Le Devoir Éditorial | Agir sur trois fronts à l’école Bedford, Yakabuski: Religion in public schools is roiling Quebec politics once again

2024/10/28 Leave a comment

Of note:

À la suite de l’épouvantable scandale de l’école primaire Bedford, dans Côte-des-Neiges, affublée de tous les maux, le débat sur la laïcité est reparti de plus belle à l’Assemblée nationale. Avant de conclure qu’un renforcement de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État s’impose, les élus seraient avisés de prendre un pas de recul et de poser un diagnostic lucide sur les dérives qui ont compromis tant le projet pédagogique de cette école que le bien-être des enfants et du personnel.

Les problèmes de l’école Bedford, une école publique, offrent un condensé des dérives du réseau scolaire québécois. Ils envoient aussi un strident signal d’alarme que nous ne pouvons ignorer, puisque quatre autres écoles de la région montréalaise font maintenant l’objet de vérifications de la part du ministère de l’Éducation pour des dérives analogues.

En somme, un clan dominant d’enseignants d’origine maghrébine — opposé à un autre groupe de la même appartenance — a pris sur lui d’adapter ou d’ignorer des pans du programme pédagogique pour lui insuffler des valeurs à mi-chemin entre le conservatisme culturel et le prosélytisme religieux au nom de l’islam. Le rapport ne va pas aussi loin, mais il est compris et analysé comme tel dans l’espace public.

Tout y est : le harcèlement, l’intimidation, la violation de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, le déni d’assistance et l’humiliation des élèves éprouvant des difficultés d’apprentissage, le refus du français comme langue d’usage, l’iniquité de traitement entre les hommes et les femmes, la démission des enseignants qui ne voulaient pas manger de ce pain-là, l’incurie administrative grâce à laquelle le climat a pourri pendant sept ans, l’incapacité de la direction ou du Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM) de venir à bout du problème, les limites de la Loi sur l’instruction publique, la mollesse crasse des instances syndicales, qui n’ont pas su agir dans l’intérêt des enfants, l’incompétence abyssale des enseignants embauchés dans un contexte de pénurie de main-d’oeuvre en éducation qui ne disparaîtra pas de sitôt…

Est-ce vraiment une affaire de laïcité ? La réponse est… complexe. Il y a là en même temps l’expression d’un refus et d’une acceptation du vivre-ensemble : n’oublions pas que le litige oppose des enseignants issus du même creuset. L’école Bedford, c’est plutôt la symbiose parfaite du déni de la laïcité, de la faiblesse dans la gouvernance scolaire et de l’incompétence pédagogique.

Si l’État n’agit pas sur ces trois fronts en simultané, il risque d’instrumentaliser la laïcité pour faire des gains politiques à court terme, en balayant sous le tapis l’impérieuse nécessité d’assainir la gouvernance scolaire et de se doter d’une Loi sur l’instruction publique permettant d’agir sur l’incompétence des enseignants avec plus de célérité. Le rapport d’enquête du ministère de l’Éducation sur l’école Bedford, qui a mené à la suspension du droit d’enseigner de 11 professeurs, est on ne peut plus clair à ce sujet : « aucune conséquence n’est prévue à la [Loi sur l’instruction publique] pour l’enseignant qui ne respecte pas ses obligations ».

Aujourd’hui, le conservatisme musulman est montré du doigt à l’école Bedford. Demain, ce sera le messianisme judaïque ou même le conspirationnisme fantaisiste, pourquoi pas ?

Nous ne pouvons prédire ce que la pénurie de professeurs et les difficultés de recrutement en éducation produiront comme canards boiteux devant la classe. Il y a pour ainsi dire urgence de passer outre la rigidité syndicale et la sacralisation de l’autonomie professionnelle pour faire en sorte que les enseignants ne puissent pas prendre de liberté avec le programme pédagogique, le principe de l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes et l’épanouissement des enfants. Il y a aussi des comptes à demander aux directions d’école et aux centres de services scolaires pour s’assurer du respect de leurs obligations dans des délais acceptables.

C’est à ces conditions que nous pourrons aborder l’enjeu de la laïcité, un élément parmi d’autres de cette poudrière. La cohérence entre l’action et le discours sera la bienvenue. Dans la foulée de cette histoire, le Parti libéral du Québec a révisé sa position historique et se dit maintenant opposé au financement public des écoles à vocation religieuse, au nom de l’équité entre les hommes et les femmes. Selon une analyse faite par La Presse, 11 de ces écoles sont lourdement avantagées par l’État, recevant des subventions de 38 millions de dollars et bénéficiant d’avantages fiscaux directs et indirects totalisant 53 millions.

Le premier ministre François Legault a d’abord rejeté une motion à l’Assemblée nationale sur l’abolition du financement public des écoles privées religieuses. Le lendemain, il s’est dit prêt à en débattre de manière réfléchie. C’est la voie à suivre. La patience, le recul et la contribution de la société civile seront nécessaires pour faire en sorte que la neutralité religieuse et l’imputabilité trouvent leur pleine expression dans le système scolaire québécois.

