At this website by various means we seek to defend life, to encourage Christian faith, to promote Catholic tradition, to edify Marriage in its link to the Creator, to encourage families and individuals, and to support missionary disciples of Jesus. G.S.
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Muslims and
Canadian Culture Time to change tune on official multiculturalism
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/calgary-herald/20110212/284069138172559
Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald Published: Saturday,
February 12, 2011
About one
dozen families who recently immigrated to Canada are demanding that the Louis
Riel School Division in Winnipeg excuse their children from music and coed
physical education programs for religious reasons.
The
families believe music is un-Islamic -just like the Taliban believe and then
imposed on the entire population of Afghanistan -and that physical education
classes should be segregated by gender even in the elementary years.
The
school division is facing the music in a typically Canadian way -that is,
bending itself into a trombone to try to accommodate these demands, even though
in Manitoba, and indeed the rest of the country, music and phys-ed are
compulsory parts of the curriculum.
Officials
say they may try to have the Muslim children do a writing project on music to
satisfy the curriculum's requirements. The school officials have apparently
consulted the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and they have also spoken to a
member of the Islamic community suggested by those very same Muslim parents.
In any
event, the school district is trying to find a way to adapt the curriculum to
fit the wishes of these families, rather than these families adapting to fit
into the school and Canadian culture.
Mahfooz
Kanwar, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, says he has some better
ideas.
"I'd
tell them, this is Canada, and in Canada, we teach music and physical education
in our schools. If you don't like it, leave. If you want to live under sharia
law, go back to the hellhole country you came from or go to another hellhole
country that lives under sharia law," said Kanwar, who is a professor
emeritus of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
That
might be putting things a little more forcefully than most of us would be
comfortable with, but Kanwar says he is tired of hearing about such out-of-tune
demands from newcomers to our country. "Immigrants to Canada should adjust
to Canada, not the other way around," he argues.
Kanwar,
who immigrated to Canada from Pakistan via England and then the United States
in 1966, says he used to buy into the "mosaic, official multiculturalism
(nonsense)."
He makes
it clear, that like most Canadians, he is pleased and enjoys that Canada has
citizens literally from every country and corner in the world, as it has enriched
this country immensely. But it's official multiculturalism -the state policy
"that entrenches the lie" that all cultures and beliefs are of equal
value and of equal validity in Canada that he objects to.
"The fact is, Canada has an enviable culture based on
Judeo-Christian values -not Muslim values -with British and French rule of law
and traditions and that's why it's better than all of the other places in the
world. We are heading down a dangerous path if we allow the idea that sharia
law has a place in Canada. It does not. It is completely incompatible with the
idea and reality of Canada," says Kanwar, who in the 1970s was the founder
and president of the Pakistan-Canada Association and a big fan of official
multiculturalism. Kanwar says his views changed
when he started listening to the people who joined his group. They badmouthed
Canada, weren't interested in knowing Canadians or even in learning one of our
official languages. They created cultural ghettos and the Canadian government
even helped fund it.
"One day it dawned on me that the reason all of us wanted to move here
was going to disappear if we didn't start defending Canada and its fundamental
values." That's when Kanwar started speaking out against the dangers of
official multiculturalism. He has been doing so for decades.
So, it's no surprise that Kanwar is delighted with the recent speech British
Prime Minister David Cameron delivered to the 47th Munich Security Conference
on Feb. 5.
"Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism," said Cameron,
"we have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they
want to belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in
ways that run counter to our val-ues. So when a white person holds
objectionable views -racism, for example -we rightly condemn them. But when
equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn't white,
we've been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them. . . .
This hands-off tolerance," said Cameron, "has only served to
reinforce the sense that not enough is shared.
All this leaves some young Muslims feeling rootless and . . . can lead them
to this extremist ideology."
Kanwar actually credits German Chancellor Angela Merkel for being among the
first of the world's democratic leaders to take the courageous step in October
to say that official multiculturalism had "failed totally."
It appears leaders are getting bolder. During an interview with TFI channel
on Feb. 10, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared: "We have been too
concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough
about the identity of the country that was receiving him."
Cameron ended his speech by saying: "At stake are not just lives, it's
our way of life. That's why this is a challenge we cannot avoid -and one we
must meet."
That democratically elected leaders are at long last starting to sing a
different tune on official multiculturalism is sweet music to Kanwar. Here's
hoping those poor kids in Winnipeg will get to hear some of it.
Licia Corbella is the Herald's Editorial Page Editor. lcorBella@
calgarYherald.com
http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=d44dba36-3b51-461c-a1ea-2101d57e346f
© Calgary Herald 2011
Corbella: Inclusion missing at Calgary Muslim event
Bilal Philips is on the record as saying all
male homosexuals should face the "punishment for deviant behaviour . . .
which is death" By Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald June
7, 2012
A man who has repeatedly said homosexuals should be executed is the top
speaker at a Calgary conference taking place on the Canada Day long weekend.
The ironically named conference - The Power of Unity: Islam in a
MultiCultural Canada - is headlining Bilal Philips, who goes far beyond saying
what many religious leaders believe about homosexuality being a sin. Philips,
who has been barred from travelling to Germany, is on the record as saying all
male homosexuals should face the "punishment for deviant behaviour . . .
which is death."
You can check him out on YouTube.
But Philips, who was born in Jamaica and raised in Ontario, where he
converted to Islam, is not the only controversial speaker - not by a long shot.
There's a whole raft of them speaking at the Muslim Council of Calgary event.
Munir El-Kassem, a dentist from London, Ont., wrote a column back in 2001
that condemned the West as hypocritical and defended the Taliban regime for
destroying the sixth-century Buddha statues in Bamiyan. He has written
glowingly about Louis Farrakhan, the extremist Nation of Islam leader who
frequently makes bigoted statements against Jews, whites and homosexuals, and is
linked to the assassination of Malcolm X.
