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Why It Is Essential to Stand up to Bigots
Last winter, the Israelis attacked minarets in Gaza. Last month, the Swiss voted to ban non-existent minarets.
The reasons proffered in both cases were patently false.
Bombed Gaza mosques probed by Justice Richard Goldstone were found not to have been hiding Hamas arms or militants.
Minarets are definitely not proliferating in Switzerland, there being only four in a nation with 350,000 Muslims – most of them refugees, ironically, from European ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Minarets – aesthetically as pleasing or irritating as steeples, pagodas or onion domes – are a symbol of Islam. Those targeting them may use different methods but their mission is the same.
Thus the near-universal condemnation of the Swiss vote, including by the Canadian Jewish Congress. And calls for a consumer boycott of Nestlé, Credit Suisse, etc., as well as a tourist boycott of Switzerland.
Thus also the rejection of attempts to downplay the vote as a harmless exercise that won't limit the practice of Islam, a mere manifestation of an identity crisis amid Europeanization/globalization.
Equally, there's little traction for the argument by some Muslims that they should be explaining Islam better, as though good PR is the antidote to xenophobia and hate.
There's no sugar-coating what has transpired: Swiss church spires won't come down but minarets won't go up. Churches will continue to dominate the Swiss landscape but mosques must remain hidden.
Such Muslims-only rules, so reminiscent of some Nazi laws against Jews, have been popping up across Europe – and Canada:
German restrictions on mosques; the French ban on the hijab in schools; Canadian bans in soccer and tae kwon do tournaments; Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to ban the niqab; Ontario's hysteria over letting Muslims use the Arbitration Act or having their religious schools funded; and Stephen Harper's bid to ban niqabi women from voting (while ignoring the 70,000 who cast absentee ballots in the last election without showing their faces).
While Europeans and North Americans have learned not to invoke free speech to peddle anti-Semitism, they routinely cite it to rationalize anti-Islamism (the Danish cartoons, and the tirades of Maclean's magazine, the National Post, etc.)
We are witnessing a strange phenomenon – again, akin to the 1930s – wherein a majority feels threatened by a minority, to the point of becoming blind to the most obvious answer to the oft-asked question of the day: how far to go in "accommodating" Muslims? No farther than for any other group and only as far as the rule of law permits.
The public seems equally oblivious to the fact that the fallout of prejudice has been hurting not just Muslims but mostly others:
It is Christians and Jews who lost out on religious arbitration because of the "sharia" controversy.
Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and other separate schools got side-swiped because of public opposition to "madrassas."
Jews, homosexuals and other vulnerable groups may find it harder to use the anti-hate provisions of human rights codes.
I remain agnostic on all three issues – but not about the irrationality they've engendered and the road kill they've produced.
To offer yet another example, Jews in Quebec, a well-integrated minority with an honourable history of contributions to the province, were dragged into the tide of anti-Muslim hostility during the "reasonable accommodation" crisis.
It follows that it's not Muslims who need defending – they can't possibly be demonized any more than they've been post-9/11 – but rather our secular democracies.
That was the lesson of the Taylor-Bouchard Commission, which called the bigots' bluff by asserting that there was no crisis, that minorities were not making unreasonable demands and that the media-fed hysteria was unbecoming of a mature democracy.
So the relevant Canadian lesson of the Swiss vote on minarets is this:
When liberals fail – as have Canada's Liberals and New Democrats – to stand up to demagogues, they commit the cardinal sin of silently watching the erosion of some of our most cherished collective values.
- Posted in
56 Comments so far
Show All"To offer yet another example, Jews in Quebec, a well-integrated minority with an honourable history of contributions to the province..."
I'm not sure what the author means by "well-integrated," but many Montreal Jews live in their own, separate (by referendum) suburbs and don't speak French. One of these suburbs - Town of Mount Royal - even has a chain-link fence around it to keep children from a poor neighborhood out during Halloween.
(google "TMR fence two sides")
This isn't really a very good model of integration. It more closely resembles intentional isolation and anglospheric vassalhood.
