‘It’s a new party’: How Conservatives try to rebuild trust among Muslim communities

2023/10/05 Leave a comment

Of note. Repeat of the Bricker-Ibbitson and Jason Kenney arguments, but targeted towards a group traditionally less inclined to vote Conservative. But opportunistic given the controversies among some members of religious groups regarding LGBTQ+ and gender issues in the school system:

When Pierre Poilievre pitches the Conservative party to Muslim Canadians, he talks about “faith, family and freedom.”

For months he has been pointing out what he sees as their overlapping values during visits to mosques, at community celebrations, with businesses and in conversations with ethnic media outlets.

It’s part of an effort to grow the party’s presence, particularly in larger cities that are home to many racialized Canadians whose support for the Conservatives plummeted during the final months of Stephen Harper’s government and his divisive 2015 campaign.

Poilievre has also fine-tuned his message to appeal to growing concerns from some parents, echoed by several prominent Muslim organizations, about what their children are learning about LGBTQ+ issues in schools.

He is gaining some traction with his acknowledgment of such worries, but whether he will take action through party policy remains unclear, given his firm view that education is a provincial matter.

Some also wonder what he would do to address the Islamophobia that many feel his party exacerbated the last time it was in power. “This is where we have that sort of cautious optimism,” said Nawaz Tahir, a lawyer who chairs Hikma, an advocacy group for Muslims in southwestern Ontario. Tahir met Poilievre with other community leaders this summer.

“While it might be resonating in the short term, there are long-term questions about whether or not people will continue to listen, or latch on, in the absence of some concrete policy proposals.”

Poilievre has chosen to walk a careful path on the issue of “parental rights.” The term, which speaks to the desire by parents to make decisions regarding their children, has been popularized by people with wide-ranging concerns about efforts to make schools more inclusive for LGBTQ+ students, such as by raising Pride flags or including discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the curriculum.

New Brunswick and Saskatchewan now require parental permission for transgender and nonbinary students to use different names or pronouns at school. Court challenges have ensued, with teachers’ unions and provincial child advocates saying the policies put vulnerable students at risk.

The Conservative leader has said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should “butt out” of the issue and “let parents raise kids,” but otherwise Poilievre has stayed mum on how he might respond.

At last month’s policy convention in Quebec City, Conservative party members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a policy change to prohibit minors experiencing gender dysphoria from receiving “life-altering” pharmaceutical or surgical treatment.

A video posted online shows that Poilievre said during a Punjabi media event in Surrey, B.C., several days later that he was “taking some time to study that policy to come to the right solution.”

He said the party would have to consider “jurisdictions,” in the sense of “which level of government is responsible for it” — but ultimately, “I will be making my position clear.”

Poilievre’s office did not respond to a question about whether he has come to any conclusions.

His office was also silent in July when a photo circulated online that showed Conservative finance critic and Calgary MP Jasraj Singh Hallan with two men who wore T-shirts that read “leave our kids alone.” The shirts featured an image of stylized figures beneath an umbrella shielding them from the rainbow of colours associated with LGBTQ+ Pride flags.

One of the men in the photo, Mahmoud Mourra, a Muslim father of five, has for months been protesting school policies and activities that acknowledge students’ sexual orientation and gender identity.

As he and thousands of others took to the streets in recent countrywide demonstrations against “gender ideology” in schools on Sept. 20, Trudeau posted on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that “transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country.”

Poilievre’s office, meanwhile, instructed MPs to keep quiet.

Two days later, Poilievre also posted on X, accusing Trudeau of “demonizing concerned parents” with his statement about the protests.

The Muslim Association of Canada also condemned Trudeau’s remarks, saying Muslim parents who participated in protests showed up “to be heard, not to sow division.” The organization said it feared Muslim kids would face “increased bullying and harassment” at school —a statement Poilievre and many of his MPs shared online.

Dalia Mohamed, who leads public affairs at the Canadian chapter of the Islamic Society of North America, said her organization has heard from parents who worry their children face pushback when opting out of certain lessons or activities related to LGBTQ+ issues.

“What they’re seeing more and more is that their kids are facing repercussions,” she said.

An audio recording surfaced online in June alleged to be an Edmonton school teacher chastising a Muslim student about missing class to avoid Pride events. The unidentified teacher says respect for differences “goes two ways,” adding that if the student thinks same-sex marriage should not be legal, then he “can’t be Canadian” and does not “belong here.”

The National Council of Canadian Muslims called it “deeply Islamophobic, inappropriate and harassing behaviour.” The school board said it was dealing with the issue.

Tahir, with Hikma, said it comes down to respecting religious freedom, adding that it is “not part of our faith teaching” to hate the LGBTQ+ community. “We condemn that,” he said.

Tahir said he and other community leaders told Poilievre the Conservatives have an opportunity to regain the support of Muslim Canadians.

He argued that the “vast majority” of Muslims voted for Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives in the 1980s and early ’90s.

“There was a lot of alignment on a number of issues. And that seems to have gone by the wayside,” he said.

Still, while there is frustration that the governing Liberals have failed to take enough action against Islamophobia,including within its own government agencies, Poilievre faces an uphill battle against long memories.

“He was around the table during the Harper years when there were some things that happened that were not well received by the Muslim community,” said Tahir.

In 2011, then-immigration minister Jason Kenney brought in a rule requiring Muslim women to remove face coverings, such as niqabs, when swearing the oath during citizenship ceremonies. During the 2015 federal election campaign, the Conservatives asked the Supreme Court to hear a request to appeal a court decision to overturn that policy, and Harper mused about extending it to all public servants. The Conservatives also promised to create a tip line to enforce a law against “barbaric cultural practices,” which they said at the time included forced marriages.

Eight years later, Conservatives are still apologizing.

“Mistakes were made. No doubt about that,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said in August of the 2015 campaign at a Greater Toronto Area breakfast meeting with members of the Pakistani community.

“There’s rebuilding of trust,” he said in a video shared online. “And I understand people saying, ‘Well, we’re not sure yet because of some of the things that happened in the past.'”

He described a “deep fundamental connection” between the Conservative party and the wider Muslim community. He said a “renaissance” of that relationship is underway.

“We’re trying to reach out to the community and tell them, ‘It’s a new party, that was eight years ago,'” Conservative Sen. Salma Ataullahjan said at the same event. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.

In a written statement, Genuis said the party’s message around lower prices, affordable housing and safer communities is “resonating with Canadians of all walks of life.

So is its defence of “faith, family and freedom,” he added.

