“Tolerating the intolerant”
written by Sherif Emil, a Montreal physician.
It was published in The Montreal Gazette on March 28th, 2010
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Tolerating+intolerant/2736040/story.html
My cousin in B.C. responded: "What To Do?"
Read Dr. Emil's article before the blog, i.e. my response to my cousin's question. Agree or disagree with me in absolute safety because we live in a democratic county.
RANTS~RAVES: What to Do?©Susan Elizabeth Dykhuis_28 March 2010
It seems restricting education to keep citizens in any country ignorant is the first tool of repressive regimes. This tool is used in both theocratic and left-leaning socialistic societies. Isn't this the reason Canadian Forces are in Afghanistan — to help Afghani people attain the right to a democratic society? To me it seems much of the Islamic world is in the Dark Ages - akin to the era in Western civilization when Popes, Kings and Crusaders — not heeding the teachings attributed to Jesus - gave non-Christians this choice: Conversion or Death.
Keeping the population uneducated and ignorant enabled Popes, Kings and Nobility to establish the system where the majority were uneducated serfs, indentured workers for the landowners who held property rights. Autocratic regimes (secular or religious) use this same strategy by restricting basic human rights along with the right to education. It works today for Imams, Emirs, Mullahs et al in many Islamic countries.
The signing of the Magna Carta Libertatum by King John on June 15th 1215 was instrumental in the development of Western democracies and cultures — bringing Canada and other nations to where we are today: Democracies with Charters of Rights. King John probably was probably forced to sign this document...
An aside: my brother Peter was born exactly 732 years later...Father's Day, June 15th 1947
What to Do?
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I believe we are doing it right in the Province of Quebec. School boards today are linguistic, not religious - Catholic and Protestant school boards now part of our past. This helps in integrating the many new citizens who are members of religions other than Judaic/Christian. In Quebec new Canadians are educated in French. Many Muslims speak French (from Morocco, for example) so coming to Quebec when immigrating facilitates the transition to the new country.
My view is once an immigrant from Anywhere, Planet Earth is accepted by Canada it is up to the prospective new Canadian to adapt to Canadian law. Religion is a private matter, like one's salary or sex life. If one wishes to religiously educate their offspring, home teaching or religious private schools are options. We don’t need to pay taxes for religious instruction in the public secular school system.
Western nations could be more diligent when vetting the backgrounds of potential new citizens. Look at what has happened in England: July 7th 2005, young British-born Muslim men committed terrorist acts against their own country.
In Madrid, Spain on the 11th of March 2004, the train terrorist attacks (three days before Spain's general elections), killing 191 people and wounding 1,800 (judge ruled Moroccan national Jamal Zougam guilty of physically carrying out the attack). In Amsterdam on November 2nd 2004 Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death by Mohammed Bouyeri who had joint Dutch and Moroccan nationality.
Immigration must be followed by integration into the new country and culture. A five-year time frame for learning the language and culture of the new homeland should be a condition of immigration. If potential new Canadian has not done that then citizenship is not granted and the applicant must leave Canada immediately.
Canada accommodates religious differences; this does not mean Canada will permit religion(s) having a role in law-making.
Canadians who are atheist or agnostic and do not appreciate being told by anyone they must respect religion. Canadian Charter Rights, i.e.: includes the right not to have religious people insisting their view is the view.
Bountiful, BC is in the news because fundamentalist Mormons are polygamous. Polygamy is illegal in Canada. We can expect fundamentalist Mormons to test this in court right up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Fundamentalist Mormans and/or fundamentalist Muslims in polygamous marriages are an affront to Canadian values as Canadian law defines marriage as between two adults: female-male; female-female; male-male
I feel most Canadians would insist that one's religious right ends the second it contravenes the law of the land -- plural marriage being just one example.
We Canadians are so fortunate: We are multi-cultural and we can freely celebrate our different national cultures and heritages.
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These words from Dr. Sherif Emil; I agree with his opinion.
But I am also astonished by the naïveté of many Quebecers, who think that the niqab, the burqa, the insistence to be served by another female, and so on are simple matters of free religious expression. They do not understand that those who ask for such accommodation are also those who espouse fundamentalist Islam. Their goal is to "Islamize" the society they have immigrated to. Those requesting accommodation have never accommodated indigenous minorities, do not acknowledge the continuous ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East, and will never raise a voice to criticize the persecution and oppression of religious minorities in the societies they left behind. Organizations that lobby hard for Muslim rights in Canada, such as the Muslim Canadian Congress, have yet to shed their hypocrisy and look back at the complete lack of accommodation of their native religious minorities.
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The comment: "You MUST respect a person's religion" -- it irks me. In 18th century Americas and Europe, it was taught that Cain's "mark" was black skin, thus the descendants of Cain are Black e.g: The Wrath of Cain upon them forever. Perhaps this was the justification for enslaving Black people. Mormons believed this at one time (not sure if they still do).
If a religion discriminates on the bases of gender, colour, ethnicity, SORRY!! I don't respect the religion or the faithful of that religion.
What to Do?Susan Elizabeth Dykhuis_29 March 2010
Love your Pet? Sterilize and Innoculate
Rescued a Pet? Then provide *SIR treatment
*SIR = Sterilize Inoculate Release
Text of “Tolerating the intolerant”©Copyright(c)The Montreal Gazette by Sherif Emil
Below:
The Copts, Egypt's indigenous Christians, like many other Eastern Orthodox Christians, celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, according to the Julian calendar. The midnight mass and Christmas day are joyous celebrations for Egypt's Christians, as they are for Christians around the world.
