Étude: la charte des valeurs québécois aurait attisé la discrimination

2017/02/14 Leave a comment

Not surprising but nice to see this confirmed in a more systematic manner:

Le débat sur la charte des valeurs a-t-il ouvert la porte à plus de racisme ? Depuis l’attentat à la Grande Mosquée de Québec, plusieurs membres de la communauté musulmane accusent le projet du Parti québécois d’avoir alimenté les tensions sociales et engendré des gestes violents à leur endroit. Une très rare étude sur la question, obtenue par La Presse, tend à leur donner raison.

Les jeunes plus sensibles

« La charte a-t-elle généré une solidarité accrue autour d’une identité commune ou a-t-elle sapé l’harmonie sociale ? » Voilà la question à laquelle ont tenté de répondre des chercheurs de l’UQAM et des universités Laval et McGill depuis 2014. Leur étude, qui cible les jeunes, est « très exploratoire », prévient Ghayda Hassan de l’UQAM. « C’est un projet pilote qui n’est pas nécessairement représentatif. » Il s’agit toutefois d’une très rare, sinon de la seule étude scientifique sur le sujet depuis 2014. L’équipe de Mme Hassan a interrogé 441 étudiants de l’UQAM (30,5 % d’hommes, 69,5 % de femmes). Pourquoi l’université ? D’abord parce que « les tensions intercommunautaires ont de graves conséquences pour les jeunes », lit-on. Aussi, « comparativement à la population générale, les étudiants sont plus susceptibles de connaître la charte ».

Discrimination

« Bien que le but de la charte était de placer la laïcité et l’égalité des femmes au coeur du débat public et politique, nos résultats montrent qu’il a eu des conséquences négatives », écrivent les chercheurs. Le tiers des étudiants ont déclaré avoir vécu personnellement ou avoir été témoins d’une forme de discrimination ethnique ou religieuse depuis la charte des valeurs. Un chiffre « plus élevé que prévu », qui a surpris les chercheurs. Les cas de discrimination étaient plus nombreux chez les immigrants, ainsi que chez ceux qui se sont identifiés comme biculturels ou appartenant à des groupes culturels ou religieux minoritaires par rapport aux Québécois « de souche » ou aux personnes s’identifiant comme catholiques. Les participants qui se disaient en faveur de la charte ont rapporté moins de discrimination que ceux qui y étaient opposés.

Perceptions transformées

Bonnes ou mauvaises, les relations intercommunautaires au Québec ? Le débat sur la charte a complètement changé la vision des jeunes sur cette question. Alors qu’ils voyaient majoritairement les relations intercommunautaires comme étant positives avant la charte, leur perception est devenue largement négative après, surtout chez les femmes, les immigrants et ceux qui s’identifient comme des minorités culturelles ou religieuses. C’est plus de la moitié des étudiants qui entrevoyaient un avenir sombre pour les relations entre les communautés. Seulement 20 % croyaient en un avenir positif. « L’étude révèle que la question de l’identité nationale québécoise est très sensible et sous-tend des tensions intercommunautaires importantes », écrivent les chercheurs.

Femmes musulmanes

Les femmes de confession musulmane ont été parmi les plus touchées par la charte, nous explique la chercheuse Ghayda Hassan, notamment parce que le débat sur le projet du PQ a beaucoup tourné autour du port du voile islamique. L’étude démontre que la couverture médiatique, en « dépeignant les symboles religieux comme des menaces au vivre-ensemble », en centrant son discours « autour de la sécularisation préconisée par la charte, a contribué à des manifestations de discrimination et d’ethnicisation dirigées surtout contre des femmes musulmanes immigrées, perçues comme des menaces pour la construction de la nation ».

Encore des séquelles ?

Dans la foulée de l’attentat dans une mosquée de Québec, plusieurs membres de la communauté musulmane ont montré du doigt la charte des valeurs. Visiblement, plus de deux ans après l’abandon du projet, les séquelles se font toujours sentir. Mais ont-elles encore un impact réel dans la société ? « Étant donné que le projet de charte a été abandonné lorsque le gouvernement du Parti québécois a été battu en 2014, les effets négatifs que nous avons observés ont peut-être disparu. Cependant, le débat sous-jacent est encore vivant », écrivent les chercheurs.

