Canada’s anti-Islamophobia study to start next month

2017/04/13 Leave a comment

I suspect that the Committee witnesses will have a fairly broad range of witnesses from a number of communities that overall will maintain the focus on Islamophobia/anti-Muslim while situating the issues in the broader context of racism and discrimination:

A committee study that Canada’s controversial anti-Islamophobia motion called for is likely to get underway next month, the Sun has learned.

All eyes will be on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage as it hears from dozens of witnesses to study the ill-defined phenomenon of Islamophobia, along with other forms of discrimination and racism.

Liberal MP Iqra Khalid’s M-103 passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 201-91 on March 23 after weeks of controversy surrounding the wording of the motion. Now the committee will pick up where the motion leaves off.

While the motion supposedly denounces all discrimination, Islamophobia was the only one that received a specific mention. Khalid has stated her motion was partially inspired by E-411, an online petition exclusively focused on Islam.

A number of mainstream pundits argued during the controversy that the motion was nothing more than a gesture and would never amount to anything.

However now that the issue is headed to committee, it will result in a report that will provide recommendations that may inspire legislation.

Multiple sources confirmed to the Sun that lists of suggested witnesses have already been put forward.

Typically, Liberal, Conservative and NDP members of a committee each put forward their own party list of witnesses and then together they narrow it down to a smaller, mutually agreed upon list.

The witnesses invited to testify for this study will largely determine the scope and tone of the committee meetings. Will they give equal time to representatives of all religions, as well as the non-religious? Will those speaking about Muslim issues be liberal Muslims or more orthodox, pro-sharia voices?

Meanwhile, a petition on the government’s official e-petition website that was created to voice opposition to sharia law gaining a foothold in Canada has reached 42,000 signatures.

The petition that inspired Khalid’s motion reached 70,000 before it was closed for signatures.

Source: Canada’s anti-Islamophobia study to start next month | Canada | News | Toronto S

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Le Québec semble bien gérer les questions d’accommodements raisonnables

2017/04/12 Leave a comment

I tend to share the assessment that the drop in numbers reflects that public and private organizations are dealing with requests on their own, with no need to refer cases to the Commission:

Les demandes de conseils sur les accommodements raisonnables de type religieux sont en baisse depuis deux ans à la Commission des droits de la personne (CDPDJ) et sont désormais supplantées par les demandes faites par les personnes handicapées.

Entre avril 2015 et mars 2016, le nombre de demandes de conseils reçus est passé à 20 et ce nombre s’est maintenu ces derniers mois. C’est la moitié de ce qu’on observait les années précédentes (40 demandes en moyenne).

Depuis la Commission Bouchard-Taylor, la Commission offre un service-conseil en matière d’accommodements raisonnables de type religieux. Le service s’adresse aux employeurs et aux organismes donnant des services. Les conseils sont donnés à titre indicatif et ne sont, dès lors, pas décisionnels.

La liste des demandes reçues révèle en outre que les congés religieux sont l’enjeu qui génère le plus de questions. Ainsi en 2015-2016, de nombreuses demandes provenaient d’entreprises privées et portaient sur la pratique du ramadan.

Le président d’une compagnie de biocarburant, par exemple, s’inquiétait pour la sécurité parce qu’un de ses employés était affaibli par le jeûne. Chez un fabricant de vêtements de sport, on déplorait que trois employés de la même chaîne de montage aient réclamé des congés en même temps. Au total, huit demandes concernaient la période du ramadan et trois des congés liés à des célébrations juives comme celle du Nouvel An juif en septembre.

Une minorité de demandes étaient toutefois plus complexes comme ce cas d’une étudiante de confession juive qui réclamait du matériel pédagogique non informatisé pour pouvoir se préparer à son examen final pendant le Sabbat.

Un seul cas portait sur le port de signes religieux (le voile) et deux concernaient la tenue de prières musulmanes dans des institutions publiques ou des commerces. Enfin, un employeur a contacté le service à propos d’un employé qui exposait une photo de Jésus « de grande dimension » dans son lieu de travail.

