Premier Kathleen Wynn never
ceases to play political games with issues dealing with issues related to religion
and ethnicity.
In February 2016, the government
established the Anti-Racism Directorate.
In July 2016, it announced that
the new Directorate will hold nine
community meetings in various urban centres commencing in Toronto on July 14,“ to engage [consult] with the
public and organizations on addressing systemic racism and eliminating barriers
for Indigenous and “racialized” communities.”
More specifically, the July
document described the objectives of these meetings to be twofold: first, to
hear from Ontarians about how to address systemic racism and implement
meaningful change, and second, to help further public dialogue; receive input
on the Anti-Racism Directorate’s mandate, and identify priority areas for the
Directorate as it applies an anti-racism perspective to government policies,
programs and services.”
In September 2016, while the consultative
meetings were in progress, the Premier issued the Minister responsible for
Anti-Racism a Mandate letter for the Directorate, which addressed the combat
against all systemic racism but highlighted Indigenous Racism, Anti-Black
Racism and Islamophobia. At the request of CIJA, the government later also highlighted
anti-Semitism.
On March 7, 2017, the government
issued a flashy document titled A Better
Way Forward: Ontario’s 3-year Anti-Racism Strategic Plan. (“The document”)
Noteworthy in this document is
the description of the anti-racism approach; namely, “taking proactive steps to
fight racial inequity …different from other approaches that focus on multiculturalism
or diversity, because it acknowledges that systemic racism exists and actively
confronts the unequal power dynamic between groups and the structures that
sustain it.” (p.11)
By removing the concept of racism
from the context of multiplicity of cultures, its natural habitat, the
government in fact created a concept stripped of its natural roots, that is to
say: an artificial concept.
Further, it compounded the
artificiality of the concept by injecting the notion of “racialization” into
the definition of “race. The document states that “People can be racialized not only based on skin colour but also
other perceived such as their culture, language ,customs,
ancestry, country or place of origin, or religion as the case is the case with
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.” (p. 11) (Italics mine).
It then proceeded to contradict
itself with respect to the notion of Islamophobia by adopting the definition of
the term formulated by the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s (OHRC) Policy on Preventing Discrimination Based on
Creed published in 2015. This definition reads: “[Islamophobia] includes
racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility directed towards
individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual
acts of intolerance and racial profiling. Islamophobia can lead to viewing and
treating and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional
systemic and societal level.” (p.53)
Surely, this definition is
inconsistent with the definition of Islamophobia provided under the heading of
racialization. The OHRC definition does not reduce Islamophobia to racism but considers
it to be merely one of a series of definitional criteria which is not
exhaustive.
As a matter in fact, the
transcript of the Anti-Racism Directorate public meeting in Mississauga
published on January 13, 2017, includes the intervention of audience Member #30,
presumably a Muslim, who, among other things, told the meeting: “Recent data
has shown us half of Ontario residents believe that Islam perpetuates violence,
that the doctrine, the faith centrally promotes violence.” This is hardly
consistent with the government’s portrayal of the Islamophobia as the result of
a process of “racialization”.
The document adopts the
definition of anti-Semitism provided by
the Canadian Race Relations Foundation,
formulated at an unspecified date , that reads: “ Latent or over
hostility or hatred directed towards, or discrimination against individual
Jewish people or the Jewish people for
reasons connected to their religion, ethnicity, and their cultural, historical,
intellectual heritage.”
There is nothing in this definition
that is remotely connected to the
concept of racism and as a matter of fact, the empirical evidence on
anti-Semitism, does not substantiate the proposition that anti-Semites have “racialized” the Jewish people or that
the Canadians in general think of the
Jewish population in Canada as a race.
Furthermore, the decision of the
government to adopt this definition of anti-Semitism is rather baffling in the
light of the facts that a) in 2016 the government members in the Ontario
Legislature secured the passage of a motion which inter-alia reads “… [The Ontario legislature] should endorse “………. the
[International] Ottawa Protocol [on Combatting Anti-Semitism...; (b) Canada is
a signatory to the Protocol and c) the Protocol provides a full definition of the
term which is in keeping with similar
definitions adopted by various
international bodies as well as by the U.S. State Department as its working
definition.