Montreal Mohawks have been similarly "well integrated."
[I'm not sure what the author means by "well-integrated," but many Montreal Jews live in their own, separate (by referendum) suburbs and don't speak French.]
For Quebec that is well integrated. Don't forget their provincial capital is the only walled city in North America. (real stone walls, ones that did not prevent the conquest of their 'nation', but walls nonetheless.) That's the part of Canada that believes in the notion that you can be both a sovereign independent nation and a part of the nation of Canada.
What kind of behaviour can you expect from the Nazi's favourite bankers?
The more I learn about the shadow policies of various governments in the world, Canada included, the more I honestly believe it is time to dismantle the present system for something smaller and organic.
I admit I have no idea at the present what form a future governing system could consist of, and also admit it looks like we will be regressing to a totalitarian or Fascist system in the very near future.
What will come after?
I don't know. But it would be nice if those future governments actually learned something from the evils we have committed.
I've got to agree. There is a limit beyond which the public participation in the electoral process is utterly meaningless. Some limit should exist that prevents nation states from getting too large. But that's not the only problem is it? Even the little 'democratic' countries engage in activities that would make any whore blush with shame. (I've known many whores - as friends, not as a customer - and few of them are/were as vile or as nasty as some of the politicians I've met)
In some ways we've already regressed to a strange form of totalitarian system, one that is totalitarian in political philosophy, but that has yet to round up those who would disagree with the system. Perhaps the despots have learned that such an activity is not needed in this era...
I dunno either, but I doubt that anyone's going to learn something from the evils we commit today. Unless, like the crooks in jail, they learn how to commit their chosen evils in a 'better' or more efficient manner.
Much of Islam as it is practiced is the brutal suppression and degradation of women, often to the point of murder. This is not about religious tolerance and freedom. It is about women's human rights. You want to talk about "xenophobia and hate," talk about that.
Much of Judaism, as it is practiced, is about limiting your social contacts in a way that is financially lucrative. This has very serious consequences for those who aren't insiders. They are allowed to starve to death, and are routinely humiliated in wars and sanctions.
And yet our governments aren't dropping cluster bombs on Israel and Manhattan. They are dropping cluster bombs FOR Israel and Manhattan.
This is a serious double-standard that has lead "The West" to a kind of extreme (and selective) bigotry as is revealed by your breezy anti-Islamic post.
Your post looks very normal, whereas this one may appear bigoted and hateful. But they're exactly the same.
The only countries practicing brutal suppression and degradation is US and Israel. The killing machines of these two countries has killed more people than AQ, Hamas, or any other Islamic units out there combined. Now who is the devil here?
"the French ban on the hijab in schools;"
ALL religious symbols are forbidden in French public schools.
Unless it is a 'small cross, or star of David' displayed 'discretely.' I suppose the Sikh could carry a kirpan, if he covered it up and it was really small, or maybe not.
No. Those signs cannot be DISPLAYED at all. If you want to wear such a sign it has to be worn invisibly, concealed under clothing on, say, a chain around the neck. Ditto Muslim women's popular pendants in the form of the name, "Allah."
Excellent article! Maybe it will be taken seriously when the Muslim bigots of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, etc etc, allow/permit the building of churches and synogagues, the importation of Bibles and accept Christian missionaries. Until then, Muslims are nothing but useless hypocrites.
One thing about bigotry is that "it's always THEM" who are the bigots.
Wheras all our bombs and sanctions are the work of "missionaries."
BRILLIANT response. So those who are now being persecuted and shit on are the ones who have to do the changing? Yeah, RIGHT. The minority are the ones who have to change, in spite of having NO power, NO representation, and NO rights? Read the article again. It's EXACTLY THAT kind of "thinking" that is being attacked. Way to stand up for intolerance.
And in THEIR countries, who the hell are YOU to tell THEM how to live? How about if they came here, and told YOU how to deal with YOUR intolerances and prejudices? Who is the hypocrite, now? Heal thyself, take the log out of your own eye first and then deal with the speck in your brother's, etc, etc, etc.
