prohibition.

“The government’s duty of neutrality, required by the Supreme Court of Canada, means that a school board cannot dictate whether verses in the Torah, Koran, New Testament or Guru Granth Sahib are acceptable,” Carpay said in a statement.

Less than eight hours after the letter was sent, Margel says she got an email back reaffirming the board’s position.

“How can you come to that conclusion in less than eight hours?” she said.

Alberta funnels public funding into “alternative schools” like CCA, which emphasize a particular language, culture, religion or subject. Each alternative school is offered through an Alberta school board. In CCA’s case, this involves a Master Agreement between the school and the BRSD, under which the board agreed not to meddle in the “essential nature” of the school’s programming.

Hate mail is flowing, misinformation and fear-mongering are widespread

“Alberta has one of the most diverse education systems in Canada,” Carpay told the Post. “It’s really contrary to government policy for any school board to try to squelch that diversity.”

Source: National Post

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ICYMI: Liberal mosque opens in Berlin – The Washington Post

2017/06/22 Leave a comment

Interesting example of how Islam can evolve in the West:

Inside the red-brick building that now houses the German capital’s newest and perhaps most unusual mosque, Seyran Ates is staging a feminist revolution of the Muslim faith.

“Allahu akbar,” chanted a female voice, uttering the Arabic expression “God is great,” as a woman with two-toned hair issued the Muslim call to prayer. In another major break with tradition, men and women — typically segregated during worship — heeded the call by sitting side by side on the carpeted floor.

Ates, a self-proclaimed Muslim feminist and founder of the new mosque, then stepped onto the cream-colored carpet and delivered a stirring sermon. Two imams — a woman and a man — later took turns leading the Friday prayers in Arabic. The service ended with the congregation joining two visiting rabbis in singing a Hebrew song of friendship.

And just like that, the inaugural Friday prayers at Berlin’s Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque came to a close — offering a different vision of Islam on a continent that is locked in a bitter culture war over how and whether to welcome the faith. Toxic ills like radicalization, Ates and her supporters argue, have a potentially easy fix: the introduction of a more progressive, even feminist brand of the faith.

“The intention is to give liberal Islam a sacred space,” Ates said. “I feel very discriminated by regular mosques where women have to pray in ugly backrooms.”

Seyran Ates introduces the first Friday prayers, on June 16, 2017, at Berlin’s Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque, which she helped to establish. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The subject of withering criticism as well as hopeful support, the house of worship is part of a small but growing number of liberal mosques founded all or in part by women.
Seen by their backers as an antidote to gender bias that often leaves Muslim women praying in smaller spaces, the new kind of “feminist mosques” amount to a rallying cry for change, observers say.

In London, for instance, the female-founded Inclusive Mosque Initiative opened its doors in 2012. Female imams routinely lead prayers in spaces that welcome male and female Muslims of any sect — gays and lesbians included. More recently, mixed-gender or all-female prayers have spread to boutique mosques from California to Switzerland to Denmark.

Women and men traditionally pray separately in mosques for reasons of modesty. Some argue that the Koran does not explicitly call for separation, but others say that female voices should not be heard during prayer.

Source: Liberal mosque opens in Berlin – The Washington Post

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Too many Canadians don’t recognize the Islamophobia in their country

2017/06/13 Leave a comment

Melayna Williams on Islamophobia:

Indeed, plenty of work has already been done to capture, contextualize and fully understand what Islamophobia means. A paper published in 2011 by the Ontario Human Rights Commission highlights the “negative stereotyping and discrimination as a result of pre-existing perceptions of Muslims as ‘different’ from the rest of Canadian society, along with negative associations of their communities with violence and terrorism” in the decade following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

These problems even occur in institutions that pledge tolerance and inclusion, like Canadian universities. Following the Quebec City mosque attack, Muslim students publicly recounted incidents that are part of their daily reality: the defacing of posters for a conference on Islam at Durham College and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology; and the distributing of anti-Muslim flyers and insults on student election materials at McGill University, the University of Calgary and the University of Ottawa. A student at Simon Fraser University was told to remove her hijab, and horrifyingly, last year, a woman had her hijab pulled, was punched and spat on in a grocery store in London, Ont.

