Do Canadians have a common culture?

Back in April, I talked about Canada’s unique position when it comes to race and identity. Specifically, I talked about the fact that Canada doesn’t have a unified national identity, and that this allowed us to absorb culture from all over the world in a way that other countries can’t.

It appears that about half of Canadians agree with me:

Canadians are almost evenly split on whether residents of the country share a “common culture,” according to a new national survey exploring perceptions of social cohesion in Canada.

I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I agree with about half of Canadians, since the vast majority of Canadians don’t read this blog. Whatever the case, we can’t even agree if we have a common culture or not, suggesting to me that we don’t. This has its downside, absolutely. I am a proud Canadian, I love the shit out of this country. But pin me down and ask me to define what specific things I am proud of that other countries don’t have, and I might have a difficult time of it.

There was another piece to this article that caught my eye though:

More than three-quarters of respondents — about 77 per cent — agreed with the idea that “Canada’s cultural life is enriched by people with different cultural backgrounds than the majority.”

Again, this speaks perfectly to what I was talking about before. Canada is a rich mosaic that is built of cultures from everywhere. That is what unifies us – we don’t force capitulation to a standard of Canadian-ness. Our lack of -ness is our -ness.

This reality puts specific challenges in front of us, but potentially allows us to set the stage for the rest of the world. Everywhere immigration is becoming an issue. The world is connected like never before – the internet, accessibility of travel, increased global trade. Soon everywhere will find that their national identity is eroding under the gradual waves of novel cultural expression. How amazing would it be if the rest of the world looked to Canada as a model of how to make it work? How much more proud could we be of our country if we were the blueprint upon which the structure of cultural harmony and co-existence is built?

Plus, how much more awesome will our food be?

Racist beating of black man in Courtenay, BC

This doesn’t exactly fill me with a feeling of safety:

A swarming attack on a black man in this Vancouver Island community began when one of the accused hurled a racial slur, a court heard on Thursday.

Three men riding home in a truck (way to buck the stereotype there, guys) came across a black man walking home from the gym. One of the guys in the truck called out, audibly, “there’s a nigger” as they drove past (you know, like anyone would in that situation). Understandably, the victim of the verbal assault (Jay Phillips) was angered by the word and threw his water bottle at the truck.

So the three men turned around, got out of the truck, and tried to beat Phillips up.

So Nova Scotia, you’re temporarily off the hook. Courtenay, BC is now (apparently) the most blatantly racist place in the country. Congrats, Courtenay. I’m sure that’s a legacy you’re proud of.

Hilariously, the whole thing was caught and posted on Youtube:

The high-kick that the one asshole throws made me laugh. The rest of the video just made me sad.

Once again, while I am deeply saddened (and frankly, more than a little frightened) by this event, I am not surprised in the least. As much as we like to go on and on about how racism is a thing of the past, it’s still alive and well. Of course the most bizarre thing about this particular story is that British Columbia (and certainly Courtenay, BC) doesn’t have a history of conflict with black Africans or African Americans. Black people coming to BC were more likely to be working-class or middle-class, and that exodus came much later than settlements like Chatham, Ontario or Africville in Halifax, NS. Maybe not so bizarre, if you consider the fact that these guys had probably never seen a black person before, except on television. They probably don’t know what the word “nigger” even means, or have any particularly well-organized hatred of blacks.

While this in no way excuses their unbelievably horrendous actions, this attack is a symptom of a larger problem – we live in a racist society. The assholes in the truck are undoubtedly bigots, and the fact that they mobbed and beat a guy based on their racism suggests they’re probably not the kind of guys you’d want to have around, but they’re an extreme reflection of an underlying cultural narrative that says that race is meaningful when judging a person’s worth. While it’s completely appropriate to notice that someone is from a different cultural background, and important to think about how that impacts their day-to-day life, it’s not the most important thing about them. It’s definitely not a cause of verbally and physically assault them.

I don’t live near Courtenay (it’s on Vancouver Island), so it’s unlikely I’ll be called for jury duty in this case or any that are connected to it. It’s too bad though, because I’ve been working on my Samuel L. Jackson impression:

Movie Friday: The Christian Right in Canada

We can no longer afford to believe the lie that Canada is immune from the religious fervour that is ruining the United States.

