Christian leaders from Middle East ask for Canada’s help

2016/08/05 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see if this is picked up more widely:

A trio of Christian leaders from the Middle East are calling on Canada’s government to provide direct aid to Christians being persecuted in that region.

The three church leaders — one from war-torn Syria, one from Iraq and one from Lebanon — were in Toronto Wednesday as part of the Knights of Columbus’ annual Supreme Convention gathering.

All three spoke of the persecution of Christians in Middle Eastern hotspots by radical Muslim groups, such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq, says Canada — like the U.S. — has a “moral responsibility” to help.

“The Canadian people have a long tradition of helping and supporting the persecuted and marginalized people around the world,” said Warda, using Canada’s 1994 peacekeeping mission in Rwanda — albeit a doomed one — as an example. “Canadians were there. We’re not asking some extra efforts here. It is just the commitment of the Canadian people and the Canadian nation, that they would be always defending the marginalized and the (victimized) around the world. Here, there is a clear case … there are people being persecuted because of their faith, because of their way of life.”

The problem, says Warda, is that Canada’s government does not deal with church-affiliated organizations directly, but funnels aid money through various “institutions.”

“How much of this … (has reached) the Christian … refugees? … It is a very small amount,” he said.

Source: Christian leaders from Middle East ask for Canada’s help | Canada | News | Toron

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France Has Shut Down 20 Mosques Since December Over Alleged Radical Islam Sermons – The Atlantic

2016/08/03 Leave a comment

While I understand the rationale to shut-down such places of hate, one can question whether shutting them down will simply drive them underground, where their activities may be harder to detect and contest:

“Fight against the #radicalization: since December 2015, twenty Muslim places of worship have been closed,” the Interior Ministry tweeted.

Of the country’s 2,500 mosques and prayer halls, approximately 120 of them have been suspected by French authorities of preaching radical Salafism, a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam, according to France 24.

“There is no place … in France for those who call for and incite hatred in prayer halls or in mosques … About 20 mosques have been closed, and there will be others,” Cazeneuve said.

The announcement came days after French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for a temporary ban on foreign funding of French mosques. A Senate committee report on Islam in France published in July found that though the country’s mosques are primarily financed through individual donations, a significant portion of their funding also comes from overseas—specifically from Morocco, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia. The same report called banning foreign financing of mosques “absurd and impossible,” calling instead for more transparency.

Because of France’s 1905 law establishing the separation of church and state, or laïcité, the French government cannot finance religious institutions directly. Some experts say this rule has made many mosques reliant on foreign funding.

Cazeneuve also announced Monday that French authorities would be working with the French Muslim Council to launch a foundation to help finance mosques within France.

Source: France Has Shut Down 20 Mosques Since December Over Alleged Radical Islam Sermons – The Atlantic

Filed under Radicalization, Religion Tagged with ,

How Religion Can Lead to Violence – The New York Times

2016/08/02 Leave a comment

Gary Gutting on religion and violence:

You may object that moral considerations should limit our opposition to nonbelief. Don’t people have a human right to follow their conscience and worship as they think they should? Here we reach a crux for those who adhere to a revealed religion. They can either accept ordinary human standards of morality as a limit on how they interpret divine teachings, or they can insist on total fidelity to what they see as God’s revelation, even when it contradicts ordinary human standards. Those who follow the second view insist that divine truth utterly exceeds human understanding, which is in no position to judge it. God reveals things to us precisely because they are truths we would never arrive at by our natural lights. When the omniscient God has spoken, we can only obey.

For those holding this view, no secular considerations, not even appeals to conventional morality or to practical common sense, can overturn a religious conviction that false beliefs are intolerable. Christianity itself has a long history of such intolerance, including persecution of Jews, crusades against Muslims, and the Thirty Years’ War, in which religious and nationalist rivalries combined to devastate Central Europe. This devastation initiated a move toward tolerance among nations that came to see the folly of trying to impose their religions on foreigners. But intolerance of internal dissidents — Catholics, Jews, rival Protestant sects — continued even into the 19th century. (It’s worth noting that in this period the Muslim Ottoman Empire was in many ways more tolerant than most Christian countries.) But Christians eventually embraced tolerance through a long and complex historical process.