You know, maybe, just maybe, if we actually treated people they way our western culture SAYS we should, we would be more of a beacon of tolerance and an example tot he rest of the world and they WOULD clean up their act. But as long as we act just as badly as anyone else out there, we have NO business telling everyone else that they have to live up to our ideals when we won't.
For your information only one out of more the 40 countries with Muslim majority does not allow building of churches, and guess which one, the best friend of US, Saudi Arabia.
You should ask native people of South America, North America, Africa, Asia, Australia ... what good they have seen from Christian missionaries and Bibles!
Forever_Unsilenced
There are many churches in Egypt and Turkey. Egypt has probably the oldest Christian community in the world (the Copts), founded, like the Church of Ghaza, by St. Philip. Istanbul (formerly Constantinople/Byzantium) is still the seat of the Orthodox patriarchate and Turkey has a militantly secular constitution but freedom of religion. To my knowledge the only Muslim country in which all public profession of other religions is prohibited is Saudi Arabia.
And you are an ignorant bigot.
"While Europeans and North Americans have learned not to invoke free speech to peddle anti-Semitism, they routinely cite it to rationalize anti-Islamism"
Can we equate the two 'anti-Semitism' and 'anti-Islamism'?
On one hand we are talking of an ethnic group and on the other hand a religion.
If people were indulging in 'anti-Arabism' then objection to that could be understandable. ( Technically Arabs are also Semitic people ).
But Islam is a religion not an ethnicity and it includes people from various races of the world.
WE SHOULD , WE SHOULD have every right to criticize religion or for that matter anything.
How long are we supposed to tolerate the intolerant?
By the way intellectuals in the West ( the so called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins , Daniel Dennett) are extremely critical of all religions especially Christianity. I guess the Christians should be crying foul in this case ( which they do without comparing it to Anti-Semitism) ?
PS: This is not a judgment on the issue of minarets in Switzerland. Merely my opinion on the idea that Islam is somehow being singled out and ostracized.
Of course we can roughly equate antisemitism with anti-Islamism.
Antisemitism was not criticism of a religion, but neither is anti-Islamism, despite the construction. The difficulty in calling it "anti-Arabism" is that "Arab" comes nowhere close to designating the ethnicities attacked by the phenomenon that Siddiqui calls anti-Islamism.
Anti-Islamism, as it existed in France when I could experience it there, as it exists in Southern California, where I encounter it now, is as much an ethnic prejudice as the antisemitism I saw in France and encounter in some CD posts, and the prejudice against African-Americans and Hispanics that I encounter now in California.
Let us not tolerate intolerance (while I would argue that the intolerant themselves may be tolerated in a limited sense where one can in practice fight the sin without damaging the sinner). But let us not single out the Islamic cultures as particularly or uniquely intolerant while the US wages three simultaneous racist occupations and Israel another.
Jewish is not an ethnicity.
In European societies, Jewish was a caste that was entrusted with central banking.
The invention of "Jewish" as a race/ethnicity coincided with the invention of "Aryan" as a similar kind of uber-class. Perhaps the Aryan was expected to be the warrior class for the Jewish managers.
Our cherished values are only skin deep.
One thing I have noticed
'There's no sugar-coating what has transpired: Swiss church spires won't come down but minarets won't go up. Churches will continue to dominate the Swiss landscape but mosques must remain hidden.'
How's about this for a real solution; Dump the idea of a superpowered fairy gawd from society completely. There is as much evidence for a gawd - be that Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or whatever - as there is for Harry Potter. Recognize that the gods of the bronze age have died, if they ever lived at all (they didn't) and good riddance to them.
The idea of god, and the resulting religious strife generated by idiots who like to argue that their imaginary friend is better, stronger, more merciful, than the other person's imaginary friend, has done more to restrict the potential of all humans than has any natural disaster, plague or non-religious war (has there really ever been one of those?) ever has.
Religion has never cured any plague, nor has it ever brought about peace between peoples (except the peace of a grave), it has never predicted nor prevented any disaster, and yet we still tolerate them and the delusional thinking they inspire.