It’s happening here too.

What can we expect when the Christian Right takes over? Goodbye free speech when it comes to discussion of religion. Goodbye freedom of religion (obviously). Goodbye personal freedoms of many kinds, as well as gay rights and abortion rights. Hello religious tests for political office, creationism in schools, and probably finding a way to throw God into the national anthem a couple more times.

Anyone who says that religion is harmless and is a personal choice that nobody is trying to force on anyone else, I say that you are talking out of your arse sir, and I would like you to teach me to do that trick.

Judeo-Christian heritage? Hardly

I’m really tired of hearing people say “we are founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs” or “we have to remember that this country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.” It is a phrase that often comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, that ridiculous walking ball of Silly Putty (who is so loved because she has no personality of her own and simply imprints the image of whatever is around her). Knowing at least a smattering of history, philosophy and theology, I know this not to be the case. While the country was originally founded by people who were Christian (that fact is not in dispute here, although many argue that many of the founding fathers of the United States were deist or agnostic), the principles that make Canada the country it is have at best coincidental resemblance to Judeo-Christian principles. At worst, they are in direct violation of biblical commandments.

The first thing I want to say is that this idea of Judeo-Christian anything is a complete farce. Jesus was a Jew who preached Jewish principles – nothing he said (including his famous “love your neighbour” bit) was a unique moral philosophy. Where Jesus diverged from the Jewish tradition is in man’s relationship with Yahweh, not in a person’s relationship with other people. Most of the rest of what we would call “Christian ethics” were written by either (the Apostle) Paul of Tarsus who had never met Jesus, or by Christian biblical scholars like Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas several centuries after the time of the gospels. The later Christian philosophers were influenced heavily by Greek philosophy (which predates Jesus by several centuries), which was in turn influenced heavily by the Egyptians, and so on back through the ages. The point is that so-called “Judeo-Christian” philosophy, at least when it comes to matters of ethics, does not come from Jesus at all, but from either the Torah or from non-religious, non-divine sources. Anything that Christianity has to say about ethics is either Jewish or Greek/Egyptian in origin.

The second thing I need to say as a pre-amble is that it is impossible to talk about the foundations of Canada without talking about the foundations of the United States. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, for the most part, cribbed from the US Bill of Rights, which is in itself part of the Constitution of the United States. Say what you will about the Americans, but if ever there was a group of people who figured out a system of secular justice and a stable society without appeal to religion, it was those guys. You may compare for yourself, or you can take it from me that any discussion of the founding principles of modern Canada can be seen as comparable to the founding principles of the US.

It is also important to note that Canada was a part of Britain until 1867, and didn’t establish its own internal constitution until the 1980s. It is necessary then to distinguish between “modern Canada”, with its codified system of rights, and “historical Canada”, which is essentially England. There is a fair argument to be made that if England was founded on Christian principles, then Canada was as well. However, this argument falls apart in two important places. First, England’s system of rights was drastically influenced by the US constitution, and as such it bears little resemblance to the monarchist state it once was. Second, the argument can equally be made that the Constitution Act of 1982 was a codification of the founding principles of “the nation of Canada” – a recognition of those principles already held dear to Canadians; a retroactive “foundation”. Thus, whatever is in the Constitution, despite the fact that it came later than the British North America Act of 1867, can be reasonably called the founding principles of the country of Canada.

In order to evaluate whether or not Canada was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethical system (which is more accurately described simply as ‘Jewish’, since uniquely Christian teachings are theological rather than moral), it is necessary to establish a codification of these principles. It simply will not do to merely assert ‘these are the principles’ – they must be written down somewhere that we can all agree on. Luckily, Canada has the aforementioned Constitution (I will also, for illustrative purposes, refer to the US Constitution on occasion) as its codified principles. The Torah is the source of Jewish moral tradition, and there are hundreds of regulations and legal exhortations in that document. I think it is fair to use the oft-invoked passages from Exodus, colloquially known as the Ten Commandments, as a codification of Jewish principles. Sure there are other rules and regulations (almost the entire books of Leviticus and Laws, for example), but the Ten Commandments are the founding ethical document of the tradition, so presumably all others are reflections or developments of that document. Uniquely Christian ethics, which I have argued are adaptations of Jewish principles, are generally taken from Jesus of Nazareth’s Sermon on the Mount, which I will use as the “founding document” of Christianity.