Critiques of Christian revelation by Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Hume raised serious questions that made non-Christian religions — and eventually even rejections of religion — intellectually respectable. Social and economic changes — including capitalist economies, technological innovations, and democratic political movements — undermined the social structures that had sustained traditional religion.

The eventual result was a widespread attitude of religious toleration in Europe and the United States. This attitude represented ethical progress, but it implied that religious truth was not so important that its denial was intolerable. Religious beliefs and practices came to be regarded as only expressions of personal convictions, not to be endorsed or enforced by state authority. This in effect subordinated the value of religious faith to the value of peace in a secular society. Today, almost all Christians are reconciled to this revision, and many would even claim that it better reflects the true meaning of their religion.

The same is not true of Muslims. A minority of Muslim nations have a high level of religious toleration; for example Albania, Kosovo, Senegal and Sierra Leone. But a majority — including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Malaysia — maintain strong restrictions on non-Muslim (and in some cases certain “heretical” Muslim) beliefs and practices. Although many Muslims think God’s will requires tolerance of false religious views, many do not.

A Pew Research Center poll in 2013 found that in Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan and other nations in which Islam is officially favored, a large majority of Muslims think some form of Islamic law should be the law of the land. The poll also found that 76 percent of such Muslims in South Asia and 56 percent in the Middle East and North Africa favored executing Muslims who gave up their religion, and that in 10 Muslim counties at least 40 percent favored applying Islamic law to non-Muslims. This shows that, for many Muslims, the revealed truths of Islam are not only a matter of personal conviction but must also have a central place in the public sphere of a well-ordered society.

Does this mean that Islam is evil? No, but it does mean that it has not yet tamed, to the extent that Christianity has, the danger implicit in any religion that claims to be God’s own truth. To put it bluntly, Islam as a whole has not made the concessions to secular values that Christianity has. As President Obama recently said, “Some currents of Islam have not gone through a reformation that would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity.” This adaptation will be long and difficult and require many intellectual and socio-economic changes, some produced by outside forces, others arising from the increasing power of Islamic teachings on tolerance and love. But until such a transformation is achieved, it will be misleading to say that intolerance and violence are “a pure betrayal” of Islam.
There is no central religious authority or overwhelming consensus that excludes such Muslims from Islam. Intolerance need not lead to violence against nonbelievers; but, as we have seen, the logic of revelation readily moves in that direction unless interpretations of sacred texts are subject to nonreligious constraints. Islamic thinkers like Ibn-Sina accepted such constraints, and during the Middle Ages Muslims were often far more tolerant than Christians. But the path of modern tolerance has proved more difficult for Islam than for Christianity, and many Muslims still do not accept the ethical constraints that require religious tolerance, and a significant minority see violence against unbelievers as a divinely ordained duty. We may find it hard to believe that religious beliefs could motivate murders and insist that extreme violence is always due to mental instability or political fanaticism. But the logic (and the history) of religions tells against this view.

Source: How Religion Can Lead to Violence – The New York Times

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It’s not right to equate Islam with violence, pope says

2016/08/02 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

Speaking to journalists aboard his return flight from Krakow, Poland, July 31, the pope also stressed that violence exists in all religions, including Catholicism, and it cannot be pinned to one single religion.

“I do not like to speak of Islamic violence because everyday when I look through the papers, I see violence here in Italy,” the pope told reporters. “And they are baptized Catholics. There are violent Catholics. If I speak of Islamic violence, I also have to speak of Catholic violence,” he added.

Spending about 30 minutes with reporters and responding to six questions, Pope Francis was asked to elaborate on comments he had made flying to Poland July 27 when he told the journalists that religions are not at war and want peace.