Source: Étude: la charte des valeurs aurait attisé la discrimination | Gabrielle Duchaine | National

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Liberal MP’s anti-Islamophobia motion set for debate next week

2017/02/11 Leave a comment

Hate Crimes Comparison.004

Statistics Canada Annual Police Reported Hate Crimes

Canada already has hate speech laws (unlike south of the border) and tracks police reported hate crimes (although StatsCan stopped writing its analysis of the data).

While I favour tracking, analyzing and messaging that covers all forms of racism, prejudice and discrimination, community specific messaging can be part of raising awareness, addressing concerns and reassuring communities. The previous government paid particular attention to antisemitism given the concerns of Canadian Jews.

My reading of the motion is that it has an appropriate focus on data collection and analysis, places Islamophobia within the broader context of racism and discrimination. with the resulting policy recommendations to be developed within that context by Canadian Heritage:

Members of Parliament will debate a motion to condemn Islamophobia and track incidents of hate crime against Muslims in the House of Commons next week.

Motion 103 was tabled by Mississauga, Ont., Liberal backbencher Iqra Khalid last fall, but will be discussed in the  aftermath of last month’s mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque. It calls on government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

The text of the motion also asks the government to:

  • Recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear.
  • Request the heritage committee study how the government could develop a government-wide approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia.
  • Collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities and present findings within 240 calendar days.

The motion, scheduled for one hour of debate on Wednesday, has generated a backlash online, with petitions garnering thousands of signatures opposing the motion.

Some critics have mischaracterized M-103 as a “bill” or a “law” rather than an non-binding motion.

Some have warned that Canada is moving towards criminalizing Islamophobia or even to the implementation of Islamic law, called Shariah, in Canada.

Khalid declined requests for an interview from CBC News.

When she tabled the motion on Dec. 5, 2016, she described her experience as a “young, brown, Muslim, Canadian woman.”

“When I moved to Canada in the 1990s, a young girl trying to make this nation my home, some kids in school would yell as they pushed me, ‘Go home, you Muslim’ — but I was home. I am among thousands of Muslims who have been victimized because of hate and fear,” she said.

“I am a proud Canadian among hundreds and thousands of others who will not tolerate hate based on religion or skin colour. I rise today with my fellow Canadians to reject and condemn Islamophobia.”

E-petition condemning Islamophobia

On the same day Khalid tabled her motion, an e-petition with nearly 70,000 signatures was tabled that called on the House of Commons to join the signatories in recognizing that “extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.”

Barbara Kay, a columnist for the National Post and contributor to The Rebel Media, worries about the potential impact on freedom of expression and special protections for a single religious group.

“There are a lot of countries in Europe where criticism of Islam, even if not entrenched in law as a hate crime, are being interpreted by police and law enforcement, social workers — the whole spectrum of the state apparatus. They have been internalized by those within the public service as wrong, and if not criminal then absolutely morally wrong, and therefore Muslims are a group that must be protected from this very offensive speech,” she said in an interview with CBC.

Kay said anti-hate speech laws have traditionally targeted human beings, not ideas. She questioned the need to single out Islamophobia, and argued there are more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims in Canada.

Hate crimes in Canada

According to Statistics Canada, in 2013 there were 326 police-reported hate crimes motivated by hatred of a religion or religious group, about 28 per cent of all hate crimes.

Those targeting Jewish populations were the most frequently reported, accounting for 56 per cent of religious hate crimes in 2013, according to the most recent data available. There were 181 hate-motivated crimes targeting the Jewish religion reported by police in 2013, compared to 65 crimes motivated by hatred against the Muslim religion.

In her report and a video for The Rebel website, Kay said blasphemy laws conceived according to Shariah law could creep into Canada.

She said that could have a chilling effect on free speech and ultimately mean some of her columns could be deemed Islamophobic and subject to penalties.

“I’m worried. All Canadians should be worried,” she wrote.

Push for broader discussion

B.C. Conservative MP Dianne Watts said she supports the motion but wants a broader discussion about how to end any act of hate or discrimination based on race or religion.

