Kenney: Conservative anti terror bill needs to walk a fine line

2015/01/29 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the Government walks that fine line when the Bill is tabled Friday.

Kenney, given his strong belief in freedom of religion, will likely have weighed in during Cabinet and other discussions (his initial reaction to one of the periodic Quebec controversies over the niqab was more accommodating than his present positions):

There’s a fine line between legitimate religious expression and inciting terrorism, says Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney.

It’s that line the government will be walking – carefully – in its new anti-terrorism bill, expected to be unveiled Friday.

The bill is the government’s long-awaited legislative response to two attacks carried out on Canadian soldiers last fall by men believed to have been influenced by radical Islam – attacks the government considers acts of terrorism.

Though police already have the power to go after those suspecting of being on the verge of committing terrorist attacks, the new bill is partially aimed at stopping the seeds of those attacks from germinating altogether.

“Our objective is not to diminish legitimate expression of political or religious views, but rather incitement to terrorism – and there is a fine line there that the legislation will try to draw,” Kenney said in an interview Tuesday.

“Obviously there are some malevolent religious influences that can add to the process of radicalization towards violent extremism, and we have to be extremely mindful of that.”

Kenney: Conservative anti terror bill needs to walk a fine line.

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L’intégrisme est un choix personnel, juge le premier ministre | Le Devoir

2015/01/28 Leave a comment

Sensible voices in Quebec:

Philippe Couillard n’a aucune intention de limiter le droit des intégristes de pratiquer une version radicale de leur religion, un choix personnel, selon lui, dans la mesure où ils respectent la loi.

« L’intégrisme, c’est une pratique religieuse poussée à l’extrême qui, tant qu’elle n’enfreint pas les droits des autres — des autres, exemple, les femmes —, bien sûr fait partie des choix personnels de chacun », a déclaré lundi Philippe Couillard, avant de participer au caucus présessionnel de ses députés.

Il ne faut pas confondre intégrisme et terrorisme. « Il y a beaucoup d’amalgames qui sont faits sur des concepts qui sont très distincts », a soutenu le premier ministre. Le terrorisme est « l’expression des extrémismes de tout type, bien sûr celui de l’islam radical, mais il y a d’autres extrémismes sur la planète. Mais celui-là est bien sûr celui dont on est préoccupé. »

Les propos de Philippe Couillard rejoignent ceux qu’a exprimés dans La Presse samedi Gérard Bouchard. « Il y a manifestement un lien entre intégrisme et terrorisme, mais l’un ne conduit pas nécessairement à l’autre. D’où la question : la prévention de la radicalisation religieuse conduira-t-elle à surveiller tous les intégristes et à restreindre leurs droits ? Ce serait inadmissible », juge l’historien et sociologue.

L’intégrisme est un choix personnel, juge le premier ministre | Le Devoir.

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Tony Abbott tells Sydney Islamic protesters to ‘lighten up’

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

I think Abbott has a point:

The group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, planned to rally in south-west Sydney on Friday evening against the kind of images that proliferated in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Abbott told 2GB he hoped there would be only a few protesters.

“Frankly I don’t think any of us really want to be in the business of insulting anyone, but on the other hand we all believe in free speech, and I have to say some people are a bit thin-skinned about free speech,” he said.

“I just hope the organisers of this protest lighten up a bit, and accept that in our robust democracy, a lot of people say a lot of things, and sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong, and we just have to accept the rough and the smooth together.”

A spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir likened Abbott’s comments to being asked to “discard the sacredness of our values”.

“It’s quite disingenuous to suggest a people, ie Muslims, lighten up over something that is provocative and quite derogatory to their core values and beliefs, the centre of which is obviously the prophet Muhammad,” he said.

Tony Abbott tells Sydney Islamic protesters to ‘lighten up’ | Australia news | theguardian.com.

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Judging The Beards Of Believers – SCOTUS decision

2015/01/23 Leave a comment

The latest US SC ruling on religious freedom, this time with respect to beards. Similar to Canadian approach. Commentary below by Carrie Severino:

[This ruling] emphasizes that it is the religiously-motivated view of an action, not the unbelieving bystander’s judgment of its importance, that determines whether a burden is substantial. That is particularly important where, as here, courts are dealing with a minority or unpopular religion.

The Court also clarified some key points respecting substantial burdens. First, it noted that permission to engage in many other aspects of religions exercise – here, praying daily, keeping a prayer rug, corresponding with religious advisors, keeping a halal diet, and observing religious holidays – does not cancel out the effect of denying Holt the ability to carry out his simultaneous religious obligation to grow a beard. Additionally, the Court corrected a misunderstanding below that only “compelled” religious practices could be substantially burdened or that disagreements within the Muslim community about the necessity of growing a beard meant curtailing that ability was not a substantial burden. After all, courts have no business making a judgment call about the fundamentally theological questions of how much religious practice is “enough” or which view of a certain religion is correct.

Judging The Beards Of Believers « The Dish.