The pope’s initial comment came in speaking about the murder July 26 of an elderly priest during Mass in a Catholic church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France. Two men, armed with knives, entered the church during Mass. The attackers murdered 84-year-old Father Jacques Hamel, slitting his throat. The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the murder.

Although the death of the French priest was committed in the name of Islam, the pope said that it is unfair to label an entire religion violent because of the actions of a few fundamentalists.

“One thing is true. I believe that in almost all religions, there is always a small fundamentalist group. We have them, too,” the pope said. “When fundamentalism goes to the point of killing — you can even kill with the tongue. This is what St. James says, but (you can kill) also with a knife. ”

“I do not think it is right to identify Islam with violence. This is not right and it is not true,” he said.

Instead, the pope said, that those who choose to enter fundamentalists groups, such as the Islamic State, do so because “they have been left empty” of ideals, work and values.

Source: It’s not right to equate Islam with violence, pope says

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When does Islam generate Western anxiety? – The Washington Post

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant analysis, an interesting suggestion for further research and some likely controversial advice for Muslim groups in terms of their use of words:

In recent years, the United States and its “Western” allies have faced countless foreign policy choices involving the Islamic world, from engaging with Islamist governments in Egypt and Tunisia to negotiating with Iran to managing drone campaigns in at least three countries. While foreign policy decisions are shaped by many factors, public opinion is a major input. So how does the perceived Islamic character of actors influence foreign policy attitudes toward them?

Unfortunately, our existing understanding of these perceptions is limited. Research shows that religious differences are an important ingredient in foreign policy attitudes — recent survey experiments have shown that Western citizens were more willing to start a war against “Muslim” than “Christian” adversaries. But religious differences are often more complex.

Consider the key participants in the Syrian civil war: The Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, Kurdish rebel groups, Hezbollah and the Bashar al-Assad regime are all broadly “Muslim,” but their Islamic character is portrayed — by themselves as well as by Western media — quite differently. Do these differences shape foreign policy attitudes toward them? When are Western populations really fearful and mistrustful of Islamic political actors?

Our new study in Political Research Quarterly explores these dynamics. In an original survey experiment, we randomly assigned subjects different news stories about the ongoing Syrian conflict in which we manipulated the Islamic character of a fictitious yet realistic foreign actor — the “Free Syria Movement” (FSM) — seeking U.S. military assistance. Specifically, we examined whether giving the actor common Islamic language like “Allahu akbar,” policy goals such as sharia law, and/or labels including “Islamist” affected the respondents’ social affect, political attitudes and foreign policy preferences toward the group. Conducted in May 2015 via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, the survey was completed by 1,095 respondents, with at least 120 in each of the eight conditions.

1. Islamic cues do indeed matter.

Under normal circumstances, we found that respondents’ attitudes towards the FSM were relatively benign. Although they knew the group was Muslim, they tended to give neutral or mixed responses about its level of trustworthiness, compatibility with American values, emotional impact on them and potential role as an American regional ally. Likewise, respondents had mixed views about sending FSM the requested American military aid, although they leaned slightly against doing so overall.

In contrast, with the three cues incorporated, all of these responses shifted in a significantly negative direction. Respondents tended to see the group as untrustworthy, incompatible with their values and interests, a source of fear and a potential regional adversary. Their willingness to give it aid moved firmly toward opposition, dropping on average by more than seven percentage points. And other attitudes saw even larger negative shifts, with the average trust in the group dropping by 10 percentage points. Essentially, respondents did not inherently have hostile attitudes toward the Islamic actor, only when “cued” to do so.