Gawd? Hey, now. That's Gawd-uh!
My apologies. Although that does sound a bit like a brand of cheese...
My remark was rather cheesy.
Abbey, Abbey. I have access to HUNDREDS of computers. The more you ban me, the more I will come back. Why are you afraid of me, anyway? Do ideas scare you?
What's the point? She also deletes your messages. On the other hand - she also deletes her own stories - like the one about this country "war on immigrants" a couple days ago, after it became obvious that it was an invention of her imagination.
The bright side - for her - is that she is being paid to do that. I don't think that you are...
It should be remembered that it was the Swiss in the 1930s, fearing an influx of Jewish refugees, who insisted that Germany should add a "J" character for passports issued to those designated as Jewish by the Nazis. More recently, the Swiss, fearing an influx of long-hair hippies, defeated a referendum legalizing some drugs modeled on the liberalizing efforts of the Netherlands and Spain.
The Swiss legacy of neutrality, valuable as that is for the Red Cross, partakes of an indifferent amorality so valuable for its banking industry -- withholding legacies from Holocaust victims, arranging the financing of wars, and safeholding the ill-gotten gains of tyrants.
The best way to stop bigotry would be by all of us stopping to take ourselves and our opinions so seriously, and that includes religion especially.
As bardamu pointed out below, there is bigotry on every side...in effect, the angels are on no particular side in these things.
How often must it be said: the first step in accommodating Muslims would be to stop funding Israel. That would go a long way in easing relations between the U.S. and Muslim people.
This is called "appeasement". In 1938 Neville Chamberlain believed that Hitler could be pacified if the West allowed him to take over Czechoslovakia. It did not work. It is not going to work this time either.
You are quite correct . Funding Israel is appeasement.
We should not be funding those Fascists as they seek to make more lebenstraum. In 1948 they were appeased with over 54 percent of Palestine and that was not enough so they took more. Ever since then there no limit to their demands. They want more and more.
"Funding Israel is appeasement."
No, it's much worse than appeasement.
Imagine if Britain and the USA had given Germany as much money per capita in "military aid" as it does Israel.
We'd all be writing these posts in German instead of English. What a disaster for keyboard distributors.
I guess you are both right. I was wrong for calling it "appeasement". Considering that this country was attacked by Muslim extremists, you are not advocating appeasement, you are advocating capitulation.
Who attacked whom first?
That's really besides the freaking point anyhow. How many more wars are we going to have to fight over this tiresome issue? My god, man, how many more people must die in mideast wars that will never be settled? Do you not ever get tired of sending other people to die because your invisible friend is stronger than the other guy's invisible friend? Or that one ancient tribes invisible friend supposedly gave the land to a bunch of mass murdering thugs 3000 years ago or so? I highly doubt you've ever worn the uniform or if you have you were certainly one of the arse hats who led from the rear.
EXACTLY!!!
That's why Israelis accepted a policy of disengagement and built a separation barrier - "we don't want to keep on killing you, just stay away!"
The US should have adapted the same policy and our Nobel Peace laureate should not have send more soldiers to kill and get killed in Afghanistan. We don't even have to build a wall, just screen people coming from that part of the world more carefully and wait for Islam to transform to a more peaceful form.
You are a raving lunatic. Building a wall on occupied territory has never, and will never, result in the end you believe.
You are an ignorant fool. The territory is disputed, and until an agreement is reached will remain so.
As far as the separation barrier serving its purpose, it obviously does. There were no suicide bombings or shooting attacks in Israel since it was built.
I believe it will bring peace to the region, after which it can be dismantled...
One sign of a bigot is to always bring Israel into a discussion - whether it is warranted or not.
Israel does not destroy mosques - it has of them plenty for its Muslim citizens. The only mosques that were destroyed in Gaza were the ones from which there was hostile fire. Considering that minarets offer the highest points in the area, they are favorite spots for snipers. For example of how military deals with them see this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzCxo0W2fq0 although it was shot in Iraq, but same islamists.