“We just look at what happened at the mosque in Quebec and it’s such a horrible thing to have happen in Canada because that’s not who we are, that’s not what we’re about and we have to do everything we possibly can as legislators and as a community to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Source: Liberal MP’s anti-Islamophobia motion set for debate next week – Politics – CBC News

Motion text: Motion M-103

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Americans View Islam Less Negatively Than They Did A Year Ago | The Huffington Post

2017/02/10 Leave a comment

Not sure the extent to which this is positive (fewer negative views) or negative (greater political polarization) but ironic given the words of the Trump campaign and the words and actions of the Trump administration:

Americans’ view of Islam are, by and large, hostile. But negative opinions of the religion have dropped significantly during the past year, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, despite ― or perhaps in response to ― the anti-Islam rhetoric often espousedby President Donald Trump and his advisers.

Last March, Americans were 42 points more likely to view the religion negatively than they were to view it positively. That gap dropped to 33 points by June, and to 20 points in the most recent survey, the lowest it’s been since HuffPost/YouGov surveys first asked the question nearly two years ago.

HUFFINGTON POST

At least one other pollster has noticed a similar shift. Shibley Telhami, the director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year about having seen attitudes toward “Muslim people” growing progressively more favorable between November 2015 and October 2016 ― even after Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida.

He attributed some of the change to polarization, noting that the biggest driver was evolving opinions among Democrats, and, to a lesser extent, independents.

“As on almost all issues, partisan divisions intensified during a highly divisive election year,” he wrote. “The more one side emphasized the issue — as happened with Trump on Islam and Muslims — the more the other side took the opposite position. … Trump the president should have more sway. But he is starting at place where partisanship is not diminishing, and where his presidential rhetoric mirrors his words as a partisan candidate.”

Breaking down the two most recent HuffPost/YouGov surveys along party lines yields similar results, suggesting that the Trump administration’s rhetoric has actually galvanized Democrats, and some independents, into greater support of Islam.

HUFFINGTON POST

In June 2016, Democrats, Republicans and independents all held net negative views of Islam, although the gap was most pronounced among Republicans. Since then, Democrats’ opinions of the religion have improved significantly ― favorable opinions have risen by 11 points, while unfavorable opinions have fallen by 13 points.

Source: Americans View Islam Less Negatively Than They Did A Year Ago | The Huffington Post

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We need to understand what ‘Islamophobia’ really means : Glavin

2017/02/04 Leave a comment

Good piece by Terry Glavin:

Getting it wrong can do great harm, because the slipperiness of language occurs in tandem with the slovenliness of ideas. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for instance, recently sustained a nasty self-inflicted wound to its reputation in this way. Long a turn-to organization for research on political extremism, the SPLC published a list of what it described as 15 “anti-Muslim extremists ” that included the unambiguously bigoted American hothead Pamela Geller and the notorious paranoid Frank Gaffney along with the impeccably credentialed Maajid Nawaz, a high-profile reformist Muslim. Nawaz works with the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think tank named after the founder of Britain’s first mosque.

The imprecision of the term Islamophobia is almost invariably bound up in dead-end arguments that allow both “counter-jihad” activists and jihadists alike to conflate Islam, the religion as it is practiced by the overwhelming majority of Muslims, with Islamism, the totalitarian ideology that has produced several virulent strains, including the ghastly fanaticism of Daesh, otherwise known as Islamic State.

…The conflation of Islam with Islamism allows anti-Muslim bigotry to flourish. Bigots and lunatics routinely conflate passages from the Quran with the faith of innocently devout Muslims. It’s easy work to find all sorts of bloodcurdling passages in the Quran that can be lifted and rigged to slander Muslims of all kinds. Like these: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks. . . Oh believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends. . . Oh believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness.”

Taking that to mean that Muslims are just waiting for the chance to embark upon rampages of neck-smiting and wickedness is to surrender to racism and dementia. Even more unpleasant, this one’s about Jews: “I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. . . Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”

That one’s from a lurid 16th Century tract composed by the prophet of Protestantism, Martin Luther. Shall we all start freaking out about Lutherans now?

The “left” has happily entertained its own hysterical conspiracy theories: the United Nations reconstruction of Afghanistan was really an American imperialist war for oil (Afghanistan, alas, is rich mainly in sand) is one. “Al Qaeda was created by the CIA” is another. Sometimes, the idiocies of the “left” and “the” right are indistinguishable or interchangeable, even in the arguments about President’s Trump’s vulgar excesses.

Who said this? “If they want to build a wall that’s up to them. If they want to throw out illegal immigrants or keep out Muslims that’s up to them. It’s their business.” It could have been the execrable Trump-admiring Brexit rabblerouser Nigel Farage. But it was the disgraced British MP and “anti-war” loudmouth George Galloway, who not long ago was a frequent celebrity guest on fashionable CBC chat shows and a darling of Toronto Star columnists.