En vertu de la Charte, les accommodements sont un corollaire du droit à l’égalité et les organisations doivent chercher à en offrir à ceux qui le demandent. L’accommodement raisonnable est toutefois balisé par le concept de « contrainte excessive » qui protège l’organisation ou le milieu de travail.

Un bon signe, selon les experts

Cette baisse suggère que les organismes s’en tirent plutôt bien avec ces questions, croit le professeur Marc-Antoine Dilhac, un expert des enjeux d’inclusion rattaché à l’Université de Montréal. « C’est plutôt encourageant, dit-il. Il y a une forme de jurisprudence qui s’est imposée pour des affaires similaires. »

François Rocher, de l’Université d’Ottawa, un spécialiste des enjeux d’immigration, souligne que même à 40 par an, ce sont de petits nombres et que contrairement à certaines perceptions, la « Commission n’est pas submergée de demandes ».

« Mon hypothèse, c’est que les organisations publiques et les entreprises ont bien compris la notion d’accommodements et que la société civile réussit assez bien à s’organiser avec ce problème-là. »

M. Dilhac constate en outre que les questionnements soulevés sont souvent les mêmes et qu’il est dès lors de plus en plus facile pour les employeurs de savoir quoi faire.

Le record de demandes d’avis reçus sur les accommodements religieux a été établi en 2009-2010 avec 52 dossiers contre 29 pour les personnes avec un handicap qui normalement donnent lieu au plus grand nombre de questions.

Cette tendance s’est depuis renversée. Ainsi en 2015-2016, le Service a reçu deux fois plus de demandes pour des accommodements raisonnables touchant des handicaps que pour des accommodements religieux (57 contre 20).

Source: Le Québec semble bien gérer les questions d’accommodements raisonnables | Le Devoir

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After Egypt attack, sectarianism and extremism go hand in hand: Hellyer

2017/04/11 Leave a comment

Good commentary and linkages:

Here is something else we know. The primary targets of the attacks today were Christian – their Christian identity is what singled them out for the attackers, and they paid for that identity with their lives. No one should be under any delusion in this regard – IS propaganda spoke specifically about Christians, and Christians were specifically targeted. This deadly sectarianism has to be identified as what it is – hateful, bigoted, and murderous.

But blood doesn’t know those boundaries. Among the dead today, Egyptians shared pictures of Muslims who died in the blasts – more than half a dozen Muslims, men and women, who died in the course of their duty, as police officers, protecting the security of their Christian compatriots. Had they not fulfilled their duty, many more in Alexandria would likely have paid the ultimate price. Their being Muslim did not immunize them from the crimes of the attackers. It wouldn’t.

Indeed, it is also being reported that the Egyptian security services dismantled a bomb in a mosque in Tanta today – a mosque that is known particularly for an adherence to Sufism, which is part of normative Sunni Islam, historically. But the likes of IS, informed as they are by an extremist form of Wahabism which rejects much of normative Sunni Islam in the first place, may have targeted the mosque anyway.

There will be those from the majority Muslim community who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect their Christian compatriots. There will be those who marched on the church to show solidarity with their Christian compatriots, which likewise happened in Tanta by imams. It’s one type of model. It’s a model which, regrettably if ironically, is rejected by anti-Muslim bigots in the West, many of whom took the opportunity today to further Islamophobia. Hatred, it seems, also loves company.

But there will also be those who will deceitfully condemn the murders on the one hand – and create the conditions for the sectarianism that inspired it on the other. Sectarian incitement has been an issue that far too few have been willing to tackle head-on when it comes to the pro-Islamist universe – and that includes the Muslim Brotherhood. For years, anti-Christian populist sentiment is a currency that too many in these movements traffic in – and too little attention is given to confronting it.