Poilievre addressed the criticism of the Conservatives’ unsuccessful 2015 campaign during last year’s leadership race. Rival candidate Patrick Brown, who at the time was counting on heavy support from Muslim communities, accused Poilievre of having never “publicly stood against” the divisive policies, such as a “niqab ban.” Poilievre pushed back by noting the policy was limited to swearing the citizenship oath.

Since winning the leadership, Poilievre has travelled extensively to meet with immigrant and racialized communities that Conservatives had long ago credited with delivering them a majority victory in 2011.

Historically, the party has believed that many in these groups tend to be more religiously conservative, that they will prioritize public safety and that they are looking for policies, such as lower taxes, that can help them gain an economic foothold in Canada.

Tahir said Poilievre was told during his meeting this summer that if he comes back with concrete plans to address Islamophobia, there would be “a strong willingness” from the community to vote Conservative.

In 2017, Poilievre voted alongside other Conservative MPs against a motion from a Liberal MP to condemn Islamophobia, citing concerns it could infringe on free speech.

During Ramadan this spring, Poilievre said in an interview with Canada One TV that he believes the country must “combat bad speech with good speech, not with censorship, but with good speech.”

He also spoke of bolstering a security fund for mosques and talked about combating Islamophobia through a stronger criminal justice response, part of a broader push by the Conservatives for tough-on-crime policies.

Earlier this year, Poilievre addressed long-standing allegations that the Canada Revenue Agency is discriminating against Muslim charities.

The agency “has been abusing our Muslim charities and the immigration system has been discriminating against our Muslim immigrants,” he said in a video shared by the Muslim Association of Canada.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency announced in March it would be investigating allegations of bias and Islamophobia at the CRA.

Saleha Khan said she believes Poilievre is using the debate around LGBTQ+ issues in schools to his advantage. She also worries the surrounding rhetoric could ultimately bring more harm to the community.

The London, Ont., woman and nearly 700 other people, many of whom are members of the Muslim Canadian community,have asked in an open letter that their leaders “help separate fact from fiction” by speaking out about misinformation they see fuelling a lot of the discourse, placing both Muslim and LGBTQ+ students at risk, as well as those who identify as both.

She said the debate is “gut-wrenching” and risks making life even more dangerous for average Muslim families and their children, who already experience Islamophobia and live their life under high alert.

“We will become the poster children for transphobia and homophobia when we are not the poster children for homophobia and transphobia.”

In the Ramadan interview with Canada One TV, Poilievre acknowledged that his party has done a lousy job of fostering better ties.

He pledged to be different.

“I’m coming here with my hand extended in a spirit of friendship,” he said. “It’s not the duty of the Muslim community to come to us. It’s our duty to come to you.”

Source: ‘It’s a new party’: How Conservatives try to rebuild trust among Muslim communities

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Siddiqui: Despite decades of adversity, Muslims have become an integral part of the West

2023/09/25 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant reflections:

Last week marked the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks when nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed by 19 Muslim terrorists. In the ensuing American-led war on terror waged overtly and covertly in more than 80 countries, nearly 900,000 Muslims have been killed and at least 37 million have been displaced, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project.

We also know about the parallel cultural warfare on Muslims. The Green Scare turned out to be worse than the Red Scare of the 1950s – it has had a bigger footprint, lasted longer and affected, besides the Muslim world, Muslim minorities across the West, estimated at more than 30 million.

What we know little or nothing about is this:

Muslims in the West are emerging as an integral part of the mainstream, despite or because of the heavy odds they’ve encountered.

This is particularly true of Canada’s 1.8 million Muslims and the estimated 3.5 million Muslims in the United States, that hotbed of Islamophobia.

Muslims are assuming prominent roles in a range of fields, from politics to business to culture to sports

Not only is this good news for this beleaguered minority but also our democracies, which, despite bouts of abominable bigotry, do provide the legal and political mechanisms for victims to reassert their rights, eventually.

Post-9/11, Muslims became defensive: “I am a Muslim but not a bin Laden Muslim,” “ … not a fundamentalist Muslim,” “ … not a Wahhabi Muslim,” but rather, “a moderate Muslim,” or “a Sufi Muslim.” Not that many knew who or what a Sufi was, only that the designation signalled you were Muslim Lite and unlikely to blow up planes and buildings.

But as Islamophobia intensified, many Muslims gravitated to their faith. Their ethnic, linguistic, racial, cultural, nationalist and doctrinal affiliations began to take a back seat to their pan-Islamic identity. Or, pan-Muslim identity, in the case of the non-observant.

While 48 per cent of Canadian Muslims consider their ethnic or cultural identity as important, more than 80 per cent cite being Muslim and being Canadian as markers of their identity.

Muslim and Canadian. Muslim and American. Muslim and British.

It used to be that demonized minorities in North America kept their heads down and played down their identities. During and after the Second World War, for example, Mennonites in southern Ontario nearly disappeared from the census. But Muslims announced themselves in the 2011 and 2021 censuses when the decennial religion question was asked.

Mosques are overflowing, in part due to increased immigration but not just because of it. Politicians were the first to sniff this out and troll for votes there. On the Friday sabbath, most mosques are holding two or three services. In Ramadan, the late-evening prayers when the entire Quran is recited in the month, congregations are spilling into corridors, classrooms, gyms – in an orderly Canadian manner.

An unprecedented number of women in Canada – and the United States, Britain and parts of Europe – are wearing the hijab. Most were born or bred in the West, and the first in their families to do so, often defying parents. They’ve marched proudly and fearlessly into the front lines of battling both religious and gender discrimination. They are also carving out new paths: Playing hockey and basketball, acing postsecondary education, and being professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, business partners, authors, TV producers, news anchors and stand-up comedians. In my books, they are the real Muslim heroes of the post-9/11 period.

Even the Halal industry is booming, said to be worth around $1.5-billion in Canada alone.

Ismaili Muslims, followers of the Aga Khan, are beginning to fast in Ramadan, and perform the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Given that such obligations had long been left to individual choices among the Ismailis, the new trend by their young denotes strong ecumenical solidarity.

This increase in faith activity may spook those who consider religion incompatible with secularism. On the contrary, freedom of religion, including the right to public assertion of it, is a bedrock principle of liberal democracy. So long as a faith practice is within the law, we have little or no reason to panic. Indeed, it can lead to ethical behaviour and a more humane society. Sikh gurdwaras, for example, serve Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike at their langar, free mass feeding, as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic. Churches routinely house refugee claimants.

Mosque-based food banks are feeding people of all faiths and no faith, and mosques are raising funds for neighbourhood public schools and hospitals. The Toronto-based International Development and Relief Foundation – founded in 1984 by a pious Niagara Falls physician, Fuad Sahin – provides humanitarian aid and development programs without discrimination in Canada and abroad. The Aga Khan Foundation Canada is partnering with the federal government to deliver development programs abroad.