Source: Éditorial | Agir sur trois fronts à l’école Bedford

Following the terrible scandal of the Bedford primary school, in Côte-des-Neiges, adorned with all evils, the debate on secularism has started again in the National Assembly. Before concluding that a strengthening of the Law on the Secularism of the State is necessary, elected officials would be advised to take a step back and make a lucid diagnosis of the excesses that have compromised both the pedagogical project of this school and the well-being of children and staff.

The problems of Bedford School, a public school, offer a summary of the excesses of the Quebec school network. They are also sending a shrill alarm that we cannot ignore, since four other schools in the Montreal region are now being checked by the Ministry of Education for similar drifts.

In short, a dominant clan of teachers of North African origin – opposed to another group of the same membership – has taken it upon himself to adapt or ignore parts of the pedagogical program to instill values halfway between cultural conservatism and religious proselytism in the name of Islam. The report does not go that far, but it is understood and analyzed as such in public space.

Everything is there: harassment, intimidation, the violation of the Law on the secularism of the State, the denial of assistance and the humiliation of students experiencing learning difficulties, the refusal of French as a language of use, the inequality of treatment between men and women, the resignation of teachers who did not want to eat this bread, the administrative negligence thanks to which the climate has rotten for seven years, the inability of the management or the Montreal School Service Center (CSSDM) to overcome the problem, the limits of the Public Education Act, the gross softness of the union bodies, who did not know how to act in the interests of children, abysmal incompetence Of teachers hired in a context of labor shortage in education that will not disappear anytime soon…

Is it really a matter of secularism? The answer is… complex. At the same time, there is the expression of a refusal and acceptance of living together: let’s not forget that the dispute opposes teachers from the same crucible. The Bedford school is rather the perfect symbiosis of the denial of secularism, weakness in school governance and pedagogical incompetence.

If the State does not act on these three fronts simultaneously, it risks instrumentalizing secularism to make short-term political gains, by sweeping under the carpet the imperative need to clean up school governance and to have a law on public education to act on the incompetence of teachers more quickly. The investigation report of the Ministry of Education into the Bedford School, which led to the suspension of the right to teach of 11 teachers, could not be clear on this subject: “no consequences are foreseen in the [Public Education Act] for the teacher who does not respect his obligations”.

Today, Muslim conservatism is pointed out at the Bedford School. Tomorrow, it will be Jewish messianism or even fanciful conspiracy, why not?

We cannot predict what the shortage of teachers and the difficulties in recruiting in education will produce like lame ducks in front of the classroom. It is, so to speak, urgent to go beyond union rigidity and the sacralization of professional autonomy to ensure that teachers cannot take freedom with the pedagogical program, the principle of equality between men and women and the development of children. There are also accountability for school principals and school service centres to ensure that their obligations are met within an acceptable time frame.

It is under these conditions that we will be able to address the issue of secularism, one element among others of this powder keg. Consistency between action and speech will be welcome. In the wake of this story, the Quebec Liberal Party has revised its historical position and is now opposed to public funding for religious schools, in the name of equity between men and women. According to an analysis made by La Presse, 11 of these schools are heavily advantaged by the state, receiving subsidies of 38 million dollars and benefiting from direct and indirect tax benefits totaling 53 million.

Prime Minister François Legault first rejected a motion in the National Assembly on the abolition of public funding for private religious schools. The next day, he said he was ready to discuss it thoughtfully. This is the way to go. Patience, hindsight and the contribution of civil society will be necessary to ensure that religious neutrality and accountability find their full expression in the Quebec school system.

And for background on the controversies, see Yakabuski below:

…Not surprisingly, Mr. Legault and PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon have been one-upping each other in recent days in their defence of Quebec’s secularist values. After all, l’affaire Bedford also feeds into concerns, stoked by both leaders, that immigration is threatening Quebec’s identity.

“There is a specific problem in our schools, and it involves religious and ideological infiltration. And in the case of École Bedford, it has to do with Islamist infiltration,” Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon declared. “The number of schools where 75 per cent of students were not born in Quebec is quite high in Montreal. We should study how to achieve more mixing of students to avoid the formation of microcosms.”

Mr. Drainville, a former PQ cabinet minister best known for tabling a charter of Quebec values in 2013, is now on the receiving end of PQ attacks as he seeks to come up with a political response to the École Bedford controversy. Mr. Drainville’s charter served as the inspiration for the CAQ’s Bill 21.

Mr. Plamondon is now calling for an end to Quebec’s long-standing system of subsidizing religious private schools, and is promising a four-year moratorium on “economic” immigration if the PQ wins the next election, set for 2026.

For Mr. Legault, the temptation to seize on the École Bedford case to rebuild his own political capital may be too great to resist. Another battle over religion in public schools might suit him just fine.