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Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam

2015/01/21 Leave a comment

More on the progressive voices within the Muslim communities, this time by Asra Nomani, who has been advocating that women should be able to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than segregated spaces, and a fairly extensive list of how this and similar discussions has been subject of efforts to be shut down:

Beyond these statements, though, we need a new interpretation of Islamic law in order to change the culture. This would require rejecting the eight schools of religious thought that dominate the Sunni and Shiite Muslim world. I propose naming a new one after ijtihad, the concept of critical thinking, and elevating self-examination over toxic shame-based discourse, laws and rules. Such a project could take the power out of the hands of the status quo clerics, politicians and experts and replace it with a progressive interpretation of faith motivated not by defending honor but acting honorably.

Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam – The Washington Post.

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Islam’s Problem With Blasphemy

2015/01/15 Leave a comment

Good piece by Mustafa Akyol in the NY Times:

Before all that politically motivated expansion and toughening of Shariah, though, the Quran told early Muslims, who routinely faced the mockery of their faith by pagans: “God has told you in the Book that when you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.”

Just “do not sit with them” — that is the response the Quran suggests for mockery. Not violence. Not even censorship.

Wise Muslim religious leaders from the entire world would do Islam a great favor if they preached and reiterated such a nonviolent and non-oppressive stance in the face of insults against Islam. That sort of instruction could also help their more intolerant coreligionists understand that rage is a sign of nothing but immaturity. The power of any faith comes not from its coercion of critics and dissenters. It comes from the moral integrity and the intellectual strength of its believers.

Islam’s Problem With Blasphemy – NYTimes.com.

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Drawing the prophet: Islam’s hidden history of Muhammad images

2015/01/13 Leave a comment

Interesting article on the history of devotional Islamic art that depicts the prophet Muhammad. Again, a sad forgetting of some of the rich traditions within Islam:

To many Muslims, any image of the prophet Muhammad is sacrilegious, but the ban has not always been absolute and there is a small but rich tradition of devotional Islamic art going back more than seven centuries that does depict God’s messenger.

It began with exquisite miniatures from the 13th century, scholars say. Commissioned from Muslim artists by the rich and powerful of their day, they show almost every episode of Muhammad’s life as recounted in the Qur’an and other texts, from birth to death and ascension into heaven.

Intended as private aids to devotion and prayer, these detailed scenes were made for both Sunni and Shia worshippers, and surviving examples can be found in dozens of major museum and library collections.

They also laid the foundations for a popular, if minority, tradition of devotional and inspirational images that still exists today, from icons cherished in homes to a five-storey government-commissioned mural in the heart of Tehran and even to revolutionary street art in Cairo – although the prophet’s face is obscured in both those public drawings.

In the wake of the murder of cartoonists at French magazine Charlie Hebdo, many Muslims and non-Muslims have argued that Islam has always banned any representation of the prophet, in part because of strong warnings in the Qu’ran and other religious texts against idolatry or anything that could be seen as a pathway towards idolatry.

This position is rarely challenged, perhaps because the existence of images of Muhammad is little known and almost never discussed outside communities that create, study or buy them. But their obscurity frustrates experts who see them as a rich part of Islam’s artistic heritage and resent the misconception that the only depictions of the prophet are mocking or racist creations by non-believers. “It’s really important for audiences that have never seen the pietistic images of Muhammad to make a radical distinction between the mystical and beautiful images that have been produced over the last 1,000 years by Muslims and for Muslims, and the offensive and sometimes pornographic images [currently in the news],” said Omid Safi, director of the Islamic Studies Centre at Duke University in North Carolina.

Drawing the prophet: Islam’s hidden history of Muhammad images | World news | The Observer.

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Canada vows to accept 13,000 more refugees from Syria and Iraq

2015/01/09 1 Comment

Good commitment – finally, now the challenge will be in implementation:

Canada has already accepted 20,000 Iraqis and since mid-2013 has brought 1,060 Syrian refugees to Canada. Total approvals for resettled Syrian refugees now exceed 1,275, with thousands more applications still being processed. This number doesn’t include the many more Syrians who’ve been accepted as refugees after making “inland claims” from within Canada.

The government also announced another $90-million in humanitarian assistance for people affected by the intensifying violence in both Iraq and Syria, home to a long-running civil war as well as battles between Islamic jihadis and government forces. The assistance will be distributed via UN agencies, the Red Cross and aid groups.

Mr. Alexander said the 10,000 new Syrian refugees will be resettled in Canada through both government and private-organization sponsorship. He said he expects roughly 60 per cent will be supported by private sponsors such as church groups and 40 per cent through government arrangements – “roughly the same proportions we’ve always had.”

Refugee sponsor groups said it will be a huge task to help 6,000, or 60 per cent of Syrian refugees, settle in Canada over 36 months. This is on top of the 3,000 additional Iraqi refugees Canada is now accepting.

Some said they hadn’t been officially informed of the proportion that private sponsors are expected to shoulder.