But there was no joy among Christians in Egypt at the start of this new decade. As celebrants were leaving a Coptic church in Nagi Hammadi shortly before midnight on Jan. 6, a hail of machinegun fire abruptly changed the giggling of children and the well-wishes of adults into screams of pain and agony.
Six people, aged 16 to 26, were murdered on the spot. Two others died later in hospital. A Muslim guard at the church was also killed.
Over the next two days, more Christian families were attacked by Muslim mobs, resulting in widespread destruction of property and businesses.
When I shared the event with my colleagues on Jan. 8, hardly anyone had heard the news. There was very little coverage in the Western media. And in the days that followed, hardly anyone was concerned when five churches were destroyed in Muslim Malaysia or when a Protestant church had burned to ashes in Muslim Algeria. A massacre of Christians in the Muslim part of Nigeria soon followed. Vicious attacks on Christian minorities occurred in three supposedly moderate Muslim countries within a single week. But not an eyebrow was raised.
In the meantime, we here in Quebec, like many other Western societies, are fully invested in finding ways to reasonably accommodate Muslim immigrants. We debate whether women should be allowed to wear the niqab when receiving public services. We argue whether groups that promote terrorism, murder, and Islamic revolution in Western societies should be tolerated, as is happening now in Britain. We ask whether it is reasonable accommodation to allow the azan, the loud and public Muslim call to prayer, to echo five times a day in American neighbourhoods, as was debated and allowed in Hamtramck, Mich., a few years ago.
We blame victims for living dangerously when a Dutch director is stabbed to death for criticizing Islam in a movie, or a Danish cartoonist narrowly escapes with his, and his 6-year-old granddaughter's, life, as occurred recently. We apologize to Muslims when they go on a rampage of anger and destruction in response to what the pope said or what a newspaper published.
And, yes, we lament how Islamophobic the West has become when the Swiss decide to ban minarets, not mosques, conveniently forgetting that Saudi Arabia bans the building of non-Islamic houses of worship, "moderate" Egypt requires Christians to obtain a presidential decree to repair a church bathroom, and building a church or synagogue in a Muslim country is often an insurmountable feat.
As we debate how to further accommodate our Islamic minority, who already enjoy full equal rights, and are asking for special ones, we are happy to ignore the plight of the Muslim world's Christian minorities, who in almost all cases are the indigenous inhabitants of the land, not immigrants to it, and yet have no rights.
Egypt, my native country, is a prime example. Egypt's Christians, the descendants of the pharoahs, live in increasing isolation. Christians are denied the top opportunities in academia, politics, medicine, law, business, or any other venue, with few exceptions. Violence against Christians and their properties is increasing. Those who commit it are typically set free by a government and judicial system afraid of the repercussions of punishing those who are considered heroes for shedding Christian blood. Hatred of Christians and Jews is institutionalized and taught from the earliest stages of public schools. Widespread animosity toward Christians is supported by governmental collusion to subjugate and humiliate them. Only one group in Egypt experiences more persecution than the Copts - Muslims who convert to Christianity.
The Palestinian Christians are another sad example. On a recent visit to Bethlehem, now under Palestinian Authority control, I learned that half of the town's Christians have fled since the turn of the century. On the entrance to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, an Israeli Arab town, was a billboard in Arabic and English quoting a Quranic verse, "And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers." Ethnic cleansing of Christians has been taking place in the Middle East and Muslim world for decades, picking up where the Ottoman Empire left off.
I was raised in a financially comfortable family in Egypt. But as a Christian, my fate in Egypt was sealed. I was deemed to be a third-class citizen, behind Muslim men and Muslim women. I went to the U.S. at age 17, not in search of economic opportunity, but in hunger for equal citizenship. I now live and work in Canada, and I continue to be thankful daily for the gift of openness, tolerance, and free expression.
But I am also astonished by the naïveté of many Quebecers, who think that the niqab, the burqa, the insistence to be served by another female, and so on are simple matters of free religious expression. They do not understand that those who ask for such accommodation are also those who espouse fundamentalist Islam. Their goal is to "Islamize" the society they have immigrated to. Those requesting accommodation have never accommodated indigenous minorities, do not acknowledge the continuous ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East, and will never raise a voice to criticize the persecution and oppression of religious minorities in the societies they left behind. Organizations that lobby hard for Muslim rights in Canada, such as the Muslim Canadian Congress, have yet to shed their hypocrisy and look back at the complete lack of accommodation of their native religious minorities.
Why should a secular society, engaged in debates about reasonable accommodation, care about the non-accommodation, not to mention the chronic intolerance, persecution, and murder of Christians in Muslim countries? The answer is simple. It is an issue of morality. It is an issue of decency. It is an issue of fairness.
Canadians are dying in Afghanistan to create the conditions hoped for by the Muslim world's minorities, and we denigrate the sacrifice of those brave men and women when we turn our face away from the chronic intolerance and persecution in those same lands.
If we decide to stay silent and accommodate the same hatred, closed-mindedness, tribalism, and violence in the Islamic world, we will be on a slow, but sure, path to decline as a society.
Let us not be so tolerant, to the point of tolerating intolerance. Those who come to Canada seeking opportunity and freedom should be welcomed as full participants in the Canadian experience with equal rights and equal responsibilities as all others.
But those who come with religious or political agendas should not be accommodated, regardless of any false explanations they might give for their behaviour.
Sherif Emil is a Montreal physician.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
March 29th 2010 -- Terrorist attack in Moscow. I am waiting for moderate Muslims world-wide to have major demonstrations against Muslims who are terrorists.
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