We don’t need more evidence—yet there’s still denial by many white Canadians. Exercising privilege in this way has clear detrimental effects, argues Tim Wise, an anti-racism writer and activist. “That white Americans don’t by and large see what people of colour see doesn’t mean that white folks are horrible people, of course,” he writes in an essay called “White Denial.” “What it does suggest is a degree of isolation and provincialism that should lead us to think twice before pontificating about a subject that we simply don’t have to know nearly as well as those who are the targets of it.”

This is why “recognition of Muslims as part of the fabric of this country is so critical,” argues Shirazi. Many Canadians have the luxury of not acknowledging racism, and they’ve done so to the extent that white denial has become its own narrative. Any attempt to ignore the problem—or treat its victims as “other”—undercuts any effort toward inclusion in the next 150 years.

Source: Too many Canadians don’t recognize the Islamophobia in their country – Macleans.ca

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To escape abusive marriages, many Christians in Pakistan convert to Islam | Religion News Service

2017/06/09 Leave a comment

Interesting:

For a Pakistani Christian like Shameela Masih, divorcing her abusive husband meant two choices — both nearly as bad as staying in the marriage.

“I have to prove adultery allegations against him,” said Masih, a 34-year-old mother of two. “The other option I have is to convert to Islam.”

Masih recently filed for divorce from a husband she said “frequently beats me up” and a mother-in-law who she said burned her leg with coal.

But under the majority-Muslim country’s laws, she must produce a witness who would testify to committing adultery with her husband. As a result, she’s now reluctantly planning to renounce her faith.

“Converting is the easiest way out,” she said. “My family tells me that they will disown me as a Muslim, but I don’t have a choice.”

Now Pakistani officials are considering revising the law to make it easier for couples to part ways.

“There are so many things in the existing 19th-century Christian Marriage Act that need to be revised and updated to stop the exploitation of people and protect the human rights,” said Kamran Michael, the federal minister for human rights who is spearheading the drive for the legislation.

The law grants divorces to Christian couples on four grounds: adultery, conversion, marriage to another or cruelty. But proving adultery or cruelty is tough, especially in Pakistan, where adultery is a crime, and the stigma against domestic violence is weak in many parts of the country. Christians comprise less than 2 percent of Pakistan’s population of 189 million.

Muslims, on the other hand, can easily obtain a divorce for a variety of reasons, including irreconcilable differences.

Formerly, Pakistan’s laws on divorce mirrored those in Britain. But in the early 1980s, then-military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq restored older laws from the colonial period that applied to Christians divorcing. For Muslims, he left revised laws from the 1960s intact.

“The current law on Christian divorce undermines the dignity of women,” said Fauzia Viqar, who chairs the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women. “Many Christian women are left in marriages where they are suffering cruelty by husbands without any relief from the state.”

Source: To escape abusive marriages, many Christians in Pakistan convert to Islam | Religion News Service

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More faith, not fanaticism, needed in politics: Coren

2017/06/06 Leave a comment

Michael Coren on Christianity and politics:

Within moments of Andrew Scheer being elected as the new leader of Canada’s Conservative Party his opponents began to criticize his opinions. That’s politics of course. But this time the analysis went a little deeper.

Scheer may have said that he will not reopen debates around equal marriage or abortion, it was argued, but he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage or a woman’s right to choose and that matters a great deal. And on issues such as euthanasia and trans rights, it was claimed, he will certainly be politically involved.

But his defenders responded that this was an “anti-Christian” attack and that the new champion of the Tories was being condemned for his religious beliefs.

Now just hold on one Bible-believing moment.