2. Some cues matter more than others.

Yet we also found that some of the Islamic cues harmed attitudes toward the group far more than others. Of the three, insertion of “sharia law” as a policy goal had the most harmful impact, while use of the “Islamist” label did not yield any statistically significant negative effects on any of the outcomes. This is not wholly surprising. Although sharia can have many different meanings in the Muslim world — from inclusive welfare states to punitive morality codes — Western elites have characterized this concept solely in terms of violence and oppression. In the words of Newt Gingrich, sharia is “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the rest of the world as we know it.” In fact, anti-sharia legislation had been proposed in 23 American states by 2011. This “sharia-phobia” is not unique: other broad Islamic political goals such as the pursuit of a caliphate have been received with similar apprehension in Western political discourse.

3. The influence of these cues depends on partisanship.

Finally, we found that the impact of the cues depends on party identification. With all three cues activated, for example, we see a 22 percentage point drop in trust in the group among Republicans, a 10 percentage point drop among independents and a 5 percentage point drop among Democrats. This also is not wholly unexpected. Republican political elites often describe national security threats in more explicitly Islamic terms — with a greater willingness to label terrorist groups as “Islamic” and invoke concepts such as sharia and the caliphate to characterize their goals. We interpret this mostly as Republican identifiers taking cues from their elites. Yet, as indicated above, independents and Democrats are not immune from these reactions either.

Western anxiety toward Muslim political actors is not just automatic. It is stoked by the rhetorical choices of Western elites who politicize Islamic terms and ideas and by the Islamic actors themselves who use these terms and are either ignorant or indifferent to this politicization. Contested Arabic-language terms such as sharia, khilafah (caliphate) and jihad may make the easiest targets.

This study suggests at least two promising areas of future research. First, we can examine the flip side of the coin: how adopting Christian language, policies and labels in the West influences foreign policy views in the Islamic world. This could help determine whether these processes mirror each other, in a Sisyphean cycle of religious politicization. Second, we could research whether and how these negative reactions to Islamic cues can be effectively countered. Does including brief translations and explanations of these cues that highlight their positive aspects, diverse meanings and/or Judeo-Christian equivalents ameliorate Western apprehension?

For now, we know that politicized Islamic cues such as sharia spark deeply negative Western perceptions and preferences toward their users. In the foreseeable future, Muslim actors seeking Western assistance or support would be wise to use them with great care.

Source: When does Islam generate Western anxiety? – The Washington Post

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On Islam, the GOP has lost its mind and forfeited its soul – The Washington Post

2016/07/27 2 Comments

Good commentary:

As a Christian who served in the Bush and Obama administrations, I watched in dismay….

It was not long ago that George W. Bush won the Muslim vote in 2000. Throughout his presidency Bush went out of his way to express respect for Islam and to tamp down the swell of anti-Muslim sentiment after the September 11 attacks.

But the election of Barack Hussein Obama — a black man with an Arabic name and a natural rapport with Muslims — unleashed that swell of Islamophobia on the right. Even though Obama has used many of the same lines as Bush — for instance, “We are not at war with Islam” and “Islam is a religion of peace” — too many Republicans have ignored the calls for respect.

Enter Trump, stage (far) right. From registering American Muslims to banning foreign Muslims, rejecting refugees, reviving waterboarding, and implying Obama is an ISIS sympathizer, Trump’s campaign been littered with anti-Muslim pronouncements and policy proposals. And the crowds at his rallies have cheered each new inane, hateful idea. Trump has turned prejudice into an applause line.

The Republican party, in its treatment of Muslims, has lost its mind: An overwhelming amount of research shows that Muslim faith typically has very little to do with the underlying motivations for terrorism. The 2016 Republican platform champions national security, but alienating and antagonizing devout Muslims — those best situated to discredit extremist narratives — runs directly counter to America’s security interests.
And in its treatment of Muslims, the GOP has lost its soul: The Islamophobia at the Cleveland convention was a betrayal of the “Judeo-Christian heritage” touted in the GOP Platform. At the heart of Judaism and Christianity — and Islam — is the command to love God and love neighbor. For Christians, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan makes it abundantly clear that our neighbors include those who are ethnically and religiously different.

In contemporary America, Muslims are the new Samaritans.

