Wednesday, 22 February 2017
First, Elizabeth Renzetti and co., now lawyers Warda
Shazadi Meighen and Lorne Waldman and then the line-up of other such people
have been busy bashing the M.Ps who oppose the motion by reason of its
highlighting “Islamophobia” and the absence of a specific definition of the
term in the motion; but nevertheless indicated their readiness to vote for it
provided the term was removed.
I have an old Muslim friend back in Istanbul, the
survivor of a number of others with whom I attended school in Turkey and I have
Turkish friends in Canada. And religion has never been a subject of discussion,
never mind an issue, between us. Most importantly, the ones in Canada have
never ever been insulted, humiliated or hurt by anyone for being Muslims. The reason is quite simple: they dress the
Canadian way and consider their religion to be a private matter just as the
secular Canadian society at large does.
So, what are these folks all worked up about?
The first thing about these folks is that they are rather
superficial thinkers on this subject. I wonder if they ever thought about,
asked themselves and sought the answers the following questions:
a) How can the House
recognise the need to quell the increasing climate of hate and fear, when all we have is anecdotal
evidence and patchy data before these facts are carefully established through
one or more proper/solid pieces of research designed to determine whether or
not such a climate exists and if it does exist, the precise nature, profile and
causes of it?
b) How do we know whether or
not Islamophobia exists since we do not know what it means?
c) Why bother with this
motion until the definition of Islamophobia emerges from an in- depth empirical
research?
d) Why does the motion ask
the House to condemn Islamophobia after
it has already been not only condemned
by the House, as recently as October 26, 2016, but condemned in broadest
possible terms without anyone in the House having a clue, what the term
precisely refers to, and thus pre-judge the outcome of the studies which the
motion requests before determining what
Islamophobia is, and more to the point, whether it exists, and if does exists
what are the contours, contents and the causes of it?
e) The request to condemn
“Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination”,
suggests that Islamophobia, whatever else it may be, if anything at all, is a
form of racism. If so, how can Islamophobia possibly be a racist phenomenon
since the Islamic religion is practiced by peoples of all races as well as by a
variety of peoples of mixed races?
f) Why
does the motion ask the House to take note of the petition that
led
to the passing of the motion condemning Islamophobia and
the
issues raised by it since no one identified or raised any issues about the
petition?
g) Why
is the House being asked to revisit the petition?
h) Why
does the petition fail to inform the House what are the alleged
issues
raised by the petition so as to enable the House to determine
the
relevance of these issues to the subject matters of this petition?
i) Why is it necessary to request the study of a
problem in ethnic relations with a religious dimension through a motion? As a general practice, when, a problem of
this kind is on hand, it is handled internally. And depending on the types of issues raised by the problem,
the matter would be addressed by the Department
responsible for multi-culturalism and ethnic relations or that of the
Attorney General of Canada or both, and, at times, might involve one or more additional departments.
j) Further, why are these
matters being handled by a motion when usually, these kind of requests are
either made constituency executives, voluntary organisations of one kind or
another, or internally, by members of the party in power; members of the
Cabinet or by the Minister of the appropriate government department?
k) Why does the motion require
the work to be handled by a parliamentary Standing Committee, rather than being
assigned, as is normally the case, to qualified researchers and policy wonks in
the public service who, where they deem it necessary, and subject to budgetary
approval, retain the services of one or more outside firms with the specific
qualifications required to do some of the work?
l) Why then bother with the
expense of this and other studies and of the whole of the dog and pony show
before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage until, at least, all the
critical threshold studies identified in the first three set of questions are
completed?
One need not be a genius to figure out that this motion
is a public relations exercise and part of an agenda of incremental approach to
obtain admissions and concessions which taken together with a number of adjunct
initiatives, is designed to generate cumulative effects which will ultimately
place the government in a position where, logically, it will not be unable to refuse to concede
a number of facts, to make a number of admissions and to grant further concessions that it had not originally bargained
for.
Willful ignorance of or indifference to material facts
The second thing about the foregoing commentators is
their willful ignorance of or their indifference to the facts on the ground and
to the literature that addresses and analyses them. They talk about the Muslim
community in Canada as the victims of “so-called” Islamophobia because they seem
to have no clue about the basic incontrovertible fact that the Muslim community
in Canada is itself divided into at least two segments;
The first segment is composed of mainstream Muslims who
consider their religion to be a private matter. They are generally dubbed as
reformist Muslims or Muslim reformers.
The second segment considers religion to be the absolute
paramount guide of their view of the world, the foundation of all their values,
the way they organise their lives and their community, and of the way they act
towards the “Others” and with the other segment of the community.