Despite the fact that nothing
prevented the government from adopting the definition provided by the Protocol,
it chose the inadequate definition provided by the Foundation, I submit, in
order to avoid problems with the segment of the Muslim community which is not
secular and does not consider religion to be a private matter.
With respect to these two
communities, clearly the 3 -year plan
set out in the Document and reflected in the Bill , the government
deliberately and artificially racialised
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, when neither the community at large racialises them nor do the two communities themselves
view one another in racial terms.
It did so, in order to avoid
being forced to address the subject of the hate crimes committed by the segment
of the Muslim community described above against both non-Muslims and secular
Muslims.
On March 29, 2017 the government
introduced in the Ontario Legislature Bill 114 titled An Act to provide for Anti-Racism Measures; to be named Anti-Racism Act, 2017, ontla.on.ca › Home › Bills & Lawmaking › Current
Parliament. Explanatory Note and Text of the Bill.
What then is this all about?
I submit this is all about pre-election
politics and the whole exercise is a
ploy designed to attract and secure the ethnic –racial vote is at a time, on the eve of the fast approaching general
election day, when the ratings of the performance of the government are at all-time-lows and its re-election
prospects are dim.
As it happens, it did not seem to
fool the audiences in the consultative meetings. As a matter of fact, members
of various audiences of the public meetings saw through the cynical ploy and
said things like “…the Directorate of Anti-Racism continues not to have
enforcement …we go for years… of the same things ... over and over and [nothing changes].. So why do we
continue into public consultation? There
is never going to be any enforcement.” (Mississauga, audience member #13); “We
don’t need an office for the Directorate. I am tired. I am fed up. I am
frustrated with this dialogue. We keep doing it over and over and over.Where do
we go from here? “. (Same, audience member # 14)
The proposed legislation is a
bizarre amalgam of things which a) touches upon the policies, programs and
services of the government and the public bodies emanating from it, in an
anti-racism perspective; and provides a hodgepodge of measures such as
collecting various kinds of data, keeping various types of records, and c)” the
elimination of barriers for Indigenous and two alleged, so-called “racialized”
communities; namely, the Muslim and the Jewish communities.
As some members of the audiences
also pointed out, the amount of money allocated for this 3-year enterprise, $5
million dollars is hardly enough to make
much of a dent in advancing it.
In the meantime, the government,
the municipal and provincial police forces, have been sitting on their hands
instead of addressing the hate crimes and enforcing the law by prosecuting those
who in their supplications and prayers at Islamic centres across Canada, routinely
curse non—Muslims and secular Muslims; pray for Muslims be granted victory over
non-Muslims; organise and participate in the celebration honouring the life and
deeds of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Cf.
Tarek Fatah, All Islamic Extremism
is Unacceptable,http://www.meforum.org/5286/all-islamic-extremism-unacceptable
, June 2, 2015; Muslims Shouldn’t Pray to
Defeat Non-Muslims, ,http://www.meforum.org/4974/Muslims-shouldn’t-pray-to
defeat-non-Muslims, January 13,2015;
see also: Jonathan D. Halevi, Supplications at Masjid Toronto Mosque: “Slay them one by
one and spare not one of them” ,CIJ News, February 18, 2017; not to
mention, among others, the cases of Ayman Elkasrawy, imam of Masjid Toronto
mosque who prayed ” G-d slay them [ the Jews] one by one and spare not one of them…”
In the result, the government of
Ontario has decided to establish
programs and services to mount a campaign to fight against a) racialised
Islamophobia and Muslim community, including
those and their disciples and followers, who curse and pray for the death and defeat of their fellow non-Muslim
and secular Muslim citizens, and last but not least b) half of the Ontario residents, racists who based on the preceding incontrovertible
evidence, reached the racist conclusion and formed
the totally inadmissible racist belief that Islam perpetuates violence, that
the doctrine, the faith promotes
violence ; never mind, the freedoms of
speech, thought and belief, although admittedly, this generalisation is clearly
over the top.
Paraphrasing an ancient proverb,
which according to Martin Sherman has been misattributed to Euripides, all of
this brings me to the question: What is
the difference between the Government of Ontario and a lunatic asylum? Answer:
In a lunatic asylum, at least the management is supposed to be sane.
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