One need only look to the Bible — which Trump claims as his favorite book — to know how our forefathers would tell us to treat the Samaritans among us. And it wasn’t what we saw in Cleveland.

Source: On Islam, the GOP has lost its mind and forfeited its soul – The Washington Post

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Swastika flags at Vancouver home spark cultural dialogue

2016/07/26 Leave a comment

Certainly succeeding in provoking a dialogue, and one that appears to be carried out respectfully. It is also an example of one of most, if not the most, egregious case of cultural appropriation:

Sital Dhillon was driving through her neighbourhood in South Vancouver when she noticed a house with two prominent yellow flags adorned with swastikas flying at the front gate.

“When I saw the symbol, I stopped and took a second look and it started to provide questions in my mind,” said Dhillon. “I didn’t want to draw conclusions.”

Dhillon quickly noticed the flags weren’t the only thing decorating the front of the house — there were several posters, banners, and other religious symbols, hinting that there may be something more to the use of the swastikas.

But the symbol, so associated with Nazi terrors, still touched a nerve.

“The Western world does not have a very good perception of the swastika,” she said, “It’s evil. It’s hate.”

Religious symbol

Homeowner Ravinder Gaba doesn’t see anything wrong with his use of the swastika.

Ravinder Gaba put two swastika flags in front of his house to honour a spiritual guru who is staying at his house. He says the swastika is a symbol meaning peace, love, and purity in Hinduism and other religions.

“This symbol, if you go to India, in every temple that symbol is there,” he said.

Gaba, who is Hindu, is playing host to a spiritual leader — a man believed by his followers to be an immortal living saint, Brahmrishi Shri Gurudev. The flags are flying outside his home for a few days to celebrate the occasion.

Gaba points out that the swastika goes back thousands of years, long before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis began using it.

“It’s nothing with Hitler. We don’t follow Hitler. We don’t follow even extremist people right now, okay? We are a religion against that,” he said. “Believe me I don’t know that’s his symbol. That’s a Hitler’s symbol? I don’t know.”

Swastika

Ravinder Gaba’s home was recently built and includes a large custom mantle decorated with Sanskrit swastikas. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)

Gaba’s newly built home even has an elaborate stone mantel in the living room with stylized swastikas decorating the corners.

‘A lot of pain’

Carey Brown, a rabbi at Temple Sholom Synagogue in Vancouver, reacts strongly to the flags, even with the knowledge that they aren’t a Nazi reference.

“It is very jarring to see it,” she said. “Whether it’s graffiti on a bus stop or a flag flying in someone’s lawn, even if they’re placed there for two different reasons, just seeing it … is very jarring.”

“Certainly as a Jew, it’s a symbol that has a lot of emotional painful resonance for me. We have many members of our synagogue who themselves are survivors of the holocaust, or have parents or grandparents that survived,” said Brown. “It’s a lot of pain and a little bit of fear as well.”

Brown has travelled throughout India, and is fully aware of the ancient use of the swastika in religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

“While it’s a little bit strange to see swastikas all around you, I know that in its context it means something very peaceful,” she said.

But for Brown, that context is removed once the swastika is flown in Canada.

“Symbols have meaning, and the meaning of this symbol — in the Western world certainly — is one that is the absolute opposite of peace, and to see it flying in Vancouver it is difficult to see and it represents something that’s very hateful to me.”

Cross-cultural dialogue

Gaba says his religion teaches love and peace, and that’s all he means to promote with his swastika flags.

He hopes that anyone who has misgivings about the flags will knock on his door and engage in a conversation about the issue.

“They should come to us and ask us first. We are always open. Anybody can come and ask us a question,” he said. “We are loving people.”

But for Brown, knocking on the door of a house that has swastikas outside doesn’t seem like a likely proposition.

“I think many people would want to not knock on the door, because they would be nervous about who they might encounter inside,” she said, adding that she would welcome a cross-cultural conversation about what the symbol means to different people.

