Time Immortal

How can the ordinary British citizen be expected to distinguish between the law-abiding Muslim and the extremist? In these circumstances it is easiest, and safest, to assume the worst and to take refuge in whatever form of defence comes readily to hand — even foul language.

As an asylum-seeker myself, albeit of many decades ago from Nazi Germany, I can only draw Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s attention to the distinction between assimilation and conformity. Nobody is asking Muslims to assimilate, but it behoves immigrants, of whatever religion, to conform to the norms of the society in which they have chosen to live.

When we read (as we have just done) of Muslims seeking to behead another human being, or to commit other appalling atrocities, then it is reasonable for ordinary folk to ask — what are these people doing here anyway and why do they choose to behave in ways which appall us?

My generation of immigrants conformed. We retain and value features of our origins, but we do not demand privileges or special treatment and we contribute to the life of the nation as best as we can. Ten thousand of us fought for Britain in the Second World War — a small expression of gratitude to the country which gave us refuge.

I’m surprised that the writer of that particular letter to the editor decided to publish his name and locale; the above is the sort of thing that could get you arrested in England. Even though it is so shatteringly true.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

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)

A Sudanese immigrant convicted of raping an Edmonton woman has gone missing after being freed into the community to await deportation.

Freed into the community? Was anybody using their brain that day? You don’t free someone into the community whom you intend to deport, especially not a convicted rapist. Or is that how we do things in this country?

Even when the guy is obviously a dangerous thug?

In the five years he has been in the country, Luin has accumulated 16 convictions, ranging from causing a disturbance to assault causing bodily harm and sexual assault. Luin’s violent tendencies continued in jail, where he was involved in seven attacks on other inmates and corrections staff.

…

At an Immigration and Refugee Board admissibility hearing last July, Luin was ordered deported to Sudan.

But under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as a Convention refugee he can only be deported under a document called “a danger opinion,” signed by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, a process that can take anywhere from six to 18 months.

A danger opinion is issued if the minister, after reviewing the person’s history, believes the individual poses a danger to the Canadian public or Canada’s security that outweighs the risk of deporting him or her back to the country of origin. The person is allowed to make submissions arguing to stay.

An application for a danger opinion in the Luin case was submitted Nov. 13.

Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, federal authorities could not detain Luin until they received the danger opinion, since he has already served his sentence. At an IRB detention review hearing Dec. 3, Luin was ordered released despite arguments that he posed a danger to the public and was unlikely to show up for deportation.

According to the transcript from the hearing, Luin’s criminal record shows he twice failed to attend court after convictions, once failed to appear in court and once failed to comply with a recognizance order.

“It seems to me that the minister is about 16 months behind in doing that which the minister ought to have started … a year and four months ago,” IRB adjudicator Paul Kyba wrote in his decision. “This submission to the minister for an opinion that you pose a danger to the public, in my opinion, should have been made very soon after your last conviction in July of last year, and I see no excuse; I see no valid reason why the minister chose to delay this procedure.”

Well…he’s out there now. In the city where I live. Thanks, everyone.

But remember, in Canada it’s racist to suggest that there needs to be any sort of reform or re-evaluation of priorities in the immigration and refugee claims process.

Let’s hope that they don’t make this mistake with Mohamed Parvez.

Update: Luin is back in custody after reporting to a job site near 97th Street and 63rd Avenue as a temporary worker. Hey! That’s just down the block from my office!

I see some — well, it looks like a government department — group in Switzerland is condemning that country’s immigration policies as “discriminatory and, in many respects racist.” Say it isn’t so…not the Swiss!

Fortunately, it isn’t so.

The report, from Switzerland’s Federal Commission on Racial Discrimination, recommends far-reaching changes.

It criticises the practice of allowing members of a community to vote on an individual’s citizenship application.

Muslims and people from the Balkans and Africa are the most likely to be rejected, the report points out.