The Constitution of Canada or, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

The part of the Constitution we really care about for the purpose of this discussion is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sadly, the document starts with the following phrase:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law…

Religious Christian groups lobbied to get it in there, and Muslim groups were happy about it too since it doesn’t specify which God it’s referring to. I will assume they mean the Flying Spaghetti Monster and let it go. Clearly I’m about as wild about the inclusion of this passage as dogs are about the vacuum cleaner, but it doesn’t really matter. The listed rights are the important “meat” of the constitution, not the language of the preamble.

There are many legal issues in the Constitution (the role of parliament, the rights of the PMO, judicial stuff, mobility rights, language rights, etc.) that speak more to making the country run under the rule of law rather than a reflection of moral principles. While these have literally nothing to do with the Bible (and thus I could score cheap points by saying “look! No Jewish anything here!”), that’s an apples and oranges comparison. What we’re after is the ethics and morals bits of the constitution, not the legal errata.

The Constitution lists these as fundamental freedoms:

  • freedom of conscience,
  • freedom of religion,
  • freedom of thought,
  • freedom of belief,
  • freedom of expression (my personal favourite),
  • freedom of the press and of other media of communication,
  • freedom of peaceful assembly, and
  • freedom of association.

    • As you can see, there is a great deal of overlap between this document and the US Bill of Rights. Many of the other ones that I haven’t listed here (unreasonable search and seizure, habeas corpus, etc.) are clearly direct rip-offs. Canada’s legal code, which would take about 50 posts of this length to explore sufficiently, is subject to the Constitution such that any law that violates this document are untenable. For interest, the main difference between the Canadian Constitution and the US Constitution is what is known as the “general limitation clause”, which abridges all of the rights if such violations are demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. This is why we can prosecute hate speech here – a position that I do not agree with.

    The Ten Commandments

    So what do the Ten Commandments say about the Charter? Are the Commandment principles reflected in the founding document of Canada? Let’s first look at the (paraphrased) list:

    1. I (Yahweh) am the Lord thy God (violation of freedom of religion, belief)
    2. You shall have no other gods before me; you will not make and/or worship religious idols (violation of freedom of religion, belief)
    3. You will not blaspheme against the name of God (violation of freedom of expression)
    4. Keep the Sabbath holy (no violation, no endorsement)
    5. Honour your parents (no violation, no endorsement)
    6. Do not murder (or kill, depending on who you ask) (in accordance with the legal code, albeit with caveats)
    7. Do not have sex with someone you are not married to (no violation, no endorsement)
    8. Do not steal (in accordance with the legal code)
    9. Do not bear false witness against someone else (in accordance with the legal code)
    10. Do not desire or wish for anything that belongs to someone else in such a way that disregards the rights of others (violation of freedom of conscience)

    By my count, the Charter violates four of the Ten Commandments, is in accordance with three, and is completely indifferent to the remaining three.

    Let’s look at where the two documents agree (murder, theft, perjury/slander). These are regulations that are present and discussed at length in Plato’s Repulic, which is completely separate from the Jewish tradition. Without knowing in depth the moral codes of all of the world’s cultures, it is at least sufficient to say that rules against murder, theft and lying are not exclusively Jewish and do not require appeals to divine command to make them work.

    As far as the indifferent commandments go, Canadian law (with the Constitution as its ostensible source) does not expressly forbid adultery, nor does it require citizens to honour the Sabbath or honour their parents (to the contrary, the Canadian legal system allows for the courts to supersede the wishes of the parents for the best interest of the child). These are not equivocal “if you feel like it” rules in Biblical law, they must be followed and carry as much authority as rules about murder and theft. Canada chooses to completely ignore them.

    “Christian” Ethics

    The foundation of Christian ethics is the Sermon on the Mount, and includes the Beatitudes and other uniquely Christan moral exhortations (turning the other cheek, not resisting evil, etc.). The Beatitudes promise recompense to those that mourn, the meek, those who are persecuted, the pure of heart, and those who hunger for righteousness. It is more difficult to equate these vague prophecies with “rules” as such, but they can be seen as moral guidelines. There are other tenets of Christianity such as charity, care for the sick, and self-denial that are held up as moral guidelines. Like murder and theft, these are principles that are seen in other cultural and religious traditions that pre-date Christianity. It is entirely false to call them “Christian principles”; they are better identified as “merciful principles” that do not require a deity to be practical.