Source: Swastika flags at Vancouver home spark cultural dialogue – British Columbia – CBC News

Suresh Kurl provides some historical context:

Historically, Swastika goes back to approximately 12,000 years, when it was discovered carved on an ivory figurine in Mezine (Ukraine).

In Buddhism, svastika is also considered a symbol of good fortune, prosperity, abundance and eternity. It is found carved on statues on the soles of Lord Buddha’s feet and on his heart.
In Jainism, Svastika symbolises the four states of existence: Heavenly beings (devas), Human beings, Hellish being and Tiryancha, as flora or fauna,  representing the perpetual nature of the universe in the material world, where a creature is destined to one of those states based on their karma. Amazingly, Native Americans also use this symbol for the sun.

Recently, Mr. Ravinder Gaba of South Vancouver put two swastika flags in front of his residence to honour his spiritual guru.  As a practicing Hindu he must have learned that the swastika is an old Vedic symbol denoting peace, love and purity.

If I may add, this Hindu-Auspicious symbol spelled as, Sv-asti-ka in Sanskrit also means well being, fortune, luck, success, prosperity and victory — a far cry from its Nazi association. The symbol represents the Hindu Lord Vishnu (the preserver of this planet) and god Surya (Sun).

Rabbi Carey Brown of Vancouver said, “Certainly as a Jew, it’s a symbol that has a lot of emotional painful resonance for me. We have many members of our synagogue who themselves are survivors of the holocaust, or have parents or grandparents that survived,” said Brown. “It’s a lot of pain and a little bit of fear as well.”

No human with a conscience can dispute this tragedy. I am a Hindu. I was not even born, when Adolf Hitler adopted the symbol, redefined it, corrupted it and rained his terror over Jewish people under his Nazi brand of Swastika flags.

I sincerely apologise on behalf of Mr. Gaba for flying those flags with Swastika. Though his behaviour would seem insensitive I would like to believe it was not intentional.

As we live in a multi-cultural and Inter-faith country, I believe it will be advisable to first run such symbols and objects through the litmus test before putting them out for a public display : “How it will affect the general public before we display them?  No worship or celebration can be fruitful if it ends up hurting our fellow human beings. We know it.

That said the Inter-faith Associations also have an obligation to review such sensitive issues and come up with harmonious solutions.

SWASTIKA: Cultural Sensitivity Should Take Precedence When We Display Controversial Symbols And Objects

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Le coût de la diète religieuse bondit dans les prisons

2016/07/26 Leave a comment

Part of the cost of living in a diverse society and respecting different faiths:

Le coût des repas religieux servis dans les prisons québécoises a bondi au cours de la dernière année, en particulier en ce qui concerne les mets préparés pour les détenus de confession juive. Un repas casher en prison coûte maintenant deux fois plus cher qu’un repas non religieux, a appris La Presse. Portrait de la diète carcérale, un régime de 12,6 millions par année.

Chaque repas casher servi en centre de détention a coûté 6,98 $ pendant l’année financière 2015-2016, contre 5,25 $ un an plus tôt, selon des données du ministère de la Sécurité publique (MSP) rendues publiques par la Loi sur l’accès à l’information. Selon le Ministère, ce bond de 33 % en un an est la conséquence de la résiliation du précédent contrat pour l’achat de repas cashers congelés.

« Durant la période sans contrat, les établissements de détention ont dû s’approvisionner auprès de fournisseurs locaux, à coûts plus élevés. »

– Louise Quintin, porte-parole du ministère de la Sécurité publique

Un nouveau contrat de deux ans pour l’approvisionnement de repas cashers congelésa d’ailleurs été conclu en décembre dernier pour 223 582 $. Une seule des deux soumissions déposées a été jugée admissible. En vertu du contrat, le fournisseur doit préparer jusqu’à 35 058 repas et les livrer dans quatre centres de détention de la région métropolitaine. Plus de 20 000 repas cashers sont destinés à l’Établissement de détention de Montréal (Bordeaux). Les autres sont partagés entre les prisons de Laval, de Saint-Jérôme et de Rivière-des-Prairies.