Source: Yakabuski: Religion in public schools is roiling Quebec politics once again

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Chris Selley: Latest outrages over Muslims give a preview of Quebec’s next referendum

2024/10/26 Leave a comment

Sigh:

…One might ask him the same about all manner of other religious rites parents impose upon their children, and one might even get a consistent answer. Quebec feminist icon Louise Mailloux once equated baptism and circumcision with rape. When Mailloux ran for the PQ in 2014, then leader Pauline Marois said she “respect(ed) the fact that she has that point of view.”

St-Pierre Plamondon complained, too, about a sign welcoming people to Montreal’s City Hall that features a woman wearing the hijab. “Clearly the issue of religious invasion of public space does not stop at Bedford School,” he wrote.

So, yet again, the goalposts have shifted. The old deal was if you speak French and integrate into society, you’re welcome to practice any religion you like. The more recent deal, under 2019’s Bill 21, is that if you want to wield state power for a living — as a police officer, Crown prosecutor, prison guard or teacher — then you also have to remove any religious symbols while you’re on the job.

Now the mere presence of a hijab on a little girl in a library, or anywhere in public, is problematic in Quebec.

Those who’ve always believed Bill 21 wasn’t punitive enough, including St-Pierre Plamondon, have concluded that Bill 21 must be toughened in response to the scandal at the Bedford elementary school. And it all could have been avoided if the school board had just done its bloody job.

Expect a third referendum to boil down to this: linguistic and religious freedom versus restrictions thereof. That can’t not be ugly — and it won’t work for the Yes side. The referendum would fail, and Canada would still include an even-more-divided Quebec that’s even more out of step with the rest of Canada’s concepts of linguistic and religious freedom.

Source: Chris Selley: Latest outrages over Muslims give a preview of Quebec’s next referendum

Filed under Charte de la laïcité, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Rioux | La solitude des profs

2024/10/19 Leave a comment

A noter:

…En France, les islamistes s’évertuent à « maintenir un niveau de connaissances faible afin de tuer l’esprit critique et le rationalisme, l’imaginaire et la fiction, ou encore ignorer l’Histoire, qui n’aurait aucun intérêt pour la connaissance de Dieu », dit l’historien Pierre Vermeren. Sans parler de l’éducation sexuelle…

On ne s’étonnera pas que, laissés à eux-mêmes, 56 % des professeurs français s’autocensurent sur la Shoah, le conflit israélo-palestinien, et n’osent plus montrer à leurs élèves la Vénus de Botticelli. Avant l’assassinat de Samuel Paty, ils n’étaient que 38 %. Pourtant, combien sont-ils à se cacher la tête dans le sable sans même oser prononcer le mot « islamisme » ? Face à la démission de ceux qui ne veulent pas faire de vagues, ne vous demandez pas pourquoi les professeurs se sentent abandonnés.

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… In France, Islamists strive to “maintain a low level of knowledge in order to kill critical thinking and rationalism, imagination and fiction, or ignore History, which would have no interest in the knowledge of God,” says historian Pierre Vermeren. Not to mention sex education…

We will not be surprised that, left to themselves, 56% of French teachers self-censor the Shoah, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and no longer dare to show their students the Botticelli Venus. Before the assassination of Samuel Paty, they were only 38%. However, how many of them hide their heads in the sand without even daring to say the word “Islamism”? Faced with the resignation of those who do not want to make waves, do not ask yourself why teachers feel abandoned.

Source: Chronique | La solitude des profs

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

Why Indians of almost every political persuasion are backing New Delhi in its dispute with Canada 

2024/10/19 Leave a comment

Of interest:

…No country should be allowed to evade accountability, and India is no exception. But as Canada pursues justice, Canadians will have to ask themselves some difficult questions. How and why did their country mutate into a haven for convicted and aspiring terrorists? As Ottawa accuses India of bringing terror to the streets of Canada, Canadians should ask: has their government become a facilitator of international terrorism? And finally: are radical ethno-religious chauvinists who pledge loyalty to – and are willing to shed blood for – a noxious fantasy really worth losing the goodwill of the citizens of the world’s most populous democracy?

Kapil Komireddi is the India-based author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India.

Source: Why Indians of almost every political persuasion are backing New Delhi in its dispute with Canada

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The Muslim Choice: Integration or Confrontation

2024/09/05 Leave a comment

Could also be written for many religions, the fundamentalist vs moderate:

…Two narratives about Islam have developed in western European countries, where Muslims are now a substantial minority presence. The first is of people from various countries settling into their new homes determined to live in peace with (if often at a distance from) their neighbours and the state. In several cases, these newcomers make a considerable contribution to public life: 25 Muslims were elected to the UK parliament in the July general election. The second narrative is of a group aggressively insisting upon their religious rights while they assert that they are the victims of comprehensive Western racism. Occasionally, atrocities are committed, usually by young Muslim men invoking Allah and at the deliberate cost of their own lives.