During Tuesday’s emergency House of Commons debates on how Canada should respond to Trump’s anti-Muslim executive order, the wisest counsel came not from NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, who did a splendid job attempting to wrest something useful from the government benches, nor from rookie Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed Hussen, who had nothing to offer in response.

It came from Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, who is not what you would call a popular person at the Conservative Party’s fringe, where shouting about Muslims is the loudest.

“It is facile for us to believe that there are not others on this planet who disagree with our way of life. There are those who hold views so extreme that they kill in the name of their God. They rape in the name of their God. They subjugate and bring terror in the name of their God. No religion and no nation is immune to this,” Rempel told the House.

“Yet there are those who seek to bring light and beauty to the world. They seek to bring peace, prosperity, and tolerance. Every religion and every nation has these people. They are Muslim and they are Christian. They are Sikh and they are Hindu.”

By closing our arms around the grieving widows and the children and the loved ones of those six martyrs in Sainte-Foy this week, we Canadians might just have allowed some light and beauty to emerge from this horrible thing. Yet there remains an unspeakable hatred of Muslims, and hysteria about Muslims, abroad in the land.

We need to get this right. We owe it to the dead, and we owe it to the living, to face this scourge with decency, with compassion and with honesty, to muster what is right and good about Canada to the cause of seeing to it that those six men did not die in vain.

Source: We need to understand what ‘Islamophobia’ really means – Macleans.ca

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Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making – The New York Times

2017/02/03 Leave a comment

Yet another test for the institutional checks and balances:

It was at a campaign rally in August that President Trump most fully unveiled the dark vision of an America under siege by “radical Islam” that is now radically reshaping the policies of the United States.

On a stage lined with American flags in Youngstown, Ohio, Mr. Trump, who months before had called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration, argued that the United States faced a threat on par with the greatest evils of the 20th century. The Islamic State was brutalizing the Middle East, and Muslim immigrants in the West were killing innocents at nightclubs, offices and churches, he said. Extreme measures were needed.

“The hateful ideology of radical Islam,” he told supporters, must not be “allowed to reside or spread within our own communities.”

Mr. Trump was echoing a strain of anti-Islamic theorizing familiar to anyone who has been immersed in security and counterterrorism debates over the last 20 years. He has embraced a deeply suspicious view of Islam that several of his aides have promoted, notably retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, now his national security adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s top strategist.

This worldview borrows from the “clash of civilizations” thesis of the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, and combines straightforward warnings about extremist violence with broad-brush critiques of Islam. It sometimes conflates terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State with largely nonviolent groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and, at times, with the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world. In its more extreme forms, this view promotes conspiracies about government infiltration and the danger that Shariah, the legal code of Islam, may take over in the United States.

Those espousing such views present Islam as an inherently hostile ideology whose adherents are enemies of Christianity and Judaism and seek to conquer nonbelievers either by violence or through a sort of stealthy brainwashing.

The executive order on immigration that Mr. Trump signed on Friday might be viewed as the first major victory for this geopolitical school. And a second action, which would designate the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political movement in the Middle East, as a terrorist organization, is now under discussion at the White House, administration officials say.

Beyond the restrictions the order imposed on refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, it declared that the United States should keep out those with “hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles” and “those who would place violent ideologies over American law,” clearly a reference to Shariah.

Rejected by most serious scholars of religion and shunned by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, this dark view of Islam has nonetheless flourished on the fringes of the American right since before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With Mr. Trump’s election, it has now moved to the center of American decision-making on security and law, alarming many Muslims.

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Quebec media, politicians express regret over Islam rhetoric in wake of mosque attack

2017/02/01 Leave a comment

Hopefully, a lasting lesson, not just an immediate one:

Across the province, political operators and media stars offered a range of regrets and conciliatory statements for their failure to take into account the weight carried by their constant analysis of the faith, practices and extremist fringes of Islam dating back more than 10 years.

Journal de Montréal columnist Lise Ravary wrote she has come to realize many citizens fail to catch the nuance between extremism and simple religious devotion in her writing as she has argued for a more secular state.