Goldstone report could not have determined that mosques in Gaza did not have weapons - his commission just listened to accusations and asked the parties to conduct their own investigations. So, this is a bullshit statement by Canada resident Islimist Mr. Siddiqui.
Also, Swiss did not ban mosques - they banned minarets - the tall towers from which faithful are called to prayer FIVE TIMES A DAY. This is obviously a lot of NOISE POLLUTION. Apparently, Swiss want their country to be nice and quiet - you can pray all you want, just don't invade anybody else's privacy.
Wikipedia defines bigot as a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigotry
Mr. Siddiqui only sees his side of the story. I would suggest for him to wait with his complaints until Muslim countries allow Christian and Jewis places of worship. Before that, he sounds just like another bigot.
"One sign of a bigot is to always bring Israel into a discussion - whether it is warranted or not."
That's exactly what you did. You turned an article on bigotry into a soap box for your own gang affiliation. As if the media needs more of this particular type of bias.
Please read article's first sentence.
Well, look here, it's Alan Dershowitz junior.
Yes, I am sure Mr, Goldstone, who is a Jew and a Zionist, who has a daughter serving in the IDF, is secretly in love with Hamas and keeps pictures of Hassan Nasrallah on his wall, and that's why he set out to defame Israel. The reason why the report didn't get the Israeli side of the story is because Israel refused to co-operate with the investigation from the very beggining.
Besides, there were scores of Israeli soldiers who participated in Operation Cast Lead who testified to witnessing and participating in war crimes. Are they also anti-Semites?
The fact that an armchair Zionist like you can continue to defend your beloved Israel after what happened in Gaza is astonishing. Only a truly ultra-nationalist racist could look at the death of 300 children, many of them burned to death by white posphorus, and justify it. Whether there were armed men among the civilians is in fact beside the point-people have the legitimate right to resist a colonial occupation and Israel's defense of that occupation is criminal. And don't give me your guff about how the Israeli's "pulled out" in 2005. When a foreign country cuts off your food, electricity, water, fuel, and medical supplies, builds a wall all around you, shells you every time you go to the beach and lobs missiles at yo you whenever you they feel like it, you are not independent. You just happen to live in a open-air prison.
And yes, Israel did destroy mosques, about 41 during the Gaza offensive alone.
Please learn to read. I was not disputing Goldstone report. I was commenting on the article's false assertion that it claimed that there were no weapons in Gaza mosques.
And thanks for comparing me with Alan Dershowitz - it's an honor.
[And thanks for comparing me with Alan Dershowitz - it's an honor.]
If that's an honour, I'd hate to see what you think is an insult.
I guess I am not easily insulted.
You liberals have no principles. If someone isn't a white anglo, you will support anything they do.
You know what sharia law is that this article is defending? You know what the hijab is? Do you care?
We are talking about killing women who want an education or any independent life. We are talking about killing gay people.
We are talking about women having to wear a shroud if they appear in public at all. We are talking about parents killing their daughters because they want to live a life.
These atrocities are being defended in the name of religious freedom. Give me a break. EVery religion is a patriarchal institution to oppress women and gay people. Islam right now is the worst.
What the hell are you doing defending these atrocities?
You are terminally corrupt.
"If someone isn't a white anglo..."
A lot of Muslims are white themselves and speak English.
I guess your point was that they can made to seem scarier if you accentuate the differences between the audience and this targeted outsider group.
Islamists ARE bigots.
Actually the biggest bigots are the Christian West and the Zionist Jews.....And also the biggest murderers too...Now...get your facts right Yishai!
I've heard several times here, at Lincoln, Neb., Muslim immigrants complaining about some hospitals not having kosher food. In the end, when I lost my patience, I asked in return if I could get pork in their countries' hospitals.
I know the analogy is not quite an appropriate one, but there is a point to it: Muslim immigrants *assume* their new countries must accommodate them but it never occurs to them that the process should be a two-way one. A newly immigrated Muslim bigot back in Germany 10 years ago brazenly stated that Western societies MUST culturally ajust to meet cultural/religious idiosyncrasies of Islamic newcomers.