It would be wrong and inappropriate to associate the entirety of the Islamist camp with the radicalism of the likes of IS – but likewise, it would be the height of naiveté and an utter fallacy to assume that sectarianism is only a problem in the pro-IS faction. It goes far beyond that. Condemning the attacks, for example, in English, while propagating conspiracies and “false flag” theories about them in Arabic, only means that the mood music for sectarian incitement is left unchecked even further.

To avoid further tragedy, we need to recognize that sectarianism and radical extremism remain crucial problems to resolve.

Source: After Egypt attack, sectarianism and extremism go hand in hand – The Globe and Mail

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Chris Selley: Hate religion in public schools? Yell at your MPP, not your school board

2017/04/10 Leave a comment

Chris Selley on the violent opposition of some for religious accommodation by allowing prayers to take place in Peel Region schools, rather than a more measured discussion of the form and limits of any accommodation:

But the OHRC’s interpretation of the Ontario Human Rights Code makes it plain: only cost and health and safety may stand in the way of a religious accommodation. Wiffly concepts like “secularism” may not. So whether you’re a perturbed secularist, vexed feminist, scandalized menstrual-rights advocate or fulminating Islam-hater, there’s no point aiming your complaints at the local school board. You should call your MPP.

That probably won’t get you anywhere either, frankly. Secularism and feminism are all well and good, but the New Democrats are unlikely to align with the Qur’an-stompers. The Liberals think religious accommodations are the Pope’s pyjamas. And after John Tory’s faith-based schools debacle and Patrick Brown’s sex-ed switcheroo, the Progressive Conservatives are scared stiff of this stuff. (Opposing prayer in public school isn’t exactly home-run conservative policy, anyway.)

Nevertheless, it’s not Ontario’s educators you should be bothering — it’s Ontario’s legislators. They made this world. The schools are just living in it.

Source: Chris Selley: Hate religion in public schools? Yell at your MPP, not your school board | National Post

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In Canada, Where Muslims Are Few, Group Stirs Fear of Islamists – The New York Times

2017/04/08 Leave a comment

More on the extreme right in Canada, making the New York Times (see earlier Inside Quebec’s far right: Take a tour of La Meute, the secretive group with 43,000 members):

Some experts warn that groups like La Meute, however much they eschew violence, create an enabling environment in which hate can grow. “They are embedded in a broader cultural ethos that bestows ‘permission to hate,’” said Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology who has written extensively on right-wing extremism in Canada.

The conversation within La Meute’s private Facebook page can border on hateful. In response to one person’s request about what could be done to prevent construction of a mosque in the neighborhood, another follower suggested pouring pig’s blood on the ground and letting Muslims know the land had been desecrated.

While primarily confined to French-speaking Canada, La Meute lies on a continuum of conservative thought that is propelling politicians like Kellie Leitch, a member of Parliament who is vying for leadership of Canada’s Conservative Party. Ms. Leitch once proposed a tip line for people to report “barbaric cultural practices,” and has suggested that immigrants be screened for “Canadian values” so that the country can maintain “a unified Canadian identity.”

Mr. Beaudry, the son of a onetime lumberjack and heavy equipment operator, joined the Canadian Army when he was 17 and spent years in Germany. He retired from the army after a car accident in 2002 and subsequently spent several months working as a private contractor in Afghanistan. He was greatly influenced by the specter of Taliban rule.

He said he and his friends were motivated by the 2014 killing of two soldiers in Canada in separate episodes, both at the hands of Canadian extremists who had converted to Islam. “We realized something was happening,” Mr. Beaudry said, adding that terrorist attacks in France and Belgium followed soon after.

He said that the primary goal in founding La Meute was to educate members and others about the growth of political Islam in Canada.

Mr. Beaudry spoke specifically about the group’s opposition to the niqab and the burqa, Islamic styles of dress that cover women’s faces. Only a tiny sliver of the Canadian population adopts them, but “if people cannot blend with the society,” Mr. Beaudry said, “it becomes a cancer and if you want to save your life, you have to take action.”