Parti Québécois Leader Jean-François Lisée admitted he has gone too far sometimes. His party long pushed for legislation that would limit religious accommodation in the province and restrict religious symbols and clothing in interactions with the state. Mr. Lisée once warned the burka – a head-to-toe covering some Muslim women wear – is a security risk because it could conceal firearms for a terrorist attacker.

“It wasn’t a good idea to bring that idea into the Quebec debate,” Mr. Lisée told reporters Tuesday. “It’s not easy to be Muslim in the 21st century. We could turn down our language while still debating our values.”

The Bloc Québécois federal party quietly took down an ad from the 2015 election that depicted a niqab – an all-covering black Muslim veil – transforming into a puddle of oil.

As for “radio poubelle” or “trash radio” as critics call it, Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume said the province must “reject … those who enrich themselves with hatred.”

One emotional talk radio host in the city admitted Tuesday to an airwave obsession with radical Islam and expressed his shame that his address book was empty when he needed to talk to local Muslim citizens. “I don’t think a week passes that I don’t talk about their religion, about radical Islam. When I wanted to talk to our own [Muslim] people, I figured out we don’t know any. We didn’t have a number,” said Sylvain Bouchard, morning host on FM93. Mr. Bouchard is far from the meanest host on Quebec City airwaves, and several of his competitors angrily denied going too far.

Muslims in Quebec City and across the province were buoyed by large public rallies of support in recent days but they wonder how much the public debate can change.

“Trash radio constantly wants to talk about Islam and it does us immense harm. We are a small community here and huge numbers of people listen to that radio. They see us, they don’t talk to us, they think we’re monsters,” said Yassin Boulnemour, a friend and co-worker of Abdelkrim Hassane, a 41-year-old father of two who was killed in the attack. “If you want to show us your solidarity, stop listening to the radio.”

Majdi Dridi, an organizer with the Quebec arm of the Muslim Association of Canada, said he hopes authorities will take more seriously routine acts of hate and Islamophobia the community encounters. “It’s time now to fine our points of commonality instead of talking about differences and how to accommodate them.”

Not all of the political and media actors are ready to forget about their agenda for limiting the place of Islam in the public sphere. Bernard Drainville, the former PQ member cabinet minister who in 2013 drafted the failed charter of values that would have limited religious dress in the public service among other measures, took to his current TV and radio commenting gigs to say the debate must go on – after a respectful pause.

Source: Quebec media, politicians express regret over Islam rhetoric in wake of mosque attack – The Globe and Mail

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U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear ‘Sister Wives’ polygamy appeal

2017/01/25 Leave a comment

Reality tv meets the justice system, but on a technicality:

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear an appeal from the family on TV’s “Sister Wives” challenging Utah’s law banning polygamy.

The decision ends the family’s long legal fight to overturn a seldom used and unique provision of Utah’s law that the Browns and other polygamous families contend has a chilling effect by sending law-abiding plural families into hiding because of fear of prosecution.

The provision bars married people from living with a second purported “spiritual spouse” even if the man is legally married to just one woman, making it stricter than anti-bigamy laws in other states.

The reality TLC cable channel TV show follows the lives of Kody Brown, his four wives and all their children. When it debuted in 2010, it was considered ground-breaking by offering viewers a glimpse into how a plural family navigates the unique complexities of the arrangement.

Utah prosecutors say they generally leave polygamists alone but that they need the ban to pursue polygamists for other crimes such as underage marriage and sexual assault. Only 10 people were charged with violating the law between 2001 and 2011, prosecutors say.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office declined comment on the Supreme Court’s denial of the case, which the justices issued without comment.

The saga between the Browns and Utah officials began in September 2010 when the first episode aired of the TLC show, “Sister Wives.” A county prosecutor opened an investigation, leading the Browns to leave their longtime of Lehi, Utah, in 2011, to settle in Las Vegas where they still live today.

That same year, the Browns filed a lawsuit calling the opening of the investigation government abuse. The case was closed without filing any charges.

In 2013, the Browns scored a key legal victory when a federal judge in Utah ruled the law violated polygamists’ right to privacy and religious freedom.

But an appeals court in Denver decided last year that the Browns could not sue because they were not charged under the Utah law. It did not consider the constitutional issues. That ruling will now stand.

The Brown’s attorney, Jonathan Turley, said in a statement posted on his blog that he and the family are disappointed but not surprised because the high court is on a pace to hear less than 1 per cent of the 7,500 appeals it is likely to receive this term.