More importantly, the first segment feels a great deal
discomfort, apprehension and at times fear as a result of the actions of
members of the other segment and of their like-minded counterparts beyond the
borders. It is not difficult to get a sense of it when you read the columns of
Tarek Fatah in the Toronto Sun, for example one of which published on January
10 of this year, bears the title; Death Threats are Nothing New for Muslim
Reformers.
As a matter of
fact, in another recently published column of Mr. Fatah asserted that Motion
M-103 is one directed against them.
And just as importantly, unlike the supporters of the
motion in and out of the House, the writers of the first segment are not shy to
identify members of the other segment as “radical Islamists”.
And perversely enough, the refusal, to address the issue
in an forthright manner, ends up stoking the fires of the alleged bigotry,
hostility, fear, anger and hatred in some segments of the population that
sometimes goes beyond the realm of legitimate free speech, crosses red line(s)
and in the process, ends-up making life difficult for the first segment of the
community.
Obviously, these folks have not read the substantial
amount of the writings of members and leaders of the first segment of the
Muslim community published both in Canada and abroad.
Should Renzetti,
Shazadi Meighen and Waldman and
the other leading lights of the same persuasion be interested in this literature, I will be
pleased to refer them to this
literature they ought to have read
before engaging in their sanctimonious
stoning of the Conservative Party members who presented the alternative motion which merely removes the term Islamophobia and instead refers to the major religions of
Canada.
During the debate, Liberals and NDPers and, afterwards,
some commentators sitting in the peanut gallery, glibly characterised the
Conservative motion as being divisive and intended to create a wedge issue,
when in fact, the exact opposite is true. This motion is designed to get rid of
a word in the Liberal motion which they are asked to support without knowing
its meaning. But more importantly, it is designed to give the first segment of
the Muslim community some peace of mind by opposing the very real wedge issue
created by the wording of the Liberal motion.
In the result, it is not possible to have an
intellectually honest serious discussion of the issues at hand based on the
empirical evidence, lest the outcome require the government, the NDPers, our
folks and the feel-good self-righteous multiculturalists to partake in the
formulation of appropriate responses and solutions to the “so –called”
Islamophobia problem that are at variance with theirs spurious beliefs and
prejudices.
No one has a clue as to what” Islamophobia” is and
whether in fact it does exist
The third thing about the Parliamentary cheerleaders of
the motion and their fans is their indiscriminate use of the term of
Islamophobia without having the slightest notion of what it is, and indeed, whether
it even exists in the form commonly
alleged to exist.
This in turn, has the
inevitable effect of disfiguring the definition of the problem and of
the issues at hand; warping their the
analysis and in the end, engaging in
inappropriate or simply
erroneous courses of action.
How can one effectively deal with a problem without first
carefully defining the problem? On this score, I dare say those who heaped
ridicule on the M.P.s who oppose the motion due to the absence of a precise
definition of the term in the motion as just a poor excuse to oppose it, are
bizarre and brazen.
When was the last time these folks purchased a house
without first having obtained a certified legal description of the land on
which the house sits or indeed purchase anything without knowing exactly what
it is that they were buying?
And compared to the failure to obtain such a
legal description or to ordering an item
that turns out to be the wrong one, the
potential consequences of failing to proceed with a rigorous definition
of the term and what it
entails are best avoided.
Some definitions of Islamophobia
Thomas Woodley, President of Canadians for Justice and
Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) - a pro-Palestinian website with strong
backing, defines Islamophobia as the “dislike of or prejudice against Islam or
Muslims, especially as a political force.”(Italics mine).
Iqra Khalid anticipating the arguments of the opposition
came into the debate with a ready-made definition of the term which she has
shown no interest to incorporate into the wording of her motion. The definition
which she provided is “irrational hatred of Muslims that leads to
discrimination:”
Shazadi Meighen and Waldman defined it as “irrational
fear of Muslims.”
The first thing about these definitions is the critically
important differences among them.
More specifically, Woodley,
a) does not seem to think
that there is anything “ irrational” in
disliking Islam or Muslims per se;
b) nor does he dramatise the
nature of Islamophobia by characaterising
it as “hatred”;
c) does not differentiate
between various Muslim identities and
uses the term as a one size that fits all;
d) considers Muslim the person and Islam the religion as
interchangeable terms;
and,
e) last but not least,
emphasises the importance of Islam and Muslims as a political force and in
effect places it at the heart of his definition.
Personally, I would like to meet members of the
electorate who are prepared or would care to live in a Canada, where Islam and
Muslims, or for that matter, East Indians and Hindus , Chinese and Buddhists/
Taoists or Israelis of Jewish faith are a political force.