    Even allowing for those moral guidelines that are uniquely Christian, the Charter and the legal code of Canada is largely indifferent. There are no laws either rewarding adherence to or punishing divergence from ‘turning the other cheek’. Assault is punished, but the law allows for punishment to be mitigated by considering who initiates the offense. That’s not turning the other cheek; in fact it directly contradicts the idea of turning the other cheek. However, it is not a violation of common ethical principles nor is it a violation of the Constitution.

    Concluding Thoughts

    These “think pieces” are getting longer and longer each week, and perhaps I should be apologetic for that. It is my hope to generate thought and consideration with these essays, rather than accepting bold statements like “We are founded on a Christian ethic” as fact – it could not be further from the truth. Most of our laws either defy or are completely indifferent to any kind of Biblical prescripts. But none of that is important, the most important part of these Biblical exhortations is the question of why they are right or wrong. Religious regulations are built upon the foundation that they are the will of God. Even those rules and laws that agree with the Jewish and Christian moral exhortations do so coincidentally, not because the country recognizes a deity – in fact these coincidental agreements are seen in other societies and cultures that have no Jewish or Christian heritage. We don’t have rights and freedoms because God says so, we have it to preserve a lawful, just and democratic society. The good of the society (and, by extension, of the people) is the source of right and wrong, not YahwAlladdha.

    Of course, all of this is to say nothing of the fact that many things in the Bible are contradictions of its own rules: murder is wrong but there is capital punishment (stoning) for blasphemy or adultery; we must turn the other cheek but Jesus destroyed the money-changers’ tables at the temple. The fact is that any number of Biblical passages can be used to justify any number of acts. Taken in its full context the Bible reads like a book of fables coupled with the oral history of a nomadic tribe. Considering the number of minor things that are capital offenses, I’m really glad we aren’t founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

    Even the most pious amongst us don’t bother to follow all religious rules. It’s wildly impractical to do so, and anachronistic in many cases (if you’ve ever had a cheeseburger or a taco you’ve broken Biblical law, and how many of you still plant or plow fields?). We all make judgments of right and wrong that are entirely external to scripture on a daily basis. To assert that religious text or tradition are the source of these judgments is simply not supported by any evidence. Our standards of right and wrong are references to secular and not religious values. Our codified laws recognize this fact and not only don’t force us to obey Biblical laws, but allow us to directly violate them with no repercussions. Canada was founded on rational thought and consequentialist ethical deliberation, not the ancient words of an invisible being in the sky.

    Critical Mass of crazy

    In physics, there is a term called ‘critical mass’ which describes the minimum possible amount of fissile material required to generate a self-powered nuclear chain reaction. If there is less than this critical mass available for the reaction, it will not happen.

    This concept can be applied sociologically, partially to explain why the forces of stupid seem to be less prevalent here in Canada than we see in the States. The United States of America (population 307 million as of June, 2009) is nearly ten times larger than Canada (population 33.3 million). That means that for every person and personality you see here in Canada there are, demographically speaking, around 10 more like that in the USA. 75% of Canadians live along a long (nearly 9,000 km) strip of land, with cities spread out over many miles. As a result of this confluence of geography and population size, Canadians are relatively more spread out than our southern neighbours.

    So when someone has a crazy idea (like immigrants are putting salsa in the water supply, or that the government is stealing their dreams), it’s much harder for them to find an audience for that idea in Canada. There’s simply fewer people around, and fewer still that are willing to listen. As a result, the ideas that take root in Canada will tend to be closer to the mainstream, simply due to the fact that the most bizarre ones won’t go very far.

    However, in the United States, there are 10 times as many people around to hear the weirdo ideas. You are, therefore, 10 times more likely to have someone listen to and believe your theory that dental fillings are how secret Illuminati wizards are polluting your semen with atheism. You’re 10 times more likely to have the opportunity to gather like-minded people under your banner of insanity. Once an idea is represented by a group, it gathers credibility – much like a supercritical nuclear reaction increases in energy as it goes along. Soon, you’ve got a political lobby demanding sperm screening of all political candidates who have ever had a cavity.