Likewise, parallel narratives have developed among the Muslim communities themselves. The first understands the West as a place in which they can live relatively well, practise their religion (or not) with little or no opposition, and enjoy freedoms often not available in their own—or their parents’—birth countries. A quite separate view sees relations with state authorities and native citizens in adversarial terms—a constant struggle against a colonial legacy of Islamophobic prejudice, hostility, suspicion, and barriers to freedom of expression and female dress that demand a militant response.

The attacks on mosques and individual Muslims during the August riots demonstrate that bigotry is still a problem among some cohorts of the UK population. But Islamophobia is also a much-abused and hotly contested term. Long before the summer riots, accusations of Islamophobia were used by those eager to deflect—or even reverse—blame for Muslim violence, and amplified by sympathetic parts of the media and some public figures. 

Yet polling does suggest that moderate British Muslim attitudes and communities are not a myth. In 2020, the Crest consultancy launched a research project that compared polls and focus groups of Muslims in eight towns and cities with a comparative group of the general population. The project concluded that: 

We found majorities of British Muslims trust the police, are concerned about Islamist extremism, support the aims of the [government’s counter-extremism] Prevent programme and would refer someone to it if they suspected that they were being radicalised. We found that the views of British Muslims frequently mirror those of the general population and even where they differ they rarely do so dramatically. 

Crest also found that British Muslims have a “broader range of views than is commonly acknowledged by politicians, the media and other participants in the debate on extremism.” The authors do not use the phrase “Muslim community,” since they believe the Muslim population is too diverse to make such a term useful. Instead, Muslims are seen as members of a common faith with differing backgrounds, ideas, and customs who have largely adapted to life in a new country.

As the August riots died down, another poll was conducted by More in Common, a think tank established in 2016 after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, and named after a House of Commons speech in which she said, “We have far more in common than that which divides us.” Its findings underlined the moderation of the British population as a whole and appeared to show that we do indeed have much in common in our views on extremism. Between 87 and 97 percent of respondents said, “The riots do not speak for me.” The outlier was Reform Party supporters, 41 percent of whom said that the riots did, in some measure, speak for them….

John Lloyd was a domestic and foreign correspondent for the Financial Times and a co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Source: The Muslim Choice: Integration or Confrontation

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Chris Selley: Gaza makes strange bedfellows — and maybe that’s a good thing

2024/08/14 Leave a comment

Of interest. Interesting type of intersectionality:

…Barely veiled threats aside, there’s nothing surprising about any of the foregoing. Few religions are bullish on things like homosexuality and gender fluidity, and Islam is no exception. When the Environics Institute last surveyed Canadian Muslims’ attitudes about the country, in 2016, it found just 36 per cent of Muslims felt “homosexuality should be accepted by society,” versus 80 per cent of Canadians overall. Just 26 per cent of Muslims felt it “should … be possible to be both an observant Muslim and live openly in a … same-sex relationship.”

And they’re allowed to think that. We put freedom of religion in the Charter and everything.

In some ways this just highlights the absurdity of left-versus-right thinking. Your opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really should have no bearing on your opinions about same-sex marriage or the appropriate age, if any, for gender-reassignment surgery — or indeed vice versa. They are entirely unrelated issues.

I don’t consider myself especially conservative or right wing, so I’m not here to rep “my side” or score any points. But I will note that people on the left are often obsessed with bedfellows: If someone nasty agrees with you on something, that’s somehow a reflection on you. It’s a reason to reconsider your position.

It’s not a judgment progressives would want to invite on themselves, in this case. But if they’re capable of locking arms with social-conservatives to advance a common cause, I’m tempted to see it as a good thing more than a bad thing. We should all be able to look past our differences, even visceral ones, to make a better country.

Source: Chris Selley: Gaza makes strange bedfellows — and maybe that’s a good thing

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Le Devoir Éditorial | Une foi en la laïcité

2024/07/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Dans les années 1960, Dieu en a mangé toute une au Québec. Les hippies et leur révolution contre-culturelle basée sur une réinvention du concept de la Sainte Trinité autour des figures du sexe, de la drogue et du rock’n’roll ne furent pas les seuls responsables de ces bouleversements annoncés par la prophétie de Refus global.

Dans le tome V d’Histoire populaire du Québec, l’historien Jacques Lacoursière décrit avec acuité le contraste entre l’omniprésence de l’Église et son inexorable déclin. L’Église qui « semble partout est en fait nulle part », écrit-il en citant le professeur de l’Université de Montréal et membre du clergé Jacques Grand’Maison.

Le concile Vatican II ne ralentira pas la sécularisation du Québec. Pendant que les curés débattaient encore en 1970 afin de permettre la messe dominicale le samedi soir — ô révolution ! —, la société laïque attaquait par les voies législative et judiciaire l’édifice croulant du contrôle social par soutanes interposées.