The key phrase in Khalid’s definition is “irrational
hatred” whereas the definition of Shazadi Meighen and Waldman does away with
the word “hatred” and replaces it with the term “fear”.
So what exactly is Islamophobia?
Is it only dislike or fear or is it hatred? Is that dislike, fear or hatred directed to
the Muslim identity or only to his religious identity? To all Muslims or to a
sub-group of them, and if the latter, what distinguishes the sub-group from the
main group? To Islam or a certain aspect of Islam? And if the latter, what
distinguishes the latter from the former?
Logically, how could and why should the dislike, hatred or fear of Muslims, people whose religion
happens to be Islam, be expanded to and called Islamophobia, thereby making the Islamic religion the exclusive
defining feature of a Muslim’s
identity?
If the problem is the hatred or fear of certain Muslims
or types of Muslims and /or certain aspects of Islam, then let’s just call
these facts for what they are and find and adopt an appropriate, clear and
unambiguous term that defines each of these phenomena.
In my experience, the people who invariably pay for the
intellectual laziness of the political and politically correct elites ,as for
example in this instance, for their failure to find the such terms, are the
average citizens or the persons in the
street
As it is, the people who allow Khalid and others to throw
around the word Islamophobia in juxtaposition with words like “irrational”,
“hatred”, indiscriminately without rejecting and countering it with precise and
accurate terminology and sticking to it, are responsible for turning the term
into an inflammatory one that by now has acquired a life of its own and is
uncritically accepted as depicting accurately what is going on the ground. In
the result, the term is used by some to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The concepts of “fear” and “hatred“
I very much doubt that many people hate or fear a person
simply because s/he is a Muslim, particularly since in the ordinary course of
daily life; it is not possible to tell or guess correctly who is and who is not
a Muslim, except when Muslims dress themselves in a particular style and
fashion.
Broadly speaking and based from my own personal
experiences and observations, it is not unreasonable to posit that
a) fear comes into play only
when newcomers or people from radically different cultures speak and behave in
certain ways with which the locals are not familiar; cannot figure out their
meaning; do not know what to make of them; while
b) hatred may come into play
when locals are offended by what they see or hear, particularly by what appears
to them to be contrary to one or more of the core values of the Canadian
society; and resent that these persons do not appear to be interested in and do
what it takes the trouble to integrate into the society of the country to which
they chose to emigrate.
Again, broadly speaking, I am inclined to think that
people who do not buy into multiculturalism are more likely to react negatively
and to express their dislike in a variety of more or less intense ways.
Those who buy into it are more likely to become
apprehensive and fearful, and for a number of them, fear of the unknown or of
the radically different ultimately may turn into hatred.
About “irrationality”
The blanket characterisation of fear or hatred as
irrational is empirically unsustainable.
What is irrational about apprehension or fear of, for
example,
a) the unknown and,
seemingly, the unknowable?
b) people and behaviour that are new and strange and, more importantly,
that cannot be brought within one’s comfort zone?
Is it irrational, for example,
a) for the parents of Jewish
university students and for the students themselves to fear Muslim students and
for that matter others, who manifest their anti-Semitism brazenly on the
nations’ campuses under the guise of pro-BDS campaigns and demonstrations, and
may, as sometimes they do, engage in hostile or rough play of one kind or
another?
b) for people in Europe, who
out of fear for their families’ security immigrated to Canada as a result of
the bombings and killings, or other attacks in France, Belgium and in Germany,
to continue to fear people of the same ethnic or religious affiliation as those
who committed those atrocities in Europe, lest they be affiliated with the with
them in some fashion?
c) for people who got injured or have family
members, relatives, friends and acquaintances hurt or killed by a particular
group to hate that group?
d) to fear Islam as a political force, in the
light of what has been happening and continues to happen both in Europe and in
the Middle-East?
d)for people who witness the government breach and sacrifice the long honoured
tradition and central value of secularism and particularly the secular public
school system and either feel or are helpless to do anything about it,
particularly between elections, instinctively to turn against the people who
benefitted from this breach?
I do not think so and I very much doubt any reasonable
person would think otherwise.
In the result,
Surely the term phobia with its focus on irrationality
makes no sense. All of which leaves us with the term “Islamo”.
At the end of the day
I submit that instead of pinning all the blame for what
is happening on the ground on the bigotry, irrationality, fear of hatred of
individuals, it is high time for all three levels of governments to get serious
about the matter and stop acting irresponsibly and thus add fuel to the fire.