Turley emphasized that an appeals court ruling was not made based on the merits of the Browns’ assertion that Utah’s law violates their rights of speech and religion.

“Our victory in Salt Lake City will remain as a cautionary decision for legislators who wish to marginalize or sanction this community in the future,” Turley said. “It has been a long road for all of us and it is not the end of the road. Plural and unconventional families will continue to strive for equal status and treatment under the law.”

Kody Brown is legally married to Robyn Brown, but says he is “spiritually married” to three other women. They live together in a plural relationship and belong to a religious group that believes in polygamy as a core religious practice. Their show continues to air on TLC.

Source: U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear ‘Sister Wives’ polygamy appeal – Macleans.ca

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Should we ‘ban’ Salafism? – Gurski

2017/01/24 Leave a comment

Good piece by Phil Gurski:

Truth be told, I am no fan of most Salafis (full disclosure: I am not Muslim so my views count for little). I happen to find them arrogant, intolerant and distrustful of Muslims who are not like them (this means most Muslims—look at the figure presented above: of an estimated 4.3 million Muslims in Germany, 10,000— i.e. less than one per cent—are Salafi). In the same way I have little time for fundamentalists of any religion, including my own. But, I don’t tell them how to pray and how to worship—that is not my job. Is the German government now the arbiter of Islam in Germany? Does it really want that job?

This is fraught with problems. Is anyone associated with the German government qualified to determine who is a Salafist and who isn’t? What about divisions within Salafism? Most reputable scholars recognize at least three divisions with only the third—the Salafi jihadis—as a group that must be opposed because they believe in the use of violence to get their way. If Germany cracks down on “Salafists,” whether or not they espouse violence, should it not also ban other fundamentalist groups (Jews, Christians, Hindus…)? If not, why not?

At the end of the day the people best placed to deal with Salafism, if we agree that it is a “problem,” are not those in government, but the communities where it has taken hold. They are the ones most affected by it and they are the ones criticized by those with more intolerant views. They have a vested interest in challenging this issue, not the state. If certain preachers advocate violence, then ban them.

Furthermore, and this is really important, just as there is not a direct correlation/causation between Islam and terrorism, nor is there one on every occasion between Salafi Islam and terrorism. Saying there is is disingenuous. Let’s not make the serious problem of terrorism bigger than it already is. The “escalator” model of terrorism (i.e. that there are concrete steps always present along the pathway to violent extremism) is a poor one and has never been shown to apply universally. This lack of certainty describes the relationship between Salafism and terrorism.

Canada’s 15th prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, famously said that the “state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” Nor does it have a place in the mosques, pews, synagogues, temples or gurdwaras. If any of these places serve as hub or venue for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, then that is a different story and the State does have both a right and a duty to get involved. Otherwise, it is wiser to stay out of that domain.

Source: Should we ‘ban’ Salafism? – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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To Secular Bangladeshis, Textbook Changes Are a Harbinger – The New York Times

2017/01/24 Leave a comment

Not encouraging:

Bangladesh’s Education Ministry was preparing to print the 2017 editions of its standard Bengali textbooks when a group of conservative Islamic religious scholars demanded the removal of 17 poems and stories they deemed “atheistic.”

By the time the books were distributed to schools on Jan. 1, the 17 poems and stories were gone, with no explanation from the government. Other changes had crept in, too: First graders studying the alphabet were taught that “o” stands for “orna,” a scarf worn by devout Muslim girls starting at puberty, not for “ol,” a type of yam; and a sixth-grade travelogue describing a visit to the Hindu-dominated north of India was replaced by one about the Nile in Egypt.

The changes were barely noticeable to the general public, but they alarmed some Bangladesh intellectuals, who saw them as the government’s accommodating a larger shift toward radical Islam.

Bangladesh has struggled to contain extremist violence in recent years, as Islamist militants have targeted secular writers and intellectuals. But equally significant, over the long term, are changes taking place in the general population: The number of women wearing the hijab has gradually risen, as has the number of students enrolled in madrasas, or Islamic schools.

That religious organizations now have a hand in editing textbooks, a prerogative they sought for years, suggests that their influence is growing, even with the Awami League party, which is avowedly secular, in power.

It is a shift that, increasingly, worries the United States. Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971, and in the decades that followed, it defined itself as adamantly secular and democratic.