All this represents a remarkably swift evolution for a relatively recent immigrant group, especially the Ismailis. Refugees from East Africa in the 1970s, they’ve shown themselves to be highly organized, self-reliant and successful – a model minority within a minority. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien told me during the 1990s recession that what his hometown of Shawinigan, Que., needed was “a dozen Ismaili entrepreneurs.”

Muslim advocacy groups helped turn the politically docile Muslims into a formidable voting bloc. In the 2015 election, nearly 80 per cent of Canadians Muslims voted, according to the group The Canadian Muslim Vote. Nationally, they voted 65 per cent for the Liberals, 10 per cent for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. In the 2021 election, 28 Muslim candidates ran and 12 won. Four have been ministers: Maryam Monsef (a refugee from Afghanistan), Ahmed Hussen (a refugee from Somalia), Omar Alghabra (an immigrant of Syrian descent), and my Toronto area MP Arif Virani (a refugee from Uganda), now Canada’s first Muslim minister of justice. Naheed Nenshi of Calgary was the first Muslim mayor of a large North American city, and Ausma Malik is the first hijab-wearing councillor in Toronto, indeed Canada.

In the United States, 57 Muslims were elected in the 2020 national and state elections. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives, took his oath of office in 2007 on a copy of the Quran owned by president Thomas Jefferson who, unlike contemporary American politicians, wanted to better understand Muslims. Mr. Ellison has been followed by three others: representatives Andre Carson, Rashida Tlaib and the hijab wearing Ilhan Omar.

In Britain, which has been slower in integrating minorities, there were 55 Muslim candidates in the 2019 general election and 19 were elected. Two were named Conservative ministers – Sajid Javid and Nadhim Zahawi. In Scotland, Humza Yousaf became First Minister earlier this year, the first Muslim to lead a major U.K. party, and the first Muslim to lead a democratic Western European nation. His wife, Nadia El-Nakla, is a councillor in the City of Dundee, the first member of any minority elected there.

The mayor of London since 2016 has been Sadiq Khan. Earlier as a Labour MP, he voted against his own government’s draconian anti-terrorism legislation in 2006, fearing it might snare innocent Muslims. In 2009, he was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Buckingham Palace on the Quran. Upon discovering that the palace had none, he left his copy there.

It’s not just politics.

Goldy Hyder is the first Muslim chief executive of the Business Council of Canada, which represents the heads of Canada’s 150 leading businesses. Toronto lawyer Walied Soliman, Canadian chair of Norton Rose Fulbright, has also served as its global chair.

Authors include M.G. Vassanji, Canada’s first two-time winner of the Giller Prize for fiction; Uzma Jalaluddin; Kamal Al-Solaylee; and Omar Mouallem. Rappers K’naan and Belly. TV anchors Omar Sachedina, Farah Nasser and Ginella Massa; broadcaster Adnan Virk. There’s hockey star Nazem Kadri and the wrestler Sami Zayn. Comedian Ali Hassan and Zarqa Nawaz, producer of the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, which drew a record audience of 2.1 million when it premiered in 2007.

We are familiar with American entertainers Hasan Minhaj, Mahershala Ali, and Aziz Ansari; the writers Fareed Zakaria, Reza Aslan, and Ayad Akhtar, who is also the president of PEN America; the painter Salman Toor and his partner, singer Ali Sethi, whose song Pasoori, Punjabi for conflict, has exceeded 500 million views and was the most searched song in 2022, according to Google Trends.

Muslims have traditionally divided the world into Dar al-Islamand Dar al-Harb, the dominion of Islam and the dominion that barred the free practise of Islam. Canadian Muslims speak of Canada as Dar al-Amn, an abode of peace – sans Quebec.

The province has been aping France and certain European jurisdictions in banning the hijab and the niqab (and the turban and the kippa) in public service, on pain of the wearers losing their jobs. France recently also banned the abaya in state schools, the long dress worn by some Arab women. The discrimination is rationalized in the rubric of laïcité, secularism – oblivious to the irony that while the Taliban and the ayatollahs tell women what to wear, these guardians of secularism order women what not to. The urge to control women is the same. Quebec recently banned religious activity (i.e. prayers) in schools, which disproportionally affects Muslim students. China has banned beards in Muslim Xinjiang in the name of curbing “extremism.” We are left to argue only about the degree of the control and the punishments for disobedience.

Quebec also shares another unfortunate trait with France and other parts of Europe. The only Muslims it grants prominent roles in government and the public sector are those who attack fellow Muslims, especially the observant. No dissident voices are allowed to disturb the certitudes of anti-religious secularism.

Happily, in English Canada, Muslim-baiting no longer pays political dividends. Stephen Harper found that out in the 2015 election when Canadians decided that his Barbaric Cultural Practices Act was one dog whistle too many.

Today, no Islamophobic party can win a national election, nor a xenophobic one.

Yet, as we know, Canada has not been immune from Islamophobia.

Six worshippers were massacred in Quebec City in 2017. A caretaker at a Toronto mosque was murdered in 2020. A family of four was mowed down in London in 2021; the trial of the accused is taking place as I write this.

Muslims face hostility – including, shamefully, by the right-wing mainstream media. They suffer high unemployment and underemployment. Hijab-wearing women are still harassed, spat upon, pushed, shoved and kicked in public spaces, pointing to yet another irony: The West thinks that Islam and Muslims mistreat women, yet it is Muslim women in the West who are the biggest victims of discrimination by liberals and louts alike.

Ottawa has appointed a Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, a hijab-wearing human-rights activist. Her role is akin to that of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Anti-Semitism. This is appropriate, given that Islamophobia is the new antisemitism.

Through these tough times, as during others through the ages, Muslims have been sustained by a resiliency born of sabr, patience/perseverance, enjoined by the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. Even the non-observant have it in their DNA. One common refrain among Muslims is that as bad as they’ve had it here, they are blessed, compared with the plight of many Muslims and non-Muslims around the world.

Overcoming adversity, succeeding as a minority, and integrating into the larger society have had two significant beneficial side effects for Muslims:

1) Going or gone is the notion that Muslim states “back home,” or at least the influential ones, would come to the rescue of Muslims here. Or that the Organization of Islamic Co-operation, the Jeddah-based, 56-member umbrella organization of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, would.

2) Old-world interdenominational rivalries are dissipating. All strands of Islam co-exist here: There are no Orange Day-like parades, with one set of Muslims needling the other.

All these transformational changes speak to a greater truth: Democracy is the best polity for Muslims, as it is for peoples of other faiths and no faith, so long as it treats all groups fairly.