He also believes a parliamentary motion passed last month that condemns Islamophobia is a move to silence criticism of political Islam and is the first step toward an Islamic anti-blasphemy law.

On the private Facebook page, La Meute’s leaders quiz followers, screening for the most informed and dedicated who might fill positions in the hierarchy.

Mr. Beaudry said La Meute was assigning followers to 17 geographic “clans,” each with officers and staff, “so people know who to report to and where to go when things happen.” He said five clans were “fully operational,” and he expected all to be formed by the end of the year.

The group has transportation cells that take people to meetings and has medical units to care for the injured. Some members recently started an online radio station. Last month, La Meute fielded about 400 people in four cities to protest the anti-Islamophobia motion.

“We are trying to teach people that they have much more political power, they matter much more than the majority believes,” Mr. Beaudry said. “We want to influence our world, our politics.”

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After St. Petersburg bombing, a notable absence: Russian anti-Islam backlash – CSMonitor.com

2017/04/08 Leave a comment

Interesting take:

Russia has been at war with Islamic enemies for over 500 years. Over the centuries, it fought long battles to subdue Tatars and other Muslim tribes who are now part of Russia. It also waged wars against the Persian and Turkish empires, incorporating many of their former territories into Imperial Russia.

Today, some of Russia’s most “troublesome” minorities are traditionally Muslim people with long histories of conflict with Russia, such as Chechens and Crimean Tatars. But so are some of its most successful and prosperous regions, especially Tatarstan, which has found its own formula for quelling internal Islamist extremism and co-existing, sometimes uneasily, with Moscow.

That’s one reason why most Russians don’t see Muslims as a faceless “other,” but are able to differentiate between different groups of them, says Alexey Malashenko, an Islam specialist with the Moscow Carnegie Center.

“We’ve been living among and, yes, sometimes fighting these people for hundreds of years. We know them,” he says. “The average Russian can tell the difference between a Chechen, a Tatar, an Uzbek, and a Tajik and, believe me, there are big differences. There is a great deal of xenophobia under the surface in Russia, and sometimes it comes out,” as it has in occasional urban race riots between Russians and migrant laborers – who are especially numerous in big cities like Moscow.

“But overt anti-Muslim political appeals, such as you do see in some Western countries, are absolutely impossible in Russia. Our authorities do not need or want the instability that could result from playing that card,” he says.

Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders have been very careful to separate Islam from terrorism, and to make that a frequent public message.

Two years ago Mr. Putin presided, alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, at the inauguration of the $170 million new Moscow Cathedral Mosque, a huge downtown temple that can accommodate 10,000 worshipers. With an eye both to Russia’s millions of Muslims and Russia’s growing role in the Middle East, he used the occasion to condemn Islamist extremism.

“We see what’s happening in the Middle East where terrorists of the so-called Islamic State discredit a great world religion, discredit Islam by sowing hate, killing people, and destroying the world’s cultural heritage in a barbaric way. Their ideology is built on lies, on open perversion of Islam. They are trying to recruit followers in our country as well,” he said.

The powerful Orthodox Church has also walked a cautious line. When Russia intervened in Syria almost two years ago, church officials hailed it in potentially inflammatory terms as a “holy war.” But the church, too, has been at pains to stress that it is a fight against “terrorism,” not Islam, and has repeatedly called for an alliance between moderate Christians and Muslims to combat extremism.

Familiar suspicions

Still, a more familiar Islamophobia bubbles not far beneath the surface. While Russia’s authoritarian political culture keeps it mostly bottled up for now, any survey of the country’s freewheeling social media will turn up plenty of small but clearly active groups who express the kind of militant anti-immigration, anti-foreigner, and anti-Muslim views that are familiar in the West.

“Potentially, any foreign citizen coming here is a threat,” says Valentina Bobrova, a leader of the National Conservative Movement, a small group in the central Russian city of Podolsk. “Islam … is an aggressive religion. We feel that it is attacking, trying to seize territories, minds, and souls in Russia, just as it is in Europe.”