    There needs to be a sufficient number of people in relatively easy contact with each other to allow a dumb idea to gain enough speed to be self-fueled. Just like with a nuclear reaction, a bad idea (or even a good idea that’s before its time) will peter out when it lacks the numbers required to sustain it. The disparity we can see between the market for craziness, the government distrust and splinter groups we see in the USA may at least partially explained by this critical mass issue.

    Of course you might be thinking “why doesn’t India or China have 30 times the crazy of Canada?” India is actually closer to ancient Greece – a collection of non-federated city-states that is nominally under the control of a centralized government. China on the other hand is completely under the control of its centralized government. If you aren’t allowed to speak your crazy ideas for fear of having the Glorious People’s Secret Police come knocking at your door, you’re probably not going to be forming any political parties or lobbies. The USA and Canada are nation-states with closely-held free speech laws.

    Free speech is clearly one o’ them double-edged swords.

    Canada: the great race experiment

    I’ve said previously that Canada is a unique place. However, in that post I only touched on that idea to make specific reference to a news item I found interesting. I want to expand on that statement a bit.

    While some people whose opinions I deeply respect disagree with my assessment on this matter, I see Canada as a place that lacks a strong national identity (at least at home). Americans have an identity that is built on principles of liberty in opposition to tyranny, and a history of being the leaders of the world. The English have an ex-empire, but also a history of monarchy and feudal identity that stretches back to the time of the Anglos and Saxons (as do many other European countries). China has a national identity built around its ancient history and, more recently, that has turned into a more totalitarian China-versus-the-world cultural ethos. Australians are rugged and fun-loving, Jamaicans are strong-willed and have reggae and Rastafari as part of their make-up, South Africans (for better or worse) have their history of racial divisiveness and the challenge of building a society from that. All this is to say absolutely nothing about the countries all over the world whose identities are closely allied with their religion (Iran, Israel, Indonesia… and that’s just the Is).

    So where does that leave Canada? Our history doesn’t stand in opposition to tyranny; we didn’t fight off colonial British rule, we asked politely. We don’t see ourselves as the living incarnations of our ancient aboriginal ancestors like the British; we in fact don’t seem to like our aboriginal past very much at all. Our government/communitarian identification is namby-pamby compared to that of China; in fact, a big part of the country is trying to split off. We don’t have the outback, we haven’t invented a musical genre, we don’t have a history of racial subjugation, and have no national religion.

    Watching the Olympic closing games, there was a brief moment where Canada seemed to exhibit a scintilla of national identity, which went only so far as to draw attention to the fact that the people of the world don’t really know what Canada is really all about, except that we’re funny and self-effacing, and we have beavers, mounties, and maple leaves. Is that our fate? Are we forever the middle child of the world – still part of the family but not as able as Big Brother or as attention-getting as Little Sister?

    I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s something about Canada that is uniquely Canadian that we missed a huge opportunity to exploit. Canada is, like no other place on the planet, a country where all people are welcome. I realize there are a great many countries with immigration policies, some even more liberal than ours, but the very fact that Canada does not have an over-arching Canadian-ness sets it apart from other places. Immigrants to the USA, for example, are exhorted to become “American”. Much of American immigration is inseparable from the phrase “melting pot” which means that one you’re in the States, forces act on you that compel you to become like everyone else. I would argue that any country with a strong national identity will have the same effect. Those countries with a large, politically-dominant native racial group will do this even more so.

    But for the same reasons that I outlined above, this is largely impossible in Canada. Oh sure, there’s the occasional right-winger who says that all the towel-heads need to go back to Iraquistan and get out of the white man’s country, but (thankfully) those voices are rare. As you travel west to east across the country, you are beset by Brits, Germans, Chinese, Indians (both dot and feather), Spanish, Ukranians, Russians, Polish, Métis, Scots, Irish, Ethiopians, Somalians, Nigerians, Greeks, Portugese, more Chinese, more Indians, Caribbeans, Cubans, Pakistanis, Persians, Italians, French (both tri-colour and fleur-de-lis), Dutch… the list goes on and on. Many of these groups (and to my knowledge, all of the ones I have described above) have built large communities within the overall mosaic of Canada.