This is not an exclusively secular idea. It was enunciated with stunning clarity by Islamic clerics back in the 1930s in colonial British India. Its strongest proponent was Husain Ahmed Madani, rector of a highly regarded orthodox madrassah in Deoband, north of Delhi. I’ve been reading about him while tracing my family history in those precincts.

He was a steadfast supporter of Mahatma Gandhi’s joint Hindu-Muslim struggle for independence from the British. He opposed dividing India into a majority-Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, and would ask: Whose Islam would prevail in Pakistan? Given the range of theological diversity among Muslims, only an authoritarian government could impose the kind of Islam it opted for. He was making the case for Muslims to stay in the democratic framework of postcolonial India. His prescience is being proven over and over in the West, especially Canada.

Haroon Siddiqui is editorial page editor emeritus of the Toronto Star and a senior fellow at Massey College. His latest book is My Name is Not Harry: A Memoir.

Source: Despite decades of adversity, Muslims have become an integral part of the West

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Immigration is religion’s only hope – UnHerd

2023/09/21 Leave a comment

Of interest (similar trend in Canada):

When my father was going through the process of becoming an Elder in the United Methodist Church, he was required to take courses on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. One course involved a presentation on how white people needed to make room for, and amplify the voices of, “people of colour”. My father is an immigrant from China. He, like other immigrant preachers, was confused about who the term “person of colour” referred to, and why a faith founded on the idea that there is “neither Jew nor Greek” is so obsessed with racial divisions.

Who can blame them? The progressive ideology that in recent years has swept through mainstream American Protestantism is often impenetrable to those from non-Western countries.

And yet, it is just such immigrants who are keeping Christianity alive in our secular world — everywhere from France’s Afro-Caribbean megachurches to London’s Black Majority Churches. In America, the number of citizens identifying as Christians has fallen from 90% to 64% in the last 50 years, while immigrants are becoming more influential: more than two thirds of them are Christians.
American progressives are increasingly stoking fears of an incipient “white Christian nationalism” bringing about a Cromwellian theocracy. But white Americans have actually been secularising at a slightly faster rate than other ethnicities. While black Americans have also experienced secularisation, they are still more likely to go to church and pray than the average American. And African immigrants to the US are more religious than American-born black people. The rise of Latino evangelicals in America has also been receiving mainstream coverage.

“Conservative Christians”, the bogeyman for white progressives, are therefore increasingly likely to be people of colour — the very people whose voices progressives apparently want to amplify. Christians of African origin are far more likely to hold conservative views on sexuality, while Latino evangelicals are quickly becoming a Republican bloc.

White conservatives, meanwhile, have a tendency to bemoan the secularisation of the West and the decline of traditional values, while supporting restrictive immigration processes — perhaps not realising that non-Western immigrants are more likely to be socially conservative than American-born citizens, or perhaps because their economic or tribal instincts trump their religious ones. Both progressives and conservatives are therefore mired in contradiction.

Despite the fact that liberals are secularising faster than conservatives, for the last decade, the leadership of the United Methodist Church has been adopting views on sexuality and gender identity that are in line with those of secular progressives, triggering a slow-motion denominational schism. Some years ago, I attended a UMC conference with my parents at which some attendees wore rainbow armbands in support of a movement to ordain gay clergy. Almost all of them were white. None of the representatives from immigrant congregations, and few from black congregations, wore the armbands. “Before I came to America, I thought this was a nation built on Christian values,” commented one attendee. “Why are these people going against God’s will?”

A progressive Christian might see this as a contradiction: if Jesus came from Heaven to help the marginalised, why do these marginalised Christians antagonise a fellow marginalised group? Liberal white people, who usually preach multicultural ideals, cannot answer this question honestly without making it sound like Western culture has the “correct” view on sexuality — the major irony being that progressives dismiss Western culture for what they see as regressive views.

While progressives blame “the Christian Right” for society’s ills, religious conservatives often complain about “woke Christianity”. They point to examplessuch as Allendale United Methodist Church, which had a “non-binary” drag queen deliver sermons and bills itself as “a church that is committed to anti-racism and radical solidarity with folx on the margins”. They argue that such acts are based on ideology stemming from the secular world rather than theology based on Biblical exegesis.

A similar dynamic can be observed in the UK. Earlier this year, the Church of England floated the idea of using gender-neutral pronouns for God, and allowed prayers of blessing for gay couples. The backlash was swift. Many bishops in Africa and Asia rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury — and criticised the Anglican church’s (largely white) leadership. But even within the UK, there was fierce opposition to progressive Christianity from ethnic minorities, who are keepingBritain’s Christian population from declining.

However, the religious conservatives probably have less to worry about than the progressives, in the long run. If progressive Christian churches align themselves more closely to the values of secular society than to religious ones, they will cease to exist. A similar phenomenon can be seen in American Judaism. Orthodox Jews, who take their faith seriously, and mostly vote Republican, are currently in the minority, but they are estimated to grow to become the dominant branch of American Judaism by 2050. This is partly due to birth rates, but also because non-Orthodox Jews, who mostly vote Democrat, are secularising quickly; they are far more likely to partner with non-Jews, stop observing Jewish traditions, or to cease to identify as Jewish altogether. Christianity, too, looks set to depend on the most orthodox sustaining the faith.

It is ironic that Christianity is now seen as “problematic” by progressives, because the roots of liberalism, which opened the door for progressivism, partially derive from Christianity — or Protestantism, to be specific. It was the Reformation that shifted religious practices away from a central authority to that of individuals. As Tom Holland has pointed out, almost every country that has legalised gay marriage has been shaped by centuries of both liberalism and Protestantism.

It is also ironic that white progressives support multiculturalism over assimilation, because it is the latter that would align the beliefs of immigrant communities with the values of the utopia dreamed of in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion trainings. In other words, though liberalism paved the way for immigration and multiculturalism, immigration and multiculturalism actually weaken liberalism; though Christianity paved the way for liberalism, Christianity could prove liberalism’s downfall.

The tension between a multicultural utopia pushed by secular progressives versus the socially conservative, religious-inflected attitudes many non-white groups hold has led to quite a few awkward skirmishes. While most black people vote for the same party as white liberals, 37% of black Democrats say their religious views influence how they think about transgender topics, compared to only 11% of white Democrats. While 66% of black Democrats say a person’s gender is their sex determined at birth, only 27% of white Democrats say the same.