And the story of Ilyas Nikitin, a Russian Muslim whose photograph was mistakenly circulated as a suspect in the St. Petersburg bombing, is a cautionary signal of how quickly grassroots suspicion and ill-will can erupt. Despite being cleared by police, he was subsequently forced off an airplane when terrified passengers complained, and arrived at his home in the west Siberian city of  Nizhnevartovsk to find he’d been fired from his job.

“You can’t say there is Islamophobia in Russia,” says Rais Suleymanov, an expert with the security services-linked Institute of National Strategy. “But when some act of terrorism is committed by radical Islamists, average people are quick to project all of their underlying fears onto that [Islamic] doctrine.”

Source: After St. Petersburg bombing, a notable absence: Russian anti-Islam backlash (+video) – CSMonitor.com

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German government rejects conservatives’ call for Islam law – The Washington Post

2017/04/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

The German government says there’s no need for new legislation to regulate Islamic organizations in the country.

Members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union party have called for a ban on foreign funding of Islamic organizations, and for Muslims to get statutory rights to pastoral care from an imam in prisons and hospitals.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday that such a law was “a non-issue” at the moment and noted that religious freedom is guaranteed by the German constitution.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants in Germany in recent years has rekindled public debates about the country’s relationship with Islam.

A recent report by public broadcaster ARD found that the Islam preached in some mosques is more conservative than in many Muslim countries.

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Pope to meet with UK imams in bid to promote moderate Islam – The Washington Post

2017/04/06 Leave a comment

More effective approach than his predecessor:

Pope Francis is scheduled to meet Wednesday with four British imams two weeks after the London extremist attack, part of his effort to encourage Muslim leaders who renounce using religion to justify violence.

The audience was scheduled long before the March 22 attack, in which a man mowed down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing three, before fatally stabbing a policeman on the grounds of Parliament.

The head of the British Muslim Forum, Muhammad Shahid Raza, said in an interview Tuesday that the pope’s support and message of solidarity after the attack “strengthened our position that we, like other communities, condemn all terrorist activities.”

Francis will try to further the cause later this month when he visits Al Azhar university in Cairo, Sunni Islam’s main center of learning.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, is accompanying the imams to the Vatican. He said the aim of the visit was to help promote Muslim leaders who denounce violence carried out in God’s name.

The Muslim community slowly is gaining the confidence to speak out and condemn Islamic extremism, Nichols said.

“That is the voice that has to be heard to counter the rather more undifferentiating, unappreciative and even hostile voices that view Islamic people in Britain as somehow alien and unwelcome,” he said.

Source: Pope to meet with UK imams in bid to promote moderate Islam – The Washington Post

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Nearly half of Canadians view Islam unfavourably, [Angus Reid] survey finds

2017/04/06 Leave a comment

No real surprise here apart from a remarkable increase in comfort of Sikhs compared to their 2015 survey:

Even though Canada has been praised for its religious and culture diversity, almost half of Canadians view Islam in an unfavourable light compared to other faiths, according to a new survey.

The Angus Reid Institute released results Tuesday on how Canadians view various faiths and religious symbolism in society.

The study found that 46 per cent of Canadians view Islam and clothing associated with the religion unfavourably compared to how they view other religions to likes of Christianity and Buddhism.

In terms of wearing religious grab in public, 88 per cent of those surveyed supported a person wearing the nun`s habit or a turban (77 per cent) compared to those wearing a niqab (32 per cent) or a burka (29 per cent).

However, the survey noted that more people are beginning to view Islam in a more favourable light, with Quebec residents leading the way.

According to the survey, those in Quebec who say they view the Islam faith more favourably has more than doubled since 2009, jump from 15 per cent to 32 per cent. More Quebecers are also seeing Sikhism (32 per cent) and Hinduism (50 per cent) in a more positive light.

The survey was conducted online between February 16 and 22, just over two weeks after Alexandre Bissonnette allegedly opened fire inside a Quebec City mosque killing six men during evening prayers.