    So who are the real Canadians? The question of longevity is a moot one. In the prairies, for example, there are large Ukranian and Polish communities that have been there for generations. Oakville and Halifax have supported large communities of former African slaves since Abolition in the mid-19th century (before, in fact, Canada was its own country). Chinese communities built the railroads in the western parts of the province. The French have been here as long as the British. Even the “Native First Nations” people immigrated from another continent, if archaeology and evolution are to be believed. No one cultural or racial group can call themselves “the real Canadian people”.

    The question must be asked again: who are the real Canadians. If the answer is “no one”, then the answer is also, conversely, “everyone”. Everyone who lives here and loves this country is a Canadian. As a matter of legality, I’ll acquiesce to the federal government and say that you have either have been born here or formally been granted citizenship to become a “real Canadian”, but that’s all it takes. All of these “real Canadians” then have a hand in building our national identity. This is what makes Canada uniquely Canadian.

    Certainly this reality comes with a whole host of challenges, but we have to take the bad with the good. One of the fascinating things that a place like Canada allows is the free inter-mixing of cultural groups that, up until now, had never interacted in all of human history. If you look at a place like Nepal or Burma, which are sandwiched between India and China, you will observe a culture that shares many of the characteristics of both. That’s what happens when two cultures are allowed to mix – a new culture emerges that is a “child” of both “parents”. However, places like Kenya and Spain have never had an opportunity to share cultural characteristics, as they are separated by geographical distance.

    What happens though, when a strapping lad with Kenyan parents meets a pretty young thing from Spain on the streets of Vancouver (and please believe I’ve seen it)? Or when a hot Russian babe links up with a finance-savvy Jamaican (again, seeeeen iiit!)? Or a Polish Jew falls for a Kuwaiti hipster Christian (haven’t seen it yet, but only because I haven’t introduced Alanna to Stuart – everyone falls for that guy; he’s so dreamy). All of these combi-nations (see what I did there?) and more are possible only in a place like Canada. People keep their own cultural identity, but are thrown in the mix with people from backgrounds their parents (all the way back to their ancestors) would never have had access to.

    What kind of culture will come out of a place like this? Just like the Nepalese, a culture will grow that shares characteristics of all the separate cultures that influence it. A race of people will arise that, like no other in history, cannot point to a place on the globe and say “my people come from there”. Their people will come from everywhere. And it can only happen here.

    Among other things that are easily-identified as Canadian: hockey, maple syrup, public health care, Tim Horton’s; I am proud that Canada is a place that can be, unlike any other, home to the whole world.

    “Nova Scotia’s Rosa Parks” gets apology

    This is a neat story.

    Nova Scotia has apologized and granted a pardon to Viola Desmond, a black woman who was convicted for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in 1946. Premier Darrell Dexter apologized to Desmond’s family and to all black Nova Scotians for the institutional racism of the past.

    I have to confess I’d never heard of Viola Desmond before this story. It’s an important part of my heritage, both as a black man and as a Canadian. I think sometimes we forget that racism was alive and well in Canada, and continues to this day. Obviously, the maritime provinces have been reminded of that fact recently. This apology is more than simply acknowledging the culpability of the government and people of Nova Scotia (although that’s an important and positive step); it is also bringing an important story to the surface. It serves to remind us that segregation and officially-sponsored racism isn’t a problem of hundreds of years ago, or something that only happened in the South. 1946 is in the living memory of many people.

    Of course if you flip through the comments (which I do, because I am a goddamn addict) you’ll see the usual knee-jerk response of “why live in the past? We have to move on and let things go.” It’s a nice fantasy to think that we can just ‘get over it’, but denying history is not the path to progress. The apology should not serve (and I sincerely hope it doesn’t) to make white people feel guilty for being born white. As Canadians, we should all be aware of both our strengths as a country and, in this case, our weaknesses and mistakes.

    Update: the niqab in Quebec

    There’s another story in the news that is quite contentious that speaks to my post yesterday, so I thought I’d throw in some interesting reading. The issue concerns the niqab, which is to my eyes the same as a burqa. Recently the government of Quebec passed a law banning the wearing of burqas while accessing government services. There are a lot of stupid arguments for why this is a good law: security issues, enshrining women’s rights, assimilationism. I doubt there is much of a security risk posed by these women, and there is a good argument that women should be allowed to wear whatever they want.