Conservatives in America are also tying themselves in strange knots. A common refrain is that Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation. And yet, some conservative Christians find themselves allied with Muslims against what they both see as America’s decadent hyper-individualistic secular culture. In a number of American cities, Muslims have joined conservative Christiansto protest the inclusion of explicitly LGBT-themed books in elementary schools, leading to accusations that “some Muslim families” are “on the same side of an issue as White supremacists and outright bigots”. To progressives, a “bigot” is a stereotypical white Christian conservative; to see non-white Muslim families standing beside them in droves caught many off guard. An all-Muslim city council in Michigan was once held up by liberals as a symbol of diversity, until it voted earlier this year to ban Pride flags being flown on city property, to the delight of many social conservatives. Slate has gone so far as to call Muslim voters “the new Republicans” — an unexpected twist after two decades of Republican fear-mongering against Islam.

At the same time, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu, has gone from a virtual unknown to third place in the Republican primary, by picking up the support of many conservative Christian voters. Ramaswamy does not shy away from his faith, but rather emphasises the similarities between certain schools of Hindu and Christian thought. Many conservative Christians, it seems, would rather ally with conservatives from other religions than Christians on the other side of the political divide.

It has taken a cosmic convergence of contradictions to get to this point. White progressives, with their absolute devotion to immigration, have inadvertently championed immigrants from cultures that outrightly reject progressivism. With their just-as-absolute devotion to multiculturalism, those same white progressives have created a trap for themselves where they are unable to criticise a non-white person’s culture, values or beliefs — even when they actively go against sacred progressive views on gender and sexuality. Meanwhile, white conservatives find themselves forging alliances with people they never thought they’d work with — people whose entry into the country they might have objected to. Old alliances are dissolving — and battle lines are drawn anew.

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Clark: Canada once more forced to reckon with era of foreign intimidation

2023/09/20 Leave a comment

One of many articles on the intelligence revelations that the Indian may have been behind the Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar:

It was a jolt for Canada when China retaliated for the arrest of a Huawei executive in Vancouver by locking up two Canadian bystanders, the two Michaels, five years ago. Now a second shock shows us foreign governments are continuing to reach into Canada to intimidate.

This time, agents of a supposedly friendly country, India, are alleged to be linked to the death of a Canadian, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh community leader who in June was shot in his truck in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Surrey, B.C.

There has never been anything like this before: an explosive public allegation that a foreign government’s agents targeted and killed a Canadian citizen, in Canada.

Certainly, there has never been a moment like the one on Monday afternoon when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons to tell the country that Canada’s security agencies are pursuing “credible allegations” of a potential link to the Indian government.

India is not supposed to be an enemy, or even an adversary. There are tensions, because the Indian government has for decades accused Canada of being soft on Khalistani terrorists, who seek to carve an independent Sikh state out of what is now northern India. But India has often conflated non-violent Sikh separatist advocates with terrorists and extremists. Mr. Nijjar was organizing an unofficial referendum on the creation of a Sikh state when he was killed.

The idea that New Delhi might send agents to kill a Canadian in Canada is stunning.

Mr. Trudeau said on Monday that he had spoken to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the allegation “in no uncertain terms” at last week’s G20 summit in New Delhi, but there was no word from the Canadian government on Mr. Modi’s response. There’s no sense Mr. Trudeau was given a satisfactory answer, or that he was promised Indian co-operation on an investigation.

Canada has already expelled an Indian diplomat who was the chief of the Indian foreign intelligence agency in Canada, but it’s not clear what, if anything, will happen next.

Again, Canada is jolted into recognizing a new world in which foreign governments reach out to influence, intimidate and coerce Canadians in Canada. Again, there is new reason to believe foreign interference might be a bigger, broader danger than this country is prepared to counter. This time, the allegation is assassination, which underlines the direct threat to the security of Canadians – especially those who belong to diaspora communities here.

Already, many in Canada’s Sikh community believed that the Indian government had been involved in Mr. Nijjar’s killing, and his death had sparked anger and protests. Indian diplomats had complained to Mr. Trudeau’s government that those protests were becoming threatening. The killing brought tension to Canadian streets.

It wasn’t quite the same thing in 2018, when China arrested Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on U.S. charges. But that was an attempt to intimidate Canada for exercising its own laws. It showed Canadians can’t expect sovereignty without foreign coercion.

And there have been more examples of China and other countries feeling they can reach inside Canada. The RCMP said earlier this summer that they had shut down illegal Chinese police activity in several Canadian locations. The Globe and Mail has reported on a series of attempts by Beijing to influence Canadian elections. Canadian relatives of victims of the 2020 downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 by Iranian armed forces reported that people close to the Iranian regime had approached them in Canada, in an attempt to intimidate them into silence.

Now, Mr. Trudeau has made an explosive, albeit unproven, allegation of an extreme example – an alleged assassination in Canada – and promised to work closely with allies “on this very serious matter.” In the Commons, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called on allies to “condemn this violence … in the harshest terms possible.”

But it is far from certain that the U.S. and other Canadian allies will rush to hold India to account.

For one thing, credible allegations in the hands of intelligence agencies aren’t the same as evidence gathered by police for a trial. And in a world where Western allies have imposed extensive economic sanctions against Russia and are increasingly seeking to counter China’s influence, the U.S. and European nations won’t relish the prospect of conflict with another major power.

But if the allegation is true, it will be fuel for the coming public inquiry into foreign interference. Foreign governments apparently feel as though they can reach into Canada with impunity. Countering that is now a pressing national priority.

Source: Canada once more forced to reckon with era of foreign intimidation

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Girard: L’intégrisme religieux, une menace aux droits des femmes

2023/09/20 Leave a comment

A reminder:

De nombreux récents événements démontrent, sans équivoque, que l’intégrisme religieux constitue une menace à l’égalité des sexes ici et dans le monde. En voici quelques exemples : « À travers plus de 50 édits, ordres et restrictions, les talibans n’ont laissé aucun aspect de la vie des femmes indemne, aucune liberté épargnée. Ils ont créé un système fondé sur l’oppression massive des femmes qui est à juste titre et largement considéré comme un apartheid de genre », déclarait la directrice d’ONU Femmes, Sima Bahous, le 15 août 2023.

Nulle part ailleurs dans le monde, il n’y a eu d’attaque aussi généralisée, systématique et globale contre les droits des femmes et des filles qu’en Afghanistan. Tous les aspects de leur vie sont restreints sous le couvert de la moralité et par l’instrumentalisation de la religion. Les politiques discriminatoires et misogynes des talibans nient le droit des femmes à l’égalité.

Le 14 août 2023, on apprenait que le premier ministre d’Israël, Benjamin Nétanyahou, négociait, dans le cadre d’un accord avec des alliés ultraorthodoxes, des concessions qui pourraient transformer radicalement le visage d’un pays où l’égalité des droits pour les femmes est garantie dans la déclaration d’indépendance de 1948. Bien que les lois israéliennes n’aient pas encore été modifiées pour refléter ces concessions, d’aucuns craignent que ces changements soient déjà en cours, aux dépens des femmes.