Au diable les prescriptions sur le divorce, sur l’union libre, sur la contraception ou sur l’avortement ! Elles voleront toutes en éclats au cours des deux décennies suivantes. Le recul nous permet de constater que les premières lueurs de la laïcité furent indissociables des combats féministes pour se libérer d’un carcan social qui régentait la vie des femmes, de l’habillement jusqu’à la procréation.

Bien sûr, des intellectuels catholiques participèrent aux premières initiatives visant à rattacher Dieu à la modernité, sans parvenir à freiner un mouvement qui fera passer le religieux de la sphère publique à la vie privée. La transformation fut plus longue et moins radicale qu’il ne le semble à première vue. En effet, il faudra quand même attendre jusqu’en 2005 pour achever le projet de déconfessionnalisation des écoles et jusqu’en 2008 pour voir la création du cours Éthique et culture religieuse.

Dans Genèse de la société québécoise, paru en 1993, le sociologue Fernand Dumont constate, dans un bilan du siècle, l’érosion définitive de l’Église comme « organisme politique et instance de régulation des moeurs ». C’est l’un des plus merveilleux accomplissements de la marche permanente vers la laïcité. Ce n’est pas tant un legs de la Révolution tranquille qu’un long parcours d’affranchissement face aux dogmes et aux gardiens de la parole sacrée, qui ne cesseront jamais d’aspirer à la « revanche de Dieu », pour paraphraser le sublime essai de Gilles Kepel.

Pour en revenir à Dumont, celui-ci soulignait aussi dans son essai « le flottement de la culture collective » qui accompagne la laïcité. Dans une nation en constante recherche de ses repères, c’est sans doute la raison pour laquelle l’attachement nostalgique au catholicisme et à ses rituels (baptême, mariage) a persisté bien au-delà de la Révolution tranquille. Il en est de même pour l’adhésion à une « catho-laïcité », qui s’est plu à casser du sucre sur le dos des femmes voilées tout en se portant à la défense de la symbolique du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale. Dieu merci, ce dernier a été remisé lors de la dernière offensive législative du gouvernement Legault.

Aujourd’hui, les Québécois se déclarent parmi les moins croyants et les moins pratiquants de tout le Canada, mais la ferveur religieuse suit également une tendance baissière dans les autres provinces. La ligne de fracture s’observe plutôt entre l’appui à la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État au Québec et sa diabolisation ailleurs au Canada.

Dans La laïcité du Québec au miroir de sa religiosité, les codirecteurs de l’ouvrage collectif, Jean-François Laniel et Jean-Philippe Perreault, soulignent les défis de penser le fait religieux au Québec alors qu’il semble en voie de glisser vers le statut de « corps étranger ou anachronique, en marge de la culture et de la société ». « La laïcité, dans sa volonté de neutraliser la religion, n’est pas neutre », formulent-ils.

C’est une autre façon d’envisager la Loi sur la laïcité. Celle-ci avait son utilité pour parachever l’oeuvre du rapport Bouchard-Taylor sur la crise des accommodements raisonnables, même si elle embrasse trop large en incluant le personnel enseignant. Avouons-le franchement, cette loi a autant à voir avec la marche vers la sécularisation que l’affirmation identitaire d’un groupe majoritaire entretenant une relation historique d’amour-haine avec le catholicisme. Un groupe qui projette désormais cette relation sur d’autres confessions qui n’avancent pas au même pas dans leur rapport évolutif au fait religieux.

Par l’un de ces paradoxes dont le Québec ne détient pas le monopole parmi les sociétés modernes, nous avons tué Dieu, mais nous ne sommes pas venus à bout de l’irrépressible besoin de croire, comme en atteste la montée en force de la spiritualité à base de tarots, de sorcellerie, de chakras ou de roches magiques. Nous aurions tort de penser que nous pourrons légiférer les croyances jusqu’à leur extinction, surtout pas dans une ère numérique où s’effacent les distinctions entre le public et le privé.

Source: Éditorial | Une foi en la laïcité

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Coren: Islam and Western Society

2024/07/16 Leave a comment

Note: Article dates from 2009 which I should have caught and his views, like most of us, have likely evolved somewhat.

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Surprising to see Coren writing for a more right of centre publication but he raises uncomfortable yet valid questions that his usual outlets might be uncomfortable with:

…Can Islam evolve, as has Christianity and Judaism? In that it is an exclusive monotheistic religion, it can never be as inclusive as Hinduism, but surely, as with Catholic or Protestant Christianity, it can hold to exclusive truth and still be tolerant of others who disagree. The problem is that there is limited evidence that this is happening. The Islamic heartland of the Middle East and Pakistan and even Nigeria and Indonesia evince a severe lack of acceptance for people who leave Islam for another faith, marry outside of the religion or criticize the founder, Mohammad, or the primary text, the Koran. Syria may not be as bad as Iran, Jordan may not be as bad as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia may not be as bad as Egypt, but it is only Turkey – where a militantly secular regime won a Kulturkampf against Islam, where anything resembling Western pluralism exists. It is, however, a pale imitation, and polls repeatedly reveal a personal intolerance of Christians and Jews unparalleled anywhere else in Europe.