Illustration 1: The Ontario Government
For example, the government of Ontario has to face and
come to terms with the serious adverse impacts of its
a) failure to think
carefully the long term consequences of its actions;
b) refusal to inform and educate itself seriously and thoroughly on matters which it
has to address and act accordingly;
c) carrying on with mindless
political pandering of ethnic
constituency;
d) failing to resist
opportunistic and cowardly breaches of a
fundamental rule prescribed by our Supreme Court, and of our collective value
system, and
e) finally, engaging in the
disingenuous application of the law as a zero sum game between various ethnic
and religious groups contrary to the true spirit of the Charter,
multiculturalism and of the policy of accommodation.
By way of illustration, the government by abdicating its responsibilities and allowing the school boards to respond, in
the irresponsible manner, as they did, to a
request by certain members of that community to permit Muslim students
to attend to their Friday prayers,
a) violated the cherished
Canadian value of secularism and the tradition of keeping religion out of
public schools;
b) caused considerable, but wholly avoidable long term public anger directed among others, towards the
Muslim community, and
c) violated the rights of
other Muslim parents who espouse the principle of secularism as well as those
of non-Muslim parents.
despite the fact that the request could have been readily
and easily accommodated while respecting the values, traditions and rights at
play.
The last thing this country needs is governments
generating the so-called “Islamophobia”
Illustration 2: The federal government
The alleged
and real
issues and problems I have
identified above and others in
connection with the concept of
“so-called “ Islamophobia
should and could have been addressed
and dealt with in a comprehensive manner had the government , in a
timely manner,
a) researched these issues in an orderly, systematic and thorough fashion;
b) relied on the results of
the research data
i) to provide a proper empirically substantiated
definition of what has been happening on
the ground and the causes of it, and in
the process to identify the “real” problems and issues as opposed to imaginary
or fictitious ones;
ii) to formulate one
comprehensive or a series of intertwined
policies and corresponding action
plans to address the real problems
instead of rushing or ready to vote not on one but on two motions about
Islamophobia.
Motions don’t solve problems. They can and, as in this
case do create misleading symbolism and divisiveness.
And in the present instance, the motion at hand as framed
is bound to cause more problems and headaches.
In the meantime, is the government ready to deal with yet
more motions, one after the other on the subject of Islamophobia and complicate
the work that needs to be done, by turning the whole question into a partisan
political football, if it has not already become so one on the Liberal and NDP
sides of the House?
Every delay to come to grips with the problem on the
ground and the related issues; to deal with them in a forthright manner, that
exposes Muslims, any and every Muslim in this country regardless of their
ideological orientation, to intimidation, threats, verbal abuse, verbal and
physical harassment and whatnot, will be on the head of this government and it
will be held responsible for it.
Showing and expressing solidarity with the plight of
people in unfortunate situations is the right and proper thing to do. That is,
provided the decision as to how to frame this solidarity and the statement of
support for the Motion in the House is an informed one based on a proper
understanding of the facts on the ground and of the issues at play in the light
of the existing research and literature. And I am afraid, these ingredients
have been sadly lacking in the thinking and demeanour of the government, the NDP
and of our commentators.
In the meantime, the country would fare better if the
Prime Minister would
a) stop insulting the Canadians’ strong identification
with, pride in and devotion to the
Canadian nation by describing Canada as a “country with an empty core” and
worse, acting as if it was one, contrary to all evidence, and in the
process, lay the foundations for
“tribalising” and dismantling the country;
b) start giving face to and
take advice from the progressive members of the Muslim community;
c) be careful about the
company he keeps and the organizations and institutions with which he
associates or courts, to the serious dismay of the progressives.
Further, the country would also fare better, if in
conjunction and co-operation with his provincial counterpart, the Prime
Minister would insure the establishment and implementation of innovative
experimental projects of law enforcement strategies of prevention detection,
apprehension and prosecution targeted on areas where Muslim citizens feel or are
threatened.
Last but not least, the country would feel and fare
better, if the Prime Minister would encourage his provincial counterpart to set up an
outreach program, which would specialise in providing both the alleged victims as well as other
members of the community with one or
more courses or discussion groups, not
only to teach them problem avoidance and defensive strategies but also and as
importantly, to motivate as well as
remind them of their responsibility to
accommodate themselves to the culture and values of their new homeland;
understand what Canadians minimally
expect of newcomers and to become
responsive to these expectations.
The old saying,
“G-d helps those who help themselves”, which holds true almost universally among the devout,
regardless of one’s race, religion, ethnicity or culture, is sound advice to
everyone facing problems.
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