Les médias israéliens ont ainsi fait état, ces derniers mois, d’incidents jugés discriminatoires : des chauffeurs de bus ont refusé de prendre de jeunes femmes parce qu’elles portaient des hauts courts ou des vêtements de sport ; des hommes ultraorthodoxes ont arrêté un bus public et bloqué la route parce qu’une femme conduisait ; le service national d’urgences médicales et de catastrophes a, pour la première fois, séparé les hommes des femmes pendant la partie théorique de la formation paramédicale entreprise pour répondre à une exigence du service national israélien.

Rappelons que lorsqu’il y a ségrégation basée sur le sexe, pour répondre aux souhaits des ultraorthodoxes, les femmes soit sont assises à l’arrière, soit ont accès à moins de financement, soit ont un choix de carrière limité. Les défenseurs des droits des femmes s’inquiètent également des efforts que fait le gouvernement israélien pour affaiblir la Cour suprême, qui, elle, a soutenu l’égalité des droits pour les femmes dans plusieurs domaines.

Le mouvement iranien « Femme, vie, liberté », commencé en septembre 2022 à la suite de la mort d’une jeune Iranienne de 22 ans, Mahsa Amini, dans le cadre de son arrestation par la police des moeurs pour « avoir mal porté son voile », a permis de mettre en relief les affronts aux droits des femmes perpétrés par la République islamique d’Iran.

Sa constitution même part du principe que la femme est une citoyenne de seconde zone, est légalement la propriété de l’homme et doit se conformer à une multitude d’interdits sous peine de sanction allant jusqu’à la mort. Interdits économiques, interdits d’aller et venir, interdits empêchant chacune d’elles de disposer d’elle-même. Selon le Code criminel iranien, la valeur d’une femme est égale à la moitié de celle d’un homme lorsqu’il est question de dédommagement pour un meurtre, lors de la séparation d’un héritage familial ou encore lorsqu’il est question du poids à accorder aux témoignages dans un cadre judiciaire ou dans un contexte de divorce. De plus, la République islamique d’Iran impose une ségrégation systémique entre les sexes dans les écoles, les hôpitaux, les transports, les sports et autres.

En 2022, aux États-Unis, les fondamentalistes chrétiens, très influents auprès de la droite américaine, obtenaient l’invalidation par la Cour suprême de l’arrêt Roe v. Wade, qui protégeait le droit à l’avortement à l’échelle nationale. Selon le juge dissident Stephen Breyer, cette décision aura pour conséquence de restreindre les droits des femmes et leur statut de citoyennes libres et égales.

Entré en vigueur en 2021 en Pologne, un arrêt de la Cour constitutionnelle, contrôlée par le parti conservateur nationaliste et catholique au pouvoir Droit et justice (PiS), interdit tout avortement sauf en cas de danger pour la vie ou la santé de la femme enceinte ou si la grossesse découle d’un viol. Dans la pratique, il semble cependant impossible d’obtenir un avortement, même légal. La Pologne devient ainsi l’un des pays européens les plus restrictifs en matière de droit à l’avortement.

Ici aussi

Le Canada n’est pas en reste concernant les dangers de l’intégrisme religieux. CBC News révélait, en juin 2023, l’existence d’un document stratégique de la Liberty Coalition Canada selon lequel elle veut recruter 10 000 nouveaux candidats politiques chrétiens afin de pouvoir aligner les lois canadiennes sur les « principes bibliques ». Or, le droit à l’avortement, qui fait consensus au sein de la population canadienne, fait partie de ses cibles. Après le succès obtenu par les lobbys religieux aux États-Unis, la vigilance est de mise ici aussi, au Canada, à l’égard du respect du droit des femmes à l’égalité.

Comme le disait si bien Simone de Beauvoir : « N’oubliez jamais qu’il suffira d’une crise politique, économique ou religieuse pour que les droits des femmes soient remis en question. Ces droits ne sont jamais acquis. Vous devrez rester vigilantes votre vie durant. »

Source: L’intégrisme religieux, une menace aux droits des femmes

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Yakabuski: Back-to-school in France means back to another bitter debate over secularism

2023/09/01 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

La rentrée, as the back-to-school season is known in France, is starting off with yet another divisive civics lesson after the government’s move to prohibit a traditional Middle Eastern robe that had become a fashion statement among some Muslim high-schoolers.

…

Source: Back-to-school in France means back to another bitter debate over secularism

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French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Hear we go again:

The wearing of abaya dresses by some Muslim women in French schools is a “political attack”, the government’s spokesman said Monday as he explained a ban announced on the clothing.

Education Minister Gabriel Attal said Sunday that the long, flowing dresses that originated in the Middle East would no longer be allowed in schools when the new term begins next week because they violate secular laws.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran said it was “obviously” a religious garment and “a political attack, a political sign” which he saw as an act of “proselytising” or trying to convert to Islam.

“School is secular. We say it in a very calm but firm way: it is not the place for that (wearing religious clothing),” he told the BFM TV channel.

Attal said Monday that the government was clear that abayas “did not belong in schools.”

“Our schools are being tested. These last few months, violations of our secular rules have considerably increased, particularly with regard to the wearing of religious clothing such as abayas or qamis which have appeared — and remained — in some establishments,” he told reporters.

Attal’s decision to ban abayas has sparked a new debate about France’s secular rules and whether they are used to discriminate against the country’s large Muslim minority.

A law of March 2004 banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools.

This includes large Christian crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, schools had struggled to regulate the wearing of abayas which were seen as being in a grey area.

The government has sided with politicians on the right and far-right who had pushed for an outright ban, arguing that they are part of a wider agenda from Islamists to spread religious practice throughout society.

But politicians on the left and many Muslims see France’s secular rules — known as “laicite” — as a front used by conservatives for Islamophobic policies.

They say some women choose to wear abayas, or headscarves, to signal their cultural identity, rather than out of religious belief.

Many conservative politicians have pushed in recent years for the ban on the wearing of religious symbols to be widened to universities and even parents accompanying children on their school outings.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen campaigned in last year’s presidential election to ban veils from all public streets.

The country’s constitution guarantees citizens the right to practice religion freely, but it imposes an obligation on the state and state employees to respect neutrality.

The abaya ban is likely to face a legal appeal and could lead to difficulties for school authorities who will have to decide when a large flowing dress moves from being a personal fashion choice to a religious statement, observers say.

Source: French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

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Le blasphème comme limite à la liberté d’expression?