 Les 11 759 plats cashers servis en 2015-2016 – en hausse de 15 % par rapport à l’année précédente – représentent à peine 0,17 % des quelque 7 millions de repas servis chaque année dans les prisons provinciales. En incluant les coûts de la main-d’oeuvre, la préparation de chaque repas non religieux a coûté 3,27 $ en 2015-2016, une hausse de 6 % en un an, soit trois fois plus que l’inflation. La facture a donc bondi de 516 000 $ pour la diète standard, même si 34 000 repas de moins ont été servis.

Le coût unitaire d’un repas halal a augmenté de 14 % en un an, passant de 3,61 $ à 4,10 $, en raison de la cherté de la viande halal, selon le Ministère. Ainsi, les 91 988 plats préparés en 2015-2016 pour les détenus de confession musulmane ont coûté 124 646 $, en hausse de 10 %. Ces repas sont généralement préparés à partir de viande hachée halal achetée en « très petite quantité » pour remplacer le boeuf d’un hamburger, par exemple.

« Il est important de souligner que le nombre de repas halal a diminué [de 7 %] […]. De plus, notons que les repas cashers et halal servis dans les établissements de détention représentent moins de 2 % de l’ensemble des repas servis en détention », soutient Louise Quintin. En fait, la diète religieuse représente 1,47 % de tous les repas servis en prison provinciale.

Les centres de détention ont l’obligation d’offrir un repas halal ou casher à un détenu qui en fait la demande écrite. L’administration doit alors valider « l’appartenance à la communauté religieuse du demandeur ainsi que la sincérité de sa croyance », explique Mme Quintin. Un détenu peut démontrer sa croyance religieuse par un document pertinent, par sa connaissance de sa religion ou par sa participation à des activités spirituelles.

Source: Le coût de la diète religieuse bondit dans les prisons | Louis-Samuel Perron | Actualités

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ICYMI: A Muslim get-out-the-vote group plans a flag initiative

2016/07/20 Leave a comment

While it should not be necessary (we don’t expect this from churches, temples or gurdwaras), appears a good idea in the current context:

Jawed Rathore wants to see a big Canadian flag flying from a prominently positioned flagpole in front of every mosque in the country to send the simple message that Muslims are proud Canadians.

The real estate development executive pitched the idea this week in a suburban Toronto banquet hall to a crowd of about 700 supporters of The Canadian-Muslim Vote, a non-partisan organization that made its mark by campaigning to boost turnout among Muslim voters in last fall’s federal election.

The group’s July 13 inaugural dinner to mark Eid, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, drew dozens of federal, provincial and municipal politicians, with federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister John McCallum delivering the keynote speech.

But Rathore took the podium earlier and proved a hard act to follow. The 39-year-old chief executive of Fortress Real Developments, father (as he mentioned more than once) of six children under seven, is a massively built six-three. His exuberant speaking style is as hard to ignore as his physical presence, and he offered an upbeat overview of the place of Muslims in Canada today. “For the first time ever, it’s kind of cool to be Muslim,” he proclaimed, arguing that every outburst of anti-Islamic bigotry tends to be followed by even more forceful statement of support for the Muslim community from sympathetic non-Muslims.

Still, Rathore proposed that Muslims should send a clear signal of patriotism by flying the Canadian flag in front of their mosques. In an interview with Maclean’s, he framed the initiative as a natural follow-up to the group’s push to boost the Muslim vote. (The Canadian-Muslim Vote points to exit polls that suggest the percentage of voting-age Muslims who cast a ballot might have soared to 79 per cent in the 2015 election, from an estimated 46.5 per cent in 2011.)

“We thought this would be a great opportunity,” Rathore said. “As we talked to the Muslim community about the most Canadian thing you can do, which is to vote, we [wondered], ‘What else can we do to engage with the community?’ And that’s where the team came up with this really exciting idea of getting big Canadian flags in front of every mosque across Canada.”