    This article takes a decidedly anti-ban stance. I disagree with their conclusions, but their reason for opposing the bill is sound – it’s not protecting a woman’s rights to take away her freedom of expression. Saying that banning the burqa is tantamount to supporting feminism is like saying that opposing Affirmative Action makes you a civil rights leader. It’s paternalism, plain and simple.

    However, Canada seemingly isn’t the only country with this problem. France is currently experiencing major issues with the influx of Muslim immigrants. France, however, does have an aboriginal ethnic majority population so their issue is distinct from Canada’s. We are a nation of immigrants from the beginning of this land as a unified nation.

    My stance remains the same. In a secular society, the government is not obligated to accommodate your superstition, no matter how many people believe in it. I am as offended by a woman wearing a burqa as I am by a member of Opus Dei flogging himself on the streets, or a Jehovah’s Witness coming to my home (although I live in an apartment now. Crommunist -1; Jehovah – 0). I have no patience for religion. However, as long as it’s not thrown in my face I can’t really have any objection to it. People should have the right to have their own private beliefs, but that right does not extend to public places and it certainly does not require the government to bend over backwards to facilitate your belief in mumbo jumbo.

    There. Political career officially nipped in the bud.

    Religious tolerance or cultural tolerance?

    Canada is a unique place. The full explanation of this seemingly banal statement will come perhaps in another, longer post. I just want to highlight and juxtapose a couple of recent news items. Suffice it to say that because Canada lacks a national identity (or at least a strong one) and relies on immigration to stay viable, we face unique challenges. Unlike our neighbours to the south, we can’t compel newcomers to adapt to “our culture”, because it’s not that strongly defined. Because the nation was built by wave after wave of immigrants, and our aboriginal peoples do not wield enough power to establish themselves as “the real Canadians”, our country seems to be destined to remain in a state of cultural flux – our very identity defined by the fact that we are a polyglot, multichromatic, practically diverse society. Please don’t interpret these words as condemnation – as a child of an immigrant I see the immense value of having a wealth of cultural experience easily within reach at any given moment (at least in the major urban centres).

    However, this multiculturalism comes with distinct challenges, as the Toronto police have discovered:

    The Toronto police service has started an internal review on how officers conduct searches and arrests when dealing with people from various religions. The review was sparked by a human rights complaint in July 2008 after a police officer removed a Muslim woman’s hijab, or head scarf.

    The police force is considering implementing training for cadets on the proper ways to deal with potentially dicey situations involving people from a variety of religious faiths. For those of you who don’t know, some Islamic scholars maintain that all Muslims, particularly women, should dress modestly and cover the skin. This is purportedly to forebear any sexual temptation from distracting the thoughts away from holy contemplation. This practice is by no means unique to Islam – many Christian and Jewish sects preach the same doctrine of concealing the flesh to keep the thoughts pure (in fact, the more I learn about Islam the more I suspect there’s almost nothing unique in that teaching at all). However, under the stricter interpretation of sharia law, many Muslims consider it necessary to cover nearly all of a woman’s flesh, and most certainly the hair and parts of the face, when in the public view of men outside the family. This practice varies from sect to sect, with some Muslim women wearing no covering, some wearing a simply head scarf and others covering their bodies completely in the now almost universally-reviled symbol of fundamentalist Islamic oppression, the burqa.

    Some who are more generous and liberal than I point out that freedom of religious expression is enshrined in the law, and is paramount to a free society. “Besides,” they might say, “where is the harm in the simple outward expression of religious conviction?”

    Enter the Sikh kirpan.

    Brampton’s Sukhwant Singh, in his early 50s, has been charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault, Peel police say. Singh’s next court appearance is on Thursday. Any weapon could have been used in the attack, but the fact that it was a kirpan alarms Sikh leaders who fear the incident will rouse objections once again over one’s right to wear the religious symbol in public.