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Thoughtful discussion:

La liberté d’opinion et d’expression fait partie des droits protégés par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme de 1948. Il s’agit du droit de ne pas être inquiété pour ses opinions et du droit de chercher, de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de frontières, des informations et des idées, par quelque moyen d’expression que ce soit.

Or, cette liberté d’expression heurte les tenants de dogmes religieux, qui ont recours aux accusations de blasphème pour faire taire les personnes mettant en question leurs croyances. À preuve, la résolution non contraignante du Conseil des droits de l’homme des Nations unies, adoptée en juillet 2023, qui demande aux États de condamner tout plaidoyer et manifestation publique et préméditée de profanation du Coran.

De tout temps les religions revendiquent le droit d’être protégées contre le blasphème, soit une parole, un discours ou un geste qui outrage un ou plusieurs de leurs aspects.

Dans les sociétés de droit, cette requête s’appuie de nos jours sur trois éléments. À savoir : la liberté de religion ; la protection de la société et de l’ordre public ; la religion comme élément intrinsèque et indissociable de la personne.

Dans le premier cas, la demande d’interdiction du blasphème présume que la liberté de religion vise la protection des croyances et des sentiments religieux des expressions jugées offensantes. Il incomberait ainsi à l’État d’intervenir pour contrer les critiques de dogmes religieux, ce qui semble contradictoire avec le principe de séparation de la religion et de l’État, de la liberté d’expression et de la liberté de conscience des citoyens.

La deuxième justification concerne la protection de la société et de l’ordre public. Il s’agit là d’une question brûlante d’actualité en Suède et au Danemark, à la suite des crises diplomatiques avec les pays musulmans qu’ont provoquées les récents autodafés du Coran survenus sur leurs territoires respectifs. Sans parler d’interdiction du blasphème, en tout respect de la liberté d’expression, ces pays explorent aujourd’hui des solutions juridiques qui pourraient permettre d’interdire certaines manifestations offensantes afin de contrer une situation jugée « dangereuse pour la sécurité nationale ».

Il s’agit d’une question délicate puisqu’elle remet en question leur autonomie nationale quant au modèle de société choisi démocratiquement. D’ailleurs, n’est-ce pas cette autonomie par rapport aux accusations de blasphème de pays tiers qui a permis de protéger l’écrivain britannique Salman Rushdie d’une fatwa appelant à la mort ? Voire encore celle qui a permis au Canada d’accueillir la Pakistanaise Asia Bibi, accusée de blasphème dans la foulée d’une dispute autour d’un verre d’eau en 2019 ?

La troisième justification mise en avant pour interdire le blasphème vient de l’idée que les individus et leurs croyances forment un tout indissociable, et que le respect des uns implique obligatoirement le respect des autres. Les accusations d’islamophobie s’appuient sur ce principe en confondant critique de dogmes religieux et propos offensants à l’égard d’une personne. Cette conception d’un tout identitaire immuable soulève cependant la question de la liberté, pour les croyants, de se conformer ou non aux dogmes religieux, de la liberté de croire ou de ne pas croire, de la liberté d’association et de la liberté d’expression.

La situation au Canada

Le Canada a décriminalisé le blasphème en 2018. La liberté d’expression défendue par le Canada est cependant limitée par la criminalisation des discours qui incitent à la violence contre un groupe identifiable. Le défi consiste donc à départager un propos critique à l’égard d’une religion de ce qui relève du discours haineux visant un groupe en particulier, c’est-à-dire qui incite à détester des personnes.

En 2020, à la suite de l’assassinat de l’enseignant français Samuel Paty pour avoir montré des caricatures jugées blasphématoires par une partie de la communauté musulmane, le premier ministre canadien, Justin Trudeau, avait ainsi créé toute une polémique en associant le respect d’un dogme au respect de la personne : il avait alors affirmé qu’il ne fallait pas chercher à « blesser, de façon arbitraire ou inutile, ceux avec qui on est en train de partager une société et une planète ». Ces déclarations semblaient aller au-delà du concept de propos haineux qui limite la liberté d’expression au Canada.

Est-ce la perception de ce supposé lien indissociable entre religion et croyants qui a motivé le premier ministre à nommer, en 2023, une commissaire chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie ? N’y a-t-il pas là confusion entre le respect de la personne musulmane et le respect absolu des préceptes de l’islam ?

Rappelons que c’est la liberté d’expression qui a notamment permis les avancées scientifiques contraires aux dogmes religieux (on n’a qu’à penser à l’origine de la vie) ou à la reconnaissance du droit des femmes à l’égalité.

Aujourd’hui, le Canada semble errer en souscrivant au concept d’islamophobie par respect et pour éviter de blesser des sensibilités d’une certaine communauté. Comme la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme l’a rappelé en 1994 : « Ceux qui choisissent d’exercer la liberté de manifester leur religion, qu’ils le fassent en tant que membres d’une majorité ou d’une minorité religieuse, ne peuvent raisonnablement s’attendre à être exemptés de toute critique. Ils doivent tolérer et accepter le déni… Et même la propagation par d’autres de doctrines hostiles à leur foi. »

Toute critique des religions ne constitue pas en soi une incitation à la violence ou à la discrimination.

Source: Le blasphème comme limite à la liberté d’expression?

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Chris Selley: In Canada, even Muslims can be conservatives

2023/08/03 Leave a comment

As can any group. Ibbitson and Bricker made the point about many immigrant-origin communities being more socially conservative in their 2014 book, The Big Shift but this has not hampered the Liberal government in the three subsequent elections, suggesting less important than other issues.

But valid that all parties need to be more careful in their ethnic and religious vote targeting to avoid greater divisiveness just as they also need to ensure inclusive messaging. Not an easy balance…:

Canada’s media-political universe continues to indulge one of the more fascinatingly insulting ideas in recent memory: That some socially conservative Muslims are lining up in opposition to LGBTQ- and especially gender-related school activities — drag queen story times are a prominent example — because they’ve been duped or manipulated into it by non-Muslim conservatives, especially those awful Americans.

There’s a far simpler explanation, of course: Muslim conservatives are leery-to-outraged by such things for the same reason non-Muslim conservatives are, namely some combination of religious and cultural norms, the shock of the new, and good old-fashioned gut instinct.

In addition, many Muslim-Canadians have their roots in countries where homosexuality is forbidden, never mind celebrated at elementary schools. It would be downright shocking if they had arrived pre-installed with Trudeauvian social values.

But some Canadian liberals just can’t seem to accept this.

