International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – Now that Canada no longer chairs …

2014/03/18 Leave a comment

Further to my earlier post, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Ends: Andrew Bennett New Canadian Head of Delegation, a further update on the declining importance of IHRA now that the Canadian chairmanship has come and gone. Canada will no longer financially support attendance of Canadian Holocaust experts, leaving representation more at the symbolic rather than substantive level. I always found the strength of IHRA was the extensive involvement of experts, less so the governmental level (of which I was part).

Likely a combination of the bureaucratic (viewed as minor “all things Jewish” file rather than from a broader policy perspective) and the governmental (experts and expertise have more nuanced messaging than the political level, and focus on antisemitism and Israel mean ongoing community support).

Unfortunate, as the value of IHRA and Holocaust awareness and education is important for all Canadians, particularly in as diverse a society as Canada, and for the universal lessons it brings.

CORRECTION: Subsequently, this decision to no longer fund expert attendance was reversed given stakeholder pressure but still surprising that it happened in the first place.

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Chilliwack pastor tells congregation vaccines interfere with God’s care

2014/03/18 Leave a comment

A reminder that Christians have their fundamentalists and extremists like other religions:

Rev. Adriaan Geuze says his 1,200-strong Reformed Congregation of North America in Chilliwack mostly shares that view, which is why vaccination rates in the community are “very low.”

“We leave it in (God’s) hands. If it is in his will that somehow we get a contagious disease, like in this case the measles, there are other ways, of course, to avoid this. If (we get sick), he can also heal us from it,” he said in an interview Friday.

Chilliwack pastor tells congregation vaccines interfere with God’s care.

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If you don’t think multiculturalism is working, look at your street corner

2014/03/18 Leave a comment

A more encouraging take at the daily interaction level on multiculturalism in the UK:

Think of all those tiny interactions between different ethnic groups on an average British city street: the newsagent, the corner shop, the delivery driver, the postman, friends laughing, children playing, a pair of lovers. This is what generates passive tolerance. You don’t have to be part of the interaction yourself; just witnessing it is enough to have a significant impact – comparable to the effect passive smoking has on your health, hence the term passive tolerance.

This is the finding of seven studies carried out over 10 years in the United States, Europe and South Africa, led by a team of social psychologists at the University of Oxford and published in the journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences. They were careful to rule out the most obvious explanation for their finding, social psychologists Miles Hewstone and Katharina Schmid explain – namely, that the higher levels of tolerance in more diverse neighbourhoods are a result of more tolerant people choosing to live there. Two of the studies were conducted over several years and tracked the same individuals, showing how attitudes changed. Even prejudiced people showed a greater degree of tolerance over time if they lived in a mixed neighbourhood.

The study’s positive message is reinforced by the finding of a separate study led by the same Oxford team – the biggest to date in England on diversity and trust. White British people were asked whether they felt ethnic minorities threatened their way of life, increased crime levels, or took their jobs; ethnic minority participants were asked the same questions. Both groups were then asked about how they interact with other groups in everyday situations, such as corner shops, and then about how much they trusted people from their own and other ethnic groups in their neighbourhood. What the study found was that distrust does rise in diverse communities, but day to day, direct contact cancels it out.

It may be a bit over optimistic, given the rise of UKIP and anti-immigration sentiment, but worth reading and reflecting upon; Putman’s thesis of the negative impact of diversity on trust may be overstated or incorrect.

If you don’t think multiculturalism is working, look at your street corner | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | The Guardian.

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UK: Bid to boost feminism among Muslim women

2014/03/18 Leave a comment

Part of an emerging and ongoing debate within Muslim communities, this time from the UK:

A new project to connect Islam to feminism has been launched to tackle long-standing concerns that religious Muslim women are excluded from the women’s rights debate.

In what is a deeply controversial area for many in Islamic communities and for many mainstream feminists, the linkup between a Muslim charity and the project is seen as a pioneering step to bring women from different cultural backgrounds together in the battle for sexual equality.

The social enterprise Maslaha, established by the Young Foundation to work on improving social conditions in Muslim and minority communities, said the programme had attracted a huge response in the past few days.

“An awful lot of Muslim women have felt excluded from the debate about women’s rights and this project really focuses on bringing ordinary women into a debate about Islamic feminism that has so far only really been heard in academic circles,” said Latifa Akay of Maslaha.

Bid to boost feminism among Muslim women | World news | The Observer.

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Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending: Delacourt | Toronto Star

2014/03/17 Leave a comment

Good piece on evidence vs anecdote with respect to Elections Canada and the veiled voting controversy. Also nice mention of my book:

It should remind us of the push and pull that former bureaucrat Andrew Griffith has described in his book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, about his experiences at Citizenship and Immigration when Jason Kenney became the minister.

Griffith writes of how the public servants came to the table with reports and research, only to be met with anecdotes from the minister’s many, many meetings with cultural communities.

“While anecdotal in nature, the scale of ministerial outreach meant that public servants could not ignore what he was hearing from his ‘practicum,’ as he called it,” Griffith wrote.

Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending: Delacourt | Toronto Star.

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Radical Islam is ‘a risk,’ Marois says, PQ candidate intolerance

2014/03/17 1 Comment

More measured than the Charter of Values promotion, but still appealing to the same base.

Radical Islam is ‘a risk,’ Marois says in radio interview.

One PQ candidate, Louise Mailloux, has been caught out for intolerance (while aimed at Jews, could also apply to Muslims with hilal certification):

In previous writings, Mailloux, who teaches philosophy at a Montreal college, called kosher certification “robbery” and a hidden “tax.”