In Canada, there have been several cases of so-called honour killings where fathers and brothers murder daughters and sisters who shame the family by becoming too Western. While this does occur outside of Muslim communities, it is overwhelmingly an Islamic phenomenon. Polygamy also occurs in Canada, with multiple and illegal marriages performed by Imams, and the police and judicial authorities are too timid to intervene. There are also cases of violent and hateful sermons delivered in Mosques, death threats made to critics and financial, moral and even physical support for foreign terrorists fighting and killing Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

This makes for depressing reading and paints a bleak picture of the Western, including Canadian, future. Obviously many Europeans already believe this, proved by the increasing support for right wing and sometimes even semi-fascist parties in countries such as Holland and Britain where tolerance is a way of life. We must also be extremely careful not to paint all Muslims with the same brush of suspicion. Most followers of the faith are peaceful people more concerned with paying the rent than preparing a rebellion. What, though, when Islam’s numbers grow and give it something other than cringing minority status? Christians in the Middle East will tell you that there are two radically different Islams: that of the minority and that of the majority.

If this problem is to be solved in a civilized manner, we have to transform the conversation and reform the vocabulary. First, the word “Islamophobia” must be expunged from the debate. It is meaningless, but it is used to silence contrary opinion and to place all critics of Muslim actions on the defensive. Second, there must be a collective show of courage and solidarity from assorted media and a willingness to display pictures and publish articles and books that, while not gratuitously offensive, are as cutting and critical of Islam as are those habitually drawn and written about Christianity. Third, we must hold Muslims to the same standard as anyone else and not indulge in the racism of lowered expectations. It is genuinely patronising to assume that a brown Muslim cannot act according to the same rules of civility and tolerance as a white Christian. Fourth, we must break from self-denial and admit that while we are not at war with Islam or Muslims, our liberal values are in conflict with many of the core concepts and precepts of Islam. We won the Cold War because most of us were prepared to say that capitalism, for all of its faults, was morally superior to communism. Today we are confused about what we believe, frightened to promote what we love and terrified of being seen as intolerant.

If enough people are willing to stand, read, write, act and know, we can carve out a new and successful West that includes the finer points of Islamic culture and history. If we are not – well, the thought is horribly rhetorical.

Source: Islam and Western Society

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Fatima Payman walked a path familiar to many of us – work within a system or disrupt it from the outside, Faith-based politics will be bad for social cohesion and Islam:

2024/07/06 Leave a comment

Two different takes, starting with the activist perspective of Sisonke Msimang:

Senator Fatima Payman has cut a lonely figure in the past week. The first-time senator has spoken with a clarity that is rare among politicians from the major parties. Having found her voice dissenting from her party’s tepid position on Palestine, Payman seems to have hit her stride. Her departure from the Labor party is no surprise, but as the decision loomed, it was clear that she had resonated with communities with strong ties to Palestine.

Since October last year, the Labor party has tried to walk a cautious path in the face of unfolding atrocities in Gaza. As Sarah Schwartz, executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, wrote this week: “While our government has called for a ceasefire, they refuse to name Israel’s crimes or take the material action many have called for under international law including implementing sanctions and throwing our weight behind a global arms embargo.”

Payman’s actions have put her former party’s failure to lead with a conscience in the face of horror under a microscope. In making Gaza an issue worth breaking with tradition for, Payman achieved a cut-through on Labor’s position on Palestine the party has thus far evaded. The spotlight was clearly not welcome.

In this fractious week, Payman has shown the nation that you don’t have to be the most powerful person in the room to have an impact.

The path Payman has walked is familiar to many people from marginalised communities across Australia. We are often the most vulnerable people in an organisation – lower paid, most burdened by systemic inequalities, most precariously contracted. And yet, because of the nature of the society we live in, we are frequently called upon to be courageous and to take hard stands in defence of the values of the communities we represent. We are often aware that if we don’t speak up, people in the mainstream are unlikely to understand the issues we are putting on the table.

A week ago, at the beginning of this saga, Payman invoked the memory of her father to explain the responsibility she felt to support Palestinian statehood. Insisting that she would not simply go along with party policy on a matter of principle, Payman said: “I was not elected as a token representative of diversity, I was elected to serve the people of Western Australia and uphold the values instilled in me by my late father.”

Those words resonated with many people I have spoken to in migrant communities across the country. Payman is like so many other women of colour who have pushed for change inside organisations that – whether intentionally or not – are hostile to ideas they don’t like or tone deaf to the effect they are having on minority groups. And like many others before her, Payman has had to make tough choices about whether to work within the system or seek to make change in more visibly disruptive ways.