“To some, the recent protests have been an example of conservative Muslims pushing back against causes championed by the left — which have in the past included standing against Islamophobia — amid concerns that prevailing progressive ideals conflict with their religious teachings,” the Toronto Star reported this week. “To others, it has tones of political manipulation, with members of a minority group being used to mask a larger push toward intolerance.”

“For white supremacists, expanding their base this way, or even appearing to grow support for their ‘causes’, offers (an) advantage,” Star columnist Shree Paradkar observed. “(I)mages with visibly Muslim people in their midst make for an effective cover.”

Paradkar called the situation “heartbreaking,” which epitomizes the condescension inherent in this narrative: After all Canada has done for these people, they take up with … with … conservatives? Woe!

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ushered this idea from the country’s faculty lounges and opinion pages into the mainstream, lately lecturing real live Muslim Canadians in the flesh about the error of their ways. “Misinformation” about school curriculums and activities is “being weaponized by people who are not doing it because of their interest in supporting the Muslim community,” he recently admonished parishioners at a Calgary mosque. “These are people on the far-right who have consistently stood against Muslim rights and the Muslim community.”

There it is again — this idea that Muslims are defaulting on some kind of debt.

It’s an Upper Canadian twist on the narrative that’s taken hold in Quebec in recent years: Where Quebec nationalists and conservatives would rather Muslims abandon their hijabs and embrace French-style secularism (because it’s such a success!), liberals in the Rest of Canada are happy for Muslims to worship and dress as they please, just so long as they don’t fraternize with social conservatives or take up social-conservative causes.

This is not the multiculturalism that the Liberals market to potential immigrants — the freedom to believe and worship and influence Canadian society as they choose. It’s more akin to blackmail: “We support you. We stand with you. It’d be a shame if we stopped, wouldn’t it?”

I’m using a very loose definition of “social conservative” here, incidentally. A Léger poll for the Conservative Party of Quebec, published in May, found 38 per cent of Quebecers felt drag queen story times were inappropriate for children. Many if not most would bristle at being called socially conservative. And most would not show up outside a school to protest about it.

But there’s no good reason Muslims shouldn’t pursue so-con causes in Canada unabashedly. And if they make “unlikely allies” with their non-Muslim so-cons, as the media often put it, I submit that’s for one very bad reason: The paranoia over Islamic terrorism and mass Muslim migration that took hold in some quarters after 9/11, which thankfully in Canada has proven unfounded. If that’s now far enough behind us that conservative Muslims and non-Muslims can make common cause in pursuit of common interests, I dare say we might even be looking at a good-news story.

Surely Canada would be better off if its parties and candidates stopped courting ethnic and religious voters en bloc, as if membership in a certain community ought to determine one’s position on housing policy, or the GST, or carbon pricing, or all the other things that affect our day-to-day lives. It would be a big change for Conservative strategists as well as Liberal ones, but we would be much stronger for it as a nation.

Source: Chris Selley: In Canada, even Muslims can be conservatives

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Khan: Sinead O’Connor’s road to Islam serves as an inspiration

2023/08/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

Toward the end of graduate school, I embarked on a deeply personal spiritual journey, immersing myself in the study of the Qur’an. As a result, pop culture passed me by in the 1990s – including that era’s music.

So, it was only last week that I first saw the music video for Nothing Compares 2 U, the classic song by the Irish singer known professionally as Sinead O’Connor, after her death at the age of 56.The footage was mesmerizing and raw, and the glistening tears she shed elicited a well of emotions from me. And that voice! Words cannot do it justice.

I wasn’t paying attention in 1992 when she ripped up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, decrying sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The photo had belonged to her mother, and upon her death, Ms. O’Connor took it with the intent to destroy it, in revenge for the ways in which she had suffered terribly at the hands of her mother, the Church and its institutions.

But the backlash was swift and brutal. Madonna, Frank Sinatra and Joe Pesci denigrated her; her albums were crushed by a steamroller at Rockefeller Plaza. Her actions were deemed “a gesture of hate” by Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, and “an example of anti-Catholicism” by a spokesperson for Cardinal Roger Mahony, then the archbishop of Los Angeles. (Cardinal Law would resign in 2002, while Cardinal Mahony would be removed from public duties in 2013, both for shielding sexually abusive clergy.)

Her courage was breathtaking. “I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she told the New York Times in 2021. Nonetheless, “it was very traumatizing … It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.” The evisceration of her musical career was a steep price to pay for being a woman who was unflinchingly ahead of her time.

Throughout her life, Sinead O’Connor stood up for the dispossessed: abused women and children; gay, lesbian and transgender people; AIDS patients, racial minorities and Palestinians (she refused to play in Israel in 2014). She donated her Hollywood mansion to famine-stricken children in Somalia. There has been an outpouring of reflection about her honest struggles with mental health, and about her strength in the face of trials she endured, such as the heartbreaking suicide of her son last year.

But some tributes have underplayed her Muslim faith. In 2018, after years of studying texts from a range of religions and leaving the Qur’an for last (”I had bought into the nonsense that people talked about Islam,” she admitted), she found her home in the Qur’an, and changed her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat. Umar Al-Qadri, chief imam at the Islamic Centre of Ireland and her spiritual adviser, spoke with NPR last week about what attracted her to Islam: “the fact that you can communicate with God directly,” he said, as well as the confirmation of the original Torah and Bible, along with the prophets.

A friend also gave her a hijab, which she donned in private, tweeting: “Not gonna post a photo because is intensely personal. I’m an ugly old hag. But I’m a very, very, very happy old hag.” Ms. Sadaqat would appear often in public wearing the hijab, believing that a woman had the right to wear it or not. In many photos, her inner radiance – her noor, in Arabic – shines through. And earlier this year, beaming from under her keffiyeh, she dedicated her Classic Irish Album award to Ireland’s refugee community: “You’re very welcome in Ireland. Mashallah. I love you very much and I wish you happiness.”

In a 2021 interview with Good Morning Britain, Ms. Sadaqat said that prior to converting, she would listen to the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) and find solace in its perfection and optimism. And when she converted, Mr. Al-Qadri allowed her to give the adhan in his mosque; a recording of her prayer shows women, children and men of different races entranced, some weeping upon hearing her call. I wept too, when I watched it.

Upon Ms. Sadaqat’s death, many Muslims invoked another traditional prayer: “to God we belong and to God is our return.” It is a reminder that death will visit us all. She was our sister in faith, and we, her ummah – her world community.

She was a trailblazer, ahead of her time. Though she is gone, her light shines on. And while I may have missed her rise to fame decades ago, I am grateful to have learned – even now, after she has returned to God – about her compassion, her uncompromising commitment to justice, and her humanity. Let us all do the same.

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.

Source: Sinead O’Connor’s road to Islam serves as an inspiration

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