For years, this ideology seemed to serve as an insulating force. Transnational jihadist networks that flourished in Afghanistan and Pakistan found little purchase in Bangladesh, despite its dense, poor Muslim population and porous borders.

But over the last several years, as extremist attacks on atheist bloggers and intellectuals became commonplace, secular thought was also fast receding from Bangladesh’s public spaces.

Islamist organizations, analysts say, are so skilled at mobilizing that it has become harder for the government to ignore their demands, especially with a general election coming in 2019.

Hefazat-e-Islam, a vast Islamic organization based in Dhaka, the capital, first called for changes to the textbooks during huge rallies in 2013.

“We went to the higher-ups in the government,” Mufti Fayez Ullah, the group’s joint secretary general, said. “The government realized, ‘Yes, the Muslims should not learn this.’ So they amended it. I want to add that all the political parties, they consider their popularity among the people.”

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Éthique et culture religieuse: contre tous les dogmatismes | Le Devoir

2017/01/17 Leave a comment

Good defence of the Quebec ethics and religious culture course by Christine Cossette who teaches it:

Je dis aussi à mes élèves que le doute fait partie de la foi et la rend plus intelligente en l’éloignant des dogmatismes. La foi n’est pas une évidence ; elle doit se soumettre constamment à l’esprit critique. Je la présente donc non pas comme une instance qui dit quoi penser, mais plutôt comme celle qui donne des outils pour mieux penser sa vie. C’est alors que la religion est au service de l’homme et non le contraire.

Ce que le volet Culture religieuse m’autorise à faire, c’est de mettre en lumière le nécessaire travail d’exégèse sur les textes sacrés. En étudiant par exemple la question de l’origine de la vie, je vois le darwinisme et j’analyse le contexte d’écriture des récits de la Genèse qui peuvent, s’ils sont lus mot à mot, mener à de l’obscurantisme. Mes élèves comprennent donc que, dans ces textes, scientifiques et bibliques, deux discours se côtoient mais ne s’opposent pas et qu’un scientifique peut donc être croyant ou non.

Le cours d’ECR m’offre aussi l’occasion de parler de la spiritualité qui est la commune condition humaine (qu’on soit religieux ou pas). En effet, l’être humain n’a pas nécessairement besoin de se lier à une quelconque divinité pour vivre de valeurs qui le grandissent. La spiritualité appartient à l’homme dans son humanité la plus profonde, précisément parce qu’il porte en lui un mystère qui le dépasse. L’occasion est belle ici de parler de ceux qui ont ouvert d’incroyables chemins d’humanité grâce à leur foi, à leur générosité ou à leur réflexion philosophique.

La mondialisation, avec ses limites et ses grandeurs, nous oblige à réfléchir sur l’avenir de l’humanité : comment en arriver à sauver un espace de dialogue entre chacun de nous ? Le combat n’est plus à faire entre les athées et les croyants, mais bien entre les esprits ouverts et les esprits dogmatiques qui, eux, prétendent connaître la Vérité. Or, on sait que le dogmatisme se cache autant dans le monde religieux que dans l’univers anti-religieux. « Pour mener ce combat pour la liberté et pour la tolérance, dit Comte-Sponville, nous avons besoin de faire la paix entre croyants et incroyants, de nous allier contre notre ennemi commun, qui n’est pas la religion, qui n’est pas l’athéisme, mais qui est le dogmatisme. »

Le cours d’ECR me permet de proposer cet espace de réflexion pour une humanité plus respectueuse des uns et des autres. Il me donne cette possibilité aussi de présenter ce que l’orthodoxe Olivier Clément appelle le « noyau de feu » de chacune des grandes religions en mettant en lumière ce qui les unit. Après tout, n’est-il pas honnête de dire que d’autres avant nous ont laissé des trésors pour vivre en humanité ?

J’aime donner ce cours. J’estime qu’il contribue à former des citoyens justes, courtois et à l’esprit critique. Mais je suis fatiguée de lire toutes les inepties qu’on peut en dire. Je rêve du jour où, enfin, ses détracteurs se donneront la peine de lire, non pas les cahiers d’exercices, mais bien le programme tel qu’il a été pensé, tout en précisant qu’il devrait être un peu plus balisé pour obliger ses professeurs à toujours plus de rigueur à travers l’apprentissage de fondements philosophiques, historiques et théologiques.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

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