    A prominent Brampton lawyer, Majit Mangat was stabbed during an altercation outside a Sikh temple in Brampton. Ordinarily this would have been an isolated tragic incident with no far-reaching significance, except for the fact that the weapon used in the assault was a kirpan, a ceremonial dagger worn by Sikh men. In almost all cases, the dagger is merely a decoration; an accessory that is never drawn, even in anger. Having lived for several years in Brampton myself, with a very large Sikh population (Canada is second only to India in terms of the number of Sikhs – this is the absolute number, not a per-capita calculation), I never heard of a kirpan being used as a weapon against another person. However, this incident raises the important question that will define race relations in Canada for generations to come: how much should we allow common sense to be trumped by religious practice?

    In my mind, allowing anyone to carry a weapon of any kind is not a good idea. I don’t care how symbolic or ceremonial it it supposed to be. If my religious convictions require me to carry a rifle in my hands because Jesus could arrive at any moment and I have to help him fight off Satan’s zombie hordes, common sense (and the law) would dictate that the danger I pose to society in general outweighs my religious autonomy. Such is the case here.

    I offer the following solution to this conundrum: stop allowing exceptions for religious practice. Whereas cultures are constantly adapting to the times in which they find themselves, religious edicts are absolute. If my culture tells me it’s okay to smoke marijuana in public, but I live in Canada (except in Vancouver – I love this city) then I have to adapt to the laws of the land in which I find myself. However, if I do so for religious reasons, I am forbidden by the will of Jah to restrain my pot-smokery. By allowing these cultural practices to continue under the banner of “religious freedom” makes the entire argument more convoluted than it has to be. If the law, for example, allowed cultural practice to continue provided it posed no danger to public safety or the execution of lawful policing, but refused to make exception religious practice, then the carrying of the kirpan would be a moot point. As some of the temple elders suggest in the article, the kirpan can be substituted with a smaller blade (of the kind that all people in Canada are permitted to carry religion notwithstanding) or one that cannot be removed from its sheath. This allows the cultural practice to continue unabated in such a way as it does not trump public safety.

    Neither of these cases are particular causes for concern. However, a number of years ago, debate broke out in the Ontario legislature as to whether or not Muslims should be self-policing under sharia law rather than the provincial civil court. To any rational person, allowing religious law to trump civil law is a ludicrous position to take; especially since sharia law is subject to wide interpretation depending on the imam, and is nearly always gender biased against women, sometimes with violent results. For some reason, this debate wasn’t immediately laughed out of the courts. That reason, of course, was that this was a religious issue and we have to be so careful about protecting the rights of people to practice their religion.

    I call bullshit.

    The second your religious freedoms interfere with my secular freedoms, I’m kicking your religious freedom to the curb. I am motivated in this conviction not only by the fact that I regard all religion as superstition and nonsensical illogic, but because from a practical purpose it makes more sense. Secular rights are developed with ethical and social principles in mind. Religious “rights” are developed from some person/group’s interpretation of a mistranslated book that is centuries old and is expressly forbidden to be applied contextually. Forcing modern reality to adapt to an ancient set of prescripts that cannot be universally agreed upon, even among its purported adherents, is the height of arrogance and folly.

    The right to cultural expression is a good one – we live in a multicultural society. At some point, cultures are at least partially defined by shared religious practice. While I think that’s a shame, it has been the way humanity has operated for centuries and will, at least for the time being, continue to be so. However, knowing how poorly religion fares when attempting to govern a just and enlightened society, we must stop bending over backwards to protect freedom of religious expression when it blatantly contravenes secular civil rights and public safety. Teaching police officers specific methods to be sensitive to the cultural practices of different peoples is a wonderful idea. So is adjusting the laws that govern how the kirpan can be worn. But allowing religion to contravene good sense? I can’t get behind that.

    Canada: now racism free!

    It’s always nice to see how multiculturalism and universal tolerance abounds in this great country of ours.

    Or maybe not so much.

    Two Ottawa youth were attacked by a group of allegedly Palestinian men while walking home from the bar. The group of men shouted anti-Semitic slurs at the two students (only one of whom is Jewish) and attacked them with a goddamn machete!

    I’m not going to weigh in on who is wrong and who is right in the middle eastern conflict. I honestly don’t know enough to have an informed opinion (except to know that the religious reasons are bullshit). However, that being said, I think we can all get behind the principle of not attacking people with machetes on the streets of Ottawa.

    Can’t we?