“Over three years, it will be probably on the edge of possible,” Alexandra Kotyk, director of sponsorship at AURA, a charitable organization representing the Anglican Diocese of Toronto and the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada.

I have less of an issue than some critics on the issue of need and possible preference given to Christian refugees, as it is hard to argue that Christians, and other minorities, are not likely at more risk than others.

Canada vows to accept 13,000 more refugees from Syria and Iraq – The Globe and Mail.

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Radical Islam, Nihilist Rage – Kenan Malik

2015/01/05 Leave a comment

Kenan Malik on radicalization and rejection of modernity (apart from using social media and weaponry of course!):

Anti-imperialists of the past saw themselves as part of a wider political project that sought to modernize the non-Western world, politically and economically. Today, however, that wider political project is itself seen as the problem. There is considerable disenchantment with many aspects of modernity, from individualism to globalization, from the breakdown of traditional cultures to the fragmentation of societies, from the blurring of moral boundaries to the seeming soullessness of the contemporary world.

In the past, racists often viewed modernity as the property of the West and regarded the non-Western world as incapable of modernizing. Today, it is radicals who often regard modernity as a Western product, and reject both it and the West as tainted goods.

The consequence has been the transformation of anti-Western sentiment from a political challenge to imperialist policy to an inchoate rage against modernity. Many strands of contemporary thought, including those embraced by “deep greens” and the far left, express aspects of such discontent. But it is radical Islam that has become the lightning rod for this fury.

There are many forms of Islamism, from the Taliban to Hamas, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Boko Haram. What they have in common is a capacity to fuse hostility toward the West with hatred for modernity and, seemingly, to provide an alternative to both. Islamists marry political militancy with a conservative social sensibility, a hostility to globalization with the embrace of a global ummah (the worldwide community of Muslim believers). In so doing, they turn the contradictory aspects of their rage against modernity into a strength.

Jihadism provides Islamist ideology with a military form and seemingly creates a global social movement, at a time when radical alternatives have collapsed. What jihadism does not possess is the moral and philosophical framework that guided anti-imperialist movements. Shorn of that framework, and reduced to raging at the world, jihadists have turned terror into an end in itself.

Radical Islam, Nihilist Rage – NYTimes.com.

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The state and Islam: Converting the preachers | The Economist

2014/12/13 Leave a comment

Good article in The Economist regarding state control of mosques and Imams to reduce radicalization:

In fact, the Saudi effort to tone down its clerics is mild, hesitant and belated compared to what some Muslim states do. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan already routinely use cameras. Kuwait has long installed tape-recorders to monitor Friday sermons. Preachers in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates need not write their own sermons. Except for a few trusted senior clerics, they read instead from a text delivered weekly by the government department for religious affairs that also pays all their salaries. “Protecting Youth from Destructive Ideas” and “Our National Flag, Symbol of Affiliation and Loyalty” provided two stimulating recent topics. Similarly, Turkey has for decades enforced a monopoly of Islamic discourse via a religious bureaucracy, known as Diyanet, that wields 121,000 employees and a budget of $2.3 billion.

Other governments aspire to such dominance. Tunisia’s government has in recent months restored strict state control of mosques that had slipped following its revolution of January 2011, leading to a brief flowering of Wahhabist-style jihad promotion. Morocco, whose king has traditionally posed as Commander of the Faithful, delivering televised Ramadan sermons, has steeply boosted state promotion of a relatively tolerant version of the faith. Its budget for training imams, including a growing number of foreign students, has swollen tenfold in the past three years. The unspoken aim is to counter the spread of extreme Salafist ideas in places such as Mali and northern Nigeria.

…Egypt’s government has of late clamped unprecedented controls. In January it decreed that all Friday sermons must adhere to a weekly theme set by the religious-affairs ministry, establishing a hotline to allow worshippers to denounce preachers daring to voice political dissent. Further decrees required all preachers to be government-licensed, imposed a code of ethics forbidding discussion of politics in mosques, and banned smaller prayer halls from holding Friday prayers. The ministry fired 12,000 preachers and now allows only those trained in government-approved institutes to deliver sermons.

…As a foil to the powerful Brotherhood, the [Egyptian] state had long allowed followers of quietist forms of Salafism to run some 7,000 mosques. But the ministry in September decreed it would take over their mosques too, after reports of a sermon forbidding the faithful from buying interest-bearing government bonds.

Amr Ezzat, an Egyptian researcher, sees the effort to impose state-ordained orthodoxy as misguided and possibly dangerous. Religious institutions will lose legitimacy with time, pushing more Muslims towards radical margins. And by acting in effect as the imam, the state takes upon itself a duty to enforce morality. It is perhaps as a sop to religious conservatives, for instance, that Egyptian authorities have mounted an increasingly lurid campaign against homosexuality, most recently by staging a midnight raid on a Cairo bathhouse on national television, dragging a score of naked men to prison.

The state and Islam: Converting the preachers | The Economist.

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