Payman has refused to deny one of the defining issue of our times, but hers is also a story about what it means to try to play a broken game when you are part of a minoritised group in this country.

Though Labor has improved its diversity, its caucus is still overwhelmingly white. According to Per Capita thinktank research fellow and Labor activist Osmond Chiu, the proportion of non-European-background, non-Indigenous MPs in federal Labor is close to 10% whereas in the general population that figure is 25%.

Like others who enter largely monocultural spaces, Payman is confronted with a set of rules and procedures that have worked well for the majority but have significant drawbacks for those who haven’t always belonged to the club. To sway a caucus room, you need seniority and a certain kind of standing – commodities that take time to build and are not guaranteed even when young people, women and people of colour are outstanding at their jobs.

Even if Payman had been persuasive (and to be clear, the Labor party did not seem to be interested in being persuaded on this matter), she would likely have encountered an age-old problem: those who defend the status quo thrive by claiming issues raised by people from ethnic minority communities are themselves minor or tangential. We saw this in action when the PM expressed frustration this week about the fact that he was talking about Payman and Palestine instead of tax cuts.

The message was clear – Payman was a distraction and what he really wanted to talk about was cost of living and other matters regular Australians care about. The sub-text was rich.

As it turns out, Australians can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can appreciate the tax cuts and empathise with a young senator who has managed to elevate an issue that has been bubbling away for months but that has largely been treated as a foreign policy matter by the major parties. The war on Gaza isn’t simply happening over there. Seven decades into the Israeli occupation, Palestinians have created a formidable diaspora, and many of those people have created lives in Australia. They in turn have created networks and have friends and neighbours. In a multicultural society it is these types of ties that make it hard for so many of us to tolerate the bombing of Gaza.

As she leaves Labor, Payman reminds her colleagues that genocide is not someone else’s problem. Importantly, she is seeking to prove that if you choose to ignore a genocide, communities that have families, relatives and loved ones at risk overseas may feel that you don’t care about them either.

Politics is not easy for anyone, least of all for leaders from ethnic and religious minority groups. Some play an inside game, while others seek to make change from the outside. Both strategies are important. Pushing the destruct button can sometimes make progress easier for those who choose to remain inside.

This fierce woman, whose family made a new life here after fleeing Afghanistan, has much to teach us about self-determination. Surely the country that has praised itself for giving her shelter can accept that human rights for all means exactly that – in Gaza now more urgently than ever. Payman’s actions this week have been a reminder that if we allow it to be, speaking truth to power is the most powerful gift multiculturalism can give this society. We can all learn from that.

Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)

Source: Fatima Payman walked a path familiar to many of us – work within a system or disrupt it from the outside

From the Australian PM:

The introduction of sectarian politics to Australia in the wake of Fatima Payman’s defection would risk further harm to social cohesion and be bad for the Islamic community, Anthony Albanese has warned.

The prime minister also rounded on Senator Payman by rubbishing her claims that her defection from Labor was spontaneous rather than orchestrated, and implying she should resign altogether and give back her Senate seat to the party that put her in parliament.

“Fatima Payman received around about 1600 votes,” he said of the Senate result in WA at the last election.

“The ALP box above the line received 511,000 votes. It’s very clear that Fatima Payman is in the Senate because people in WA wanted to elect a Labor government.

“And that’s why they put a number one in the box above the line, next to Australian Labor Party, rather than voted below the line for any individual.”

On Thursday, after six weeks publicly agitating against Labor’s position over the Israel-Gaza war, Senator Payman quit and moved to the crossbench as an independent for Western Australia.

She left open the possibility of forming a political party but said she did not intend to collaborate with The Muslim Vote, a group of Islamic community organisations based on a model in the UK that plans to run candidates against federal Labor MPs with large Muslim populations.

Senator Payman has met representatives of The Muslim Vote as well as micro-party specialist Glenn Druery, who has also advised the group.

Mr Albanese on Friday warned against introducingfaith- basedpolitics into Australia.

“I don’t want Australia to go down the road of faith-based political parties because what that will do is undermine social cohesion,” he said.

“My party has in and around the cabinet and ministerial tables people who are Catholic, people who are Uniting Church, people who are Muslim, people who are Jewish.

“That is the way that we’ve conducted politics in Australia. That’s the way you bring cohesion.”

There are many in the major parties who fear an Islamic political push could reignite Islamophobia, something with which Mr Albanese appeared to concur.

“It seems to me as well beyond obvious that it is not in the interest of smaller minority groups to isolate themselves, which is what a faith-based party system would do,” he said.

Source: Faith-based politics will be bad for social cohesion and Islam: PM

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Dejean | Faut-il tolérer la tenue d’activités religieuses dans l’espace public?