Contrary to what social conservatives have tried to tell us, there is nothing especially Christian about these issues. Jesus didn’t mention homosexuality, abortion, or euthanasia but He did speak a great deal about peace, love, justice, the dangers of wealth, the sin of materialism, and a preferential regard for the poor.

So Mr. Scheer and his friends, with all due respect and humility let me take you on a magical mystery tour of what that Jesus fellow actually did say.

There was the worryingly egalitarian, “Servants are not greater than their master”, and the snowflake nonsense of, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged, and “Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

Then we have the lefty silliness of, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”, and “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone,” and “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”

Moving on there is, “In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”

Not very conservative at all! Even worse there is, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Or the nastily socialistic, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

So in a way we could say that every time someone on the right attacks a Liberal or New Democrat calling for a higher minimum wage, stronger welfare, increased funding of socialized medicine or an end to war, it is they who are being attacked for promoting Christian ideas.

In other words, Christianity is not what politicians who wear their faith on their sleeve have led us to believe. Both Old and New Testament scream for social and economic fairness and the story of the Christian God is a seamless garment of care, not for some, but for all, especially those least able to look after themselves.

Roman Catholic nun Sister Joan Chittister said it so well: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

I’m one of those odd, unfashionable people who want more and not less mingling of church and state, but a church informed by the authentic teachings of its founder and not the sex-obsessed monomania of the new Catholic and evangelical right.

Sorry Mr. Scheer, but the criticism of you had nothing to do with your faith and everything to do with your fanaticism. God bless you.

Source: More faith, not fanaticism, needed in politics: Coren | Toronto Star

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How the Muslim community can tackle the scourge of extremism: Sheema Khan

2017/06/01 Leave a comment

Her latest op-ed and usual sensible suggestions and recommendations:

In the elusive search for clues on radicalization, there are meaningful steps that Muslim communities can take toward addressing this scourge.

There should be “safe” spaces available for Muslim youth to discuss their concerns and passion for justice, in the company of those with sound knowledge of Islamic teachings. Rather than the traditional one-way lecture, there should be round tables in which topics are discussed frankly in context with normative Islamic principles. Currently, most Muslim institutions shy away from such discussions, for fear of being accused of fomenting extremism. Local organizations can sponsor a screening of Tug of War, a short Canadian indie film that boldly tackles this topic.

Grassroots initiatives that teach resiliency to Muslim youth must be developed. Since Canada opened the doors of immigration, a plethora of ethno-religious groups have experienced racism. Yet, such groups have found the resiliency to survive and thrive.

Muslims have deep resources within their faith about dealing with hostility through patience, principled justice and forgiveness. They can also use valuable anti-racism tools developed by civil society. For example, the National Council of Canadian Muslims plays a key role by empowering Muslims to address xenophobia through engagement with civil institutions.

Mentorship will also play a key role in helping youth to integrate. There are many Muslim professionals, entrepreneurs, artists and activists who have faced challenges and succeeded. Their experiences are invaluable for the coming generation. We need forums where such knowledge can be shared and mentoring partnerships established.

Civic engagement is the key to non-violent activism. Whether the focus is local justice or foreign policy, there needs to be further education about the role of NGOs, government institutions and one’s responsibility in the democratic process. The 2015 federal election prompted many Muslims to initiate grassroots campaigns for political engagement. As an example, The Canadian-Muslim Vote provides regular updates about House deliberations, along with interviews of MPs.

Perhaps the most difficult, yet necessary, component is to ask some tough questions. Why is it that a small minority of Sunni Muslim youth is latching on to a death cult? How are the teachings of Islam being twisted to appeal to a hateful, morally bankrupt mindset? Why are appeals to basic morality (e.g., forbiddance of murder and suicide) failing?

Finally, those espousing violence must be reported to the authorities. Friends, family and mosque congregants had warned police about Mr. Abedi’s extremist views – without success. This means we must all try harder to prevent the next incident.

Source: How the Muslim community can tackle the scourge of extremism – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with

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