Source: Nearly half of Canadians view Islam unfavourably, survey finds – National | Globalnews.ca

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Anti-Muslim hatred has no place in my Canada: Margaret Wente

2017/04/05 Leave a comment

A rare column by Wente that captures the issues well:

We do a pretty good job of welcoming newcomers to this country. It’s one of our great strengths. I don’t buy the myth, beloved of some, that Canadians harbour deep racist and xenophobic tendencies that are just waiting to be set alight by the likes of Kellie Leitch.

But some days, I have to wonder what’s gotten into people. Who, for example, would want to deny Muslims the right to bury their dead?

It seems that there are more than you might think.

The terrible massacre in January of six worshippers at a mosque in Quebec City revealed a problem: Quebec Muslims have few places to bury their dead. The only Muslim-run cemetery in the province is in Montreal, several hours’ drive away. After the massacre, the small town of Saint-Apollinaire (population 6,000) found some land that would be suitable for another one, and quickly struck a deal to sell it to the Muslim community. It seemed like a neighbourly way to help. But as The Globe and Mail’s Ingrid Peritz found, the plan was met with a storm of protest.

“This cemetery is just the embryo of other projects,” one person wrote in an e-mail to the town’s mayor. “These people are here to grab religious and political power.”

The mayor, Bernard Ouellet, is staunch in his support for the plan, and believes most townspeople support it too. But he’ll have to work hard to quell the fears. As Quebec imam Hassan Guillet says, “If the project is refused and we’re not allowed to be buried in this land, how are we going to be accepted to live in this land?”

Religious accommodation is always a touchy subject, but the opposition to this plan is simply wrong. There is no place for it in my Canada.

Here in Ontario, we have our own hysterias. A strident group of anti-Muslim activists have been waging a noisy campaign to end Muslim prayer at schools in a big district near Toronto. At one school-board meeting, someone tore pages from the Koran and stomped all over them. At others, people leaped to their feet to denounce Islam. A parents’ group launched a petition complaining that “unsolicited exposure to religion” could “create subconscious bias in the minds of impressionable children for or against a faith.” In the latest bit of hate-filled showmanship (as a school-board spokesman aptly called it), a local agitator offered a $1,000 reward to any student who surreptitiously recorded hate speech during a Muslim prayer service.

Needless to say, Muslim prayer in schools has always been contentious. You may believe, as I do, that any type of prayer – including this type – has no place in the public schools. But I also believe it’s not the worst idea. Like it or not, religious accommodation is the law, and the schools are devoted to inclusiveness. Our interest is to integrate new Canadians, not segregate them. We want their children to be educated in the public schools, not religious schools. So we’d better make sure the kids (and parents) feel comfortable there. And if an optional 20-minute prayer session once a week helps them feel more welcome, then why not?

The Peel District School Board, where the current commotion has broken out, serves a sprawling, suburban multiethnic community whose Muslim population is around 10 per cent. Muslim students have been observing Friday prayers for 20 years. Other schools around the province make the same accommodation. It’s been a work in progress. One heavily Muslim school in Toronto faced tough questions a few years back because menstruating girls weren’t allowed to take part in the prayer service. There have been concerns about sexism, as well as worries about just what kind of Islam is being preached. The Peel board has conducted lengthy consultations about whether the students who lead the sessions may write their own sermons, and by whom, if anyone, they must be approved.

To be honest, I have no idea how all this will work out, and neither does anybody else. It will take a generation or more to tell. Canada is not immune from the ethnoreligious tensions that are rocking the world and there’s no way we can avoid them. But we can discourage the fear-mongers and the hate-mongers from poisoning our public discourse. We won’t always agree, especially over symbols that touch our deepest values. Let’s just hope we can keep finding ways to disagree politely. That’s supposed to be the Canadian way, and I don’t want to lose it.

Source: Anti-Muslim hatred has no place in my Canada – The Globe and Mail

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