Shaykh Hatem Alhaj recently lost his job at the Mayo Clinic because he wrote
papers in support of female circumcision. He later tried to clarify his
position by saying he only supports nicking the clitoris, not cutting it right
off.
Another heavy-hitting speaker is British MP George Galloway, a veritable
rock star of antiIsraeli and anti-western sentiment, who was barred from
entering Canada in 2009 after he gave more than $50,000 to Hamas in the Gaza
Strip, in contravention of Canadian law, which bans all donations to terrorist
organizations. Canada lists Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Galloway was eventually permitted to enter Canada, but he can be seen very
clearly on YouTube handing over a bag of money to members of the Hamas
leadership, whose very charter calls for the obliteration of the state of
Israel and all Jews.
Abraham Ayache, chairman of the Muslim Council of Calgary, said the
conference is being organized to celebrate 50 years of Islam in Calgary and is
all about unity and celebrating multiculturalism.
"This conference is open to everybody. Our doors are always open. We
encourage Muslims to integrate into society and we want to raise awareness
about Islam and we want non-Muslims to understand more about Islam . . . and
for the media to start focusing on the positives rather than the
negatives," Ayache said.
His lineup of speakers, however, makes that difficult. When asked about
Philips's views that homosexuals should be executed Ayache responded by saying:
"George Bush is an individual who holds that opinion." It's an
outrageous claim.
While certainly finding ample evidence that Bush believes in maintaining the
traditional definition of marriage, nowhere is there evidence that he believes
in sentencing homosexuals to death.
Ayache, who says the MCC has eight Islamic scholars working for the
organization, adds that speakers will be given topics to discuss that deal with
unity and multiculturalism.
But a recent posting on the MCC website under the heading "Ask the
Imam" seems to indicate that some of the organization's hired imams
haven't read the memo about cultural tolerance and unity.
In answer to a question by a single mother concerned about her children no
longer being obedient to her, an imam on the site wrote: "You should
instil a hatred for this culture and its ways in the hearts of your
children." He also wrote: "It is haraam (forbidden) for you to give
your children free rein in forming friendships with the children of the kuffaar."
Kuffaar, or kufir, is synonymous with infidel or nonbeliever. Translation: the
vast majority of Canadian society.
That particular posting has very recently been removed from the website, but
there are some blogs that have preserved screen grabs of those pages.
Nagah Hage, the conference committee chair, said the MCC is the umbrella
organization for Sunnis in Calgary and is "the most powerful Muslim
organization in the country," since it owns and operates all the Sunni
"assets" in Calgary including mosques and the Calgary Islamic School.
Hage says some of the topics open for discussion at the conference include:
the influence of national and international politics on Muslims of North
America, western media in Muslim countries and the use of financial resources
for improving the status of Muslims of the world, as well as other topics that
have not been solidified. Not a whole lot there about unity or
multiculturalism.
Kevin Alderson, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary and a
gay rights activist, says he's concerned about Philips speaking in Calgary.
"This is barbaric, archaic and insane," said Alderson, who has
just finished writing his latest book, Counseling LGBTI Clients. "It
certainly says nothing about multiculturalism. I think these speakers should be
carefully monitored to ensure that they don't cross the line into hate speech
by advocating the killing of homosexuals."
Sgt. Bill Dodd, who heads the Calgary Police Service's diversity resources
section, says Calgary police have a good relationship with the MCC and intend
on attending the conference, which will run from June 29 through July 1 at the
Coast Plaza Hotel, 1316 33rd St. N.E.
"It's not our role to ban speech.
"Our job is to uphold everybody's Charter rights and freedoms and to
uphold the Criminal Code, and sometimes there's a balance there."
Time will tell if there will be balance at this conference and whether the
diversity of Canadians - all Canadians - will truly be, if not celebrated, at
least accepted on Canada Day.
Licia Corbella is a columnist and
editorial page editor. lcorbella@calgaryherald.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Calgarians are rich in character and rich in opinions. So,
too, is Herald columnist Licia Corbella. She's not afraid to say what others
are thinking, but at the same time, she's eager to celebrate wonderful stories
of success in our city. Opinion that matters; opinion that counts: Read Licia
Corbella, exclusively in the Calgary Herald and at calgaryherald.com
Biography
Licia
Corbella has worked for daily newspapers for almost 30 years and is currently
the Calgary Herald's Editorial Page Editor. She started her journalism career
in 1986 at The Province newspaper in Vancouver while still a journalism student
at Vancouver Community College, where she graduated with honours. Eventually,
she and her husband moved to Toronto where she worked as a general assignment
reporter at The Scarborough Mirror, The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun, where
she won numerous awards for her feature writing and news reporting, including
two Edward Dunlop Awards.
In October 1993, she moved to Alberta with her husband Stephen
and began working at the Calgary Sun in a variety of roles, including assistant
city editor, lifestyle and travel editor and news columnist. In 1998, she was
appointed editor, a role she held until she came to the Herald in December
2007.
Licia was a competitive swimmer and former Canadian record
holder in the 200 and 400 Individual Medley events as an 11 & 12-year-old
and 13 & 14-year-old girl.She is married to Stephen and they have twin sons
in high school - both of whom are accomplished athletes, students and budding
philanthropists.
E-mail : lcorbella@calgaryherald.com
Recent Columns
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At this website by various means we seek to defend life, to encourage Christian faith, to promote Catholic tradition, to edify Marriage in its link to the Creator, to encourage families and individuals, and to support missionary disciples of Jesus. G.S.
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© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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Thinking Faith reviews Where the Hell is God? by Richard Leonard SJ