2024/06/20 Leave a comment

The latest Quebec religion/laïcité debate:

Une prière organisée le dimanche 16 juin par une communauté musulmane dans le parc des Hirondelles (Ahuntsic-Cartierville) a suscité une controverse, au point que la mairesse de l’arrondissement est allée en ondes pour justifier la tenue de l’événement. Il faut souligner qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’une première fois, mais la diffusion sur les réseaux sociaux d’une vidéo montrant des musulmans, en marge d’un rassemblement en soutien à la Palestine, priant aux intersections de Stanley et Sainte-Catherine n’est sans doute pas étrangère à la controverse.

Ces deux événements posent plusieurs questions : faut-il tolérer la tenue d’activités religieuses dans l’espace public ? Et si oui, à quelles conditions ? Et parmi les traditions religieuses qui organisent des activités religieuses dans l’espace public, l’islam fait-il l’objet d’un traitement différentiel ?

Dans une chronique en date du 12 juin, Richard Martineau déclarait : « Imaginez des gens avec des croix qui décident, eux autres, en plein milieu du centre-ville de Montréal, ils arrivent et puis ils prient avec des croix et puis Jésus et puis tout ça. On aurait raison de dire : “ça, c’est des crinqués”. Les gens diraient : “L’extrême droite chrétienne, l’extrême droite catholique, ça a pas de bon sens.” »

J’invite donc le chroniqueur à participer le 13 juillet prochain à La marche pour Jésus, qui correspond précisément à ce qu’il décrit. Lors de l’édition de 2023, plusieurs centaines de chrétiens — majoritairement protestants évangéliques — défilaient dans le centre-ville de Montréal (sur René-Lévesque et Sainte-Catherine), distribuaient des dépliants qui invitaient les passants à « donner leur vie à Jésus », tandis que des haut-parleurs diffusaient de la musique pop chrétienne. Étrangement, personne ne s’en est ému.

De la même façon, la présence de membres de l’Association internationale pour la conscience de Krishna, plus connus sous le nom des « hare krishna » en référence au mantra que les fidèles scandent en musique, à proximité de certaines stations de métro de Montréal ou encore les opérations de prosélytisme de prédicateurs évangéliques dans les transports en commun ne suscitent pas vraiment de réaction.

La controverse autour de la prière dans le parc des Hirondelles, tout comme La marche pour Jésus ou encore les nombreuses processions organisées par des groupes religieux à proximité de leurs lieux de culte, remet sur le devant de la scène la question de savoir si l’expression collective du religieux doit être autorisée dans l’espace public. Quand un chroniqueur comme Richard Martineau, dans la même chronique que celle citée précédemment, déclare : « Que tu pries dans une mosquée, que tu pries chez toi, j’en ai rien à foutre. Mais prier dans la rue, c’est une manifestation de force, c’est un symbole », il se positionne en faveur d’une limitation du religieux à l’espace domestique ou cultuel.

Cette position, assez courante, se fonde sur l’idée que la neutralité de l’État passe nécessairement par l’évacuation de toute manifestation religieuse de l’espace public. Une telle idée est rendue possible par l’ambiguïté de l’expression « espace public », à la fois « sphère publique » (domaine du politique et de la discussion démocratique) et espace géographique de circulation ouvert à toutes et tous (les rues, les places, les parcs…).

Si la laïcité implique bien une neutralité de la sphère publique envers les différentes traditions religieuses, il n’en va pas de même de l’espace public au sein duquel les différentes visions du monde (notamment religieuses) peuvent s’exprimer librement, dans les limites de ce qui est autorisé par la loi. Il serait d’ailleurs malvenu dans une société libre et démocratique que l’État en vienne à réguler l’expression des convictions de ces citoyennes et citoyens.

Pour autant, faut-il accepter toutes formes d’expression collective du religieux sur la base du respect de la liberté de conscience et de religion énoncées dans les chartes ? Il apparaît que non, et l’on a tendance à oublier que le premier article de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne rappelle que ceux-ci ne sont pas absolus et peuvent être restreints « dans des limites qui y sont raisonnables et dont la justification peut se démontrer dans le cadre d’une société libre et démocratique ».

Ajoutons que, sur un plan pratique, la Ville de Montréal possède un Règlement concernant la paix et l’ordre sur le domaine public qui permet d’encadrer la tenue d’activités, quelle qu’en soit la nature. Par exemple, l’article 10 stipule que « l’initiateur ou l’organisateur de tout défilé, parade, procession, marathon, tour cycliste, doit présenter au directeur du Service de la circulation et du transport une demande d’autorisation à cette fin, au moins 30 jours avant la date prévue pour l’événement ». Sur cette base, il est possible d’évaluer de façon objective les conséquences, et les nuisances potentielles, de la tenue d’activités dans l’espace public.

Frédéric Dejean est professeur au département de sciences des religions de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.

Source: Idées | Faut-il tolérer la tenue d’activités religieuses dans l’espace public?

More reasonable, IMO, than the contrary view expressed by Nadia El-Mabrouk and the Rassemblement pour la laïcité: Idées | Les parcs ne sont pas des lieux de culte

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

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