Time Immortal

Canadian multiculturalism, failing to combat racism and Muslim-phobia, is gradually moving towards adopting faith-based multiculturalism, allowing the formation of cultural ghettoes immune from social and legal scrutiny against violations of human rights. Such politics serve the interests of conservative Muslim leaders. Enjoying the formal recognition by different levels of government, they openly reject civic norms of conduct, and preach their obscurantist and rigid understanding of ‘piety’ and ‘modesty’ to an audience that struggles to adjust to life in the diaspora. Some religious leaders indirectly supported Aqsa Pervez’s murder by warning that culture cannot supersede religion and urged that their followers should ‘convince’ their daughters to wear the hijab.

[Haideh Moghissi, professor of sociology and women�s study at York University, Toronto] and [Shahrzad Mojab, professor and director of Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto] are of the opinion that ’s case represents a revealing example of the lives of many children of Muslim immigrants who came to Canada predominantly in the 1990s, and now are coming of age. The vast majority is inevitably influenced by the dominant Canadian culture and patterns of behaviour. Many parents have no problem with this and adopt a healthy mix of broader cultural practices and those of their own. A growing number of families, frustrated by the difficult conditions of life and influenced by imported orthodox imams, however, venture the impossible task of replicating their past way of life in their country of origin. They try to force their own ‘choices’ on their children. Many of these young Canadians, particularly young girls and women, live a double life and have to hide their true feelings and submit to their parents’ imposition. �Aqsa Pervez shed the mask of compliance with the Muslim womanhood her father wanted her to wear, hence the harshest imaginable punishment in his hands,� they add.

The two academics note that it is only in recent decades that political and economic failures, imperialist policies towards Muslim-majority societies, authoritarianism, and the unresolved Palestinian issues, have given prominence to the rigid totalitarian ultra-conservative Islam. Taking this voice as the voice of Muslims is a fatal mistake with dire consequences.

As Kate is often seen to remark, most Canadians seem to think that multiculturalism means “more pavillions at Folk Fest”. And to be fair, that has been one of the outcomes of Canada’s open attitude towards the cultures of other immigrants. My neighbourhood would be that much poorer were the little Lebanese take-away not present there.

But somewhere along the line, multiculturalism stopped being about welcoming other cultures into Canada (which as a concept still implies that Canadian law and values have primacy) and became about doing everything within our power to avoid giving even the slightest impression that there is anything about Canada which we, as Canadians welcoming immigrants to our shores, see about Canada that might just be…what’s the word? better?…than the places these people are coming to us from.

And the result has been predictable: Canada has not given those who immigrate to it the necessary basis in Canadian culture so that they might properly integrate into Canadian society, so those immigrants have (in essence) ‘imported’ the culture of their nation of origin to Canada in an effort to fill in the gap.

The problem is that some of those other cultures are, for lack of any better term, rather distasteful in their attitudes, especially their attitudes toward women. And we cannot afford — nor can we tolerate — such attitudes to be allowed to fester within Canadian communities. If we do, there will be many more Aqsa Parvezes that we hear about. And even one more is too many.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)