In a 2012 newspaper article, Mailloux said Christians “missed a great opportunity to make lots of money” when they decided that all food is permissible. “Ding, ding, ding! You can imagine the trick, getting paid to bless bottles of Coke,” she wrote. “There are even rabbis who bless an entire truck (of Coke) in one go. It is more profitable, and it can bless the truck at the same time.”

She called for kosher slaughter to be banned, and for the government to provide rules to “secularize” food and no longer “promote religious accommodation” in food.

Quebec premier defends candidate accused of spreading anti-Semitism

The PQ is becoming the party of small-minded atheists (Jonathan Kay)

Another had to withdraw following his “F**k Islam” comment:

«Fuck Islam»: Roland Richer doit «au moins» s’excuser, dit Legault

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Le malaise musulman – La Presse+

2014/03/17 Leave a comment

Not surprising, and illustrates why the PQ is using its identity politics and Charter strategy (English Canada also has a more negative impression of Muslims compared to other faith groups, but not to this extent):

La barrière est énorme : 72 % des non-francophones disent avoir une opinion positive des musulmans, mais seulement 36 % des francophones pensent de même. Intuitivement, Youri Rivest, vice-président de CROP, s’est demandé si cela pouvait s’expliquer par le fait que les francophones vivent beaucoup en région et qu’ils ne sont pas habitués à voir des gens d’autres cultures.

Or, M. Rivest signale que, vérification faite, cette variable compte peu. La différence dans la perception des musulmans par les francophones et les non-francophones ne peut pas non plus s’expliquer par le fait que les non-francophones de l’échantillon sont personnellement touchés par la Charte, puisque leur cohorte compte tout autant de musulmans que de Chinois, de Grecs, d’Italiens que d’hispanophones, pour qui la Charte ne changera rien à leurs habitudes.

N’empêche, ces gens sont peut-être spontanément sensibles au fait d’être minoritaires, avance M. Rivest. Mais la différence fondamentale dans la perception des musulmans réside ailleurs à son avis : cela serait une question de valeurs. « Parmi les Québécois qui ont une opinion négative des musulmans, observe-t-il, 82 % ont l’impression que les immigrés ont des valeurs différentes de celles des Québécois et 84 % estiment que les immigrés devraient mettre de côté leur culture et s’adapter à celle du Québec »

Le malaise musulman – La Presse+.

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BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Tory warning on multiculturalism

2014/03/17 Leave a comment

More UK debates, within the Conservative Party, on multiculturalism:

Asked about Mr Grieve’s comments on BBC One’s Andrew Marr show, Conservative leader David Cameron said he agreed that “state multiculturalism” had been the wrong approach.

Mr Cameron said: “What he said was that state multiculturalism – the idea that as welcoming people into our country and keep them all in silos, and treat British Muslims as Muslims, rather than as British citizens, treat British Jews as Jews rather than as British citizens – that is wrong.

“I think trying to integrate more, trying to bring people together more, trying to build a strong British identity for the future, I think that’s absolutely right.”

European multiculturalism had a more communitarian basis than in Canada, where integration and equity were always at its base, and it was never intended to be “deep” multiculturalism, divorced from overall Canadian society, laws and values.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Tory warning on multiculturalism.

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Dan Delmar: The Parti Québécois’ shadow media empire | National Post

2014/03/15 Leave a comment

The points on Quebecor’s role in identity politics are interesting:

“Some people sell cheap perfume,” the National Post’s Andrew Coyne wrote this week. “Mr. Péladeau is in the cheap-emotion end of things, peddling different brands of phony outrage to different audiences.”

Since the first Quebec “reasonable accommodation” crisis of 2007, Péladeau’s newspapers have featured prominent reports and columns about ethnic integration in Quebec society — or, more accurately, an alleged lack thereof.

When’s Drainville’s Nebraska precedent turned out to be based on an artifact from the segregation era, the issue was ignored by Quebecor

That crisis, highlighted by the town of Hérouxville’s anti-Muslim “cod of behaviour,” boosted then Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) leader Mario Dumont to the position of leader of the official opposition (his party later folded, and many members joined the Coalition Avenir Québec). Dumont is now a host on Péladeau’s news network, LCN.

Hérouxville, and the Bouchard-Taylor Commission called in response to the issue (whose findings were ignored by the PQ), is seen as a precursor to Drainville’s Charter of Values.

Dan Delmar: The Parti Québécois’ shadow media empire | National Post.

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Religion and Healthcare

2014/03/15 Leave a comment

From UofT’s student newspaper, The Varsity, a lengthy piece on religion, accommodation and healthcare. My favourite part is the care taken to have an inclusive interfaith space:

The creation of the spiritual oasis of Mount Sinai, for example, was done by a committee.

“We actually pulled together staff who were interested in designing that space from a wide range of religious groups, including atheists, so we had everybody at the table,” says Kanee. “We worked together to figure out what we needed in that space, but also how we could build a space that wouldn’t be accommodating to the needs of one religion, and offend others.”

The room has prayer mats and kneelers, and a small table that can serve as an altar, and is attached to a wudu room. Each element was carefully considered before its inclusion; for example, no artifact could dominate the room.

“So it’s very plain,” Kanee explains, “but everything you need is in there, you just need to access it and pull it out.”

Shifting intersections: The evolving relationship between religion and medicine in Toronto’s public sphere

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