Although Rathore sees a high level of acceptance of Muslims in Canada, he doesn’t deny his community remains misunderstood by too many. “There’s a sense when you talk to people about Islamophobia, or even just people’s general unawareness of Islam, they think because of some of the things they see and hear that Muslims choose to exclude themselves, that Muslims choose to segregate themselves,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He said most Muslims want to be seen as part of the Canadian social fabric. “Nothing really says that more than a Canadian flag going up,” he said. “Sometimes the simplest medium is the most effective one.” [Note: See the Environics Institute Why Muslims are proud Canadians – The Globe and Mail which largely confirms this].

Rathore brings a business branding perspective to the image challenge facing Muslims. Fortress Real Developments, headquartered just north of Toronto, has real estate projects underway in six provinces. “You look at some of the big U.S. brands that have come north of the border, and Walmart is one of the big examples: at every supercentre they have there is a huge Canadian flag,” he said.

“When they were coming up here, there was the usual rhetoric about ugly Americans, and Walmart made the very simple gesture of saying, ‘We recognize that we are not seen as being from here, we’re outsiders, we’re strangers, and we are coming to Canada’—and they erected these huge flags.”

At the Eid dinner, Rathore showed slides of major mosques, then clicked to the same photos adorned with rudimentary illustrations of Canadian flags flying in front of them. It wasn’t high-tech, but it seemed to convey what he has in mind. In the 24 hours after the dinner, he said groups called, emailed and texted with offers to sponsor 55 flag poles at mosques. His company will pay for the first ten, though.

The Canadian-Muslim Vote plans to take the next few weeks to figure out how to proceed, Rathore said, and hopes to start putting up flagpoles in September or October.

Source: A Muslim get-out-the-vote group plans a flag initiative

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Let’s face it: The world has an Islamic problem – Marquardt

2016/07/19 2 Comments

Felix Marquardt’s, founder of the Al-Kawakibi Foundation for Islamic Reform and the think tank Youthonomics, take on Islam and terror and, in particular, an interesting argument for showing the horrific videos:

If Muslims want to be taken seriously when we argue that our religion is one of love and peace and social justice, then we must not cede to the natural inclination to say we have “nothing to do” with the authors of the ignominious crimes committed in the name of Islam.

We have one thing in common with them. We all call ourselves Muslims. Of course, their vision of Islam is perverse and completely, well, wrong. There is a common thread between despicable acts of violence committed around the world these days. And that common thread is that the people who commit them think of themselves as Muslims.

In other words, no, there is no intrinsic “problem” with Islam, but yes, hell yes, there is a contemporary degenerescence of our religion that is threatening its very existence and future. If we, as Muslims, cannot agree on this, then we must brace ourselves, for Islam will disintegrate completely before our eyes in the coming years. To address a problem, one must first admit that there is a problem.

This brings into focus another major issue that has popped up since Thursday’s attack in Nice: the dissemination of the footage of the slaughter and its aftermath.

The French authorities are asking that people refrain from sharing the gruesome pictures and videos, claiming that doing so may galvanize or trigger other would-be kamikazes. Others argue the same thing out of respect to the families of the victims.

I have news for you: In this day and age, Islamic State admirers and supporters who want to gain access to this footage will find a way to do so.

And, as far as I am concerned, is it precisely out of compassion for the victims that I want all the people in the world who share my faith to see what is being done in the name of our religion. Images of Nazi extermination camps and the picture of the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm bombings shocked the world and brought change, precisely because they shocked the world.

We are encouraged to share footage of police abusing and killing black people all over the United States to make the world aware of what is going on there, but we should hide what IS is doing in southern France? Muslims all around the world must see what is being committed in the name of their religion so they can finally confront the reality of Islam in the 21st century: Medina, Cairo …we have a problem.

Source: Let’s face it: The world has an Islamic problem – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with ,

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