This doesn’t strike me as racist as much as it strikes me as prudent. After all, many other European nations are…shall we say…”struggling” with the lawlessness of large immigrant populations from the Balkans and Africa, especially those segments of said immigrant populations which are also Muslim. France is perhaps the most salient example one could point to here (indeed, some commentators have classified the persistent levels of violence in French Muslim immigrant communities as being akin to a low-level intifada).

And is it racist of the Swiss to say to themselves “hey, we don’t want that kind of trouble here, and since that trouble would seem to be linked to certain demographic factors, perhaps we can avoid having that kind of trouble here if we limit the demographic factors likely to give rise to such trouble?” I don’t think it is. I think it might be the sanest thing any European government has said in…well, recent memory at least.

Switzerland has Europe’s toughest naturalisation laws. Foreigners must live for 12 years in a Swiss community before they can apply, and being born in Switzerland brings no right to citizenship.

Is that really an unreasonable and racist policy? Twelve years is a fairly lengthy time, yes, but what if that’s the amount of time needed for a person to really, truly feel habituated to a place and its customs, culture, traditions and laws?

Under the current system, foreigners apply through their local town or village.

Which, again, is reasonable — why force foreigners to apply for citizenship in a locale in which they a) have not been living and b) probably won’t move in to after they become citizens? The other advantage that this method theoretically confers on the Swiss is that it gives each local town or village the ability to say whether it wants to accept as a citizen the applicant in question — while it’s not easy to hide any wrongdoing in one’s history, it’s harder to hide it from the authorities in the place where one lives, as opposed to in a place one does not live.

They appear before a citizenship committee and answer questions about their desire to be Swiss. After that, they must often be approved by the entire voting community, in a secret ballot, or a show of hands. This practice, the report says, is particularly likely to be distorted by racial discrimination.

It cites the case of a disabled man originally from Kosovo. Although fulfilling all the legal criteria, his application for citizenship was rejected by his community on the grounds that his disability made him a burden on taxpayers, and that he was Muslim.

Now, did the report actually say that the reason for rejection was, in part, due to the man’s Muslim faith? Was that actually written on a document somewhere? Or is that just the man’s personal opinion being parroted by the BBC reporter (after all, this is the BBC we’re talking about here).*

The rejection on financial grounds makes more sense, in that a country has every right to desire for itself those citizens who will make a net positive financial contribution to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, and to explicitly not desire for itself those citizens who will be a net financial drain. Put more plainly, nations desire (or should desire) to admit immigrants who will take on jobs and become taxpayers, as opposed to immigrants who will have to draw payments from government support programs.

This is especially true in Europe, where many countries are morphing into welfare states anyhow.

The report recommends that decisions on citizenship should be decided by an elected executive and not by the community as a whole. But such a move is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

What makes more sense here? That a community — i.e. the people who will be living and working alongside the new citizens — be allowed to decide who can and cannot be made a citizen of the community, or that the decision be outsourced to a disinterested political body external to the community (which, almost by definition, cannot be expected to understand the community’s needs and human dynamic)?

When a coach is putting together a sports team, it’s the coach and his assistants and trainers who will attend the camps and tournaments to scout out talent — that coach and his assistants will pick the best athletes they can based on their observations, to form the most effective team possible. Where that process goes awry is when the decision-making process is either hampered or co-opted entirely by an external body; if some third-party group simply handed a coach a group of athletes of uncertain skill and compatibility and expected an effective team to result from it, would that be anywhere near as likely to actually happen as in the case of the coach-picked team?

Foreigners are a key issue in the run-up to Switzerland’s general election next month.

The right-wing Swiss People’s Party, currently leading in the opinion polls, claims Swiss communities have a democratic right to decide who can or cannot be Swiss.

Only in that bizarre European sense of irony could a right-wing party think to call itself “the people’s,” but I suppose that’s how they roll across The Pond. This party has been in the Swiss news before, at the center of the minaret controversy over there — their basic argument is that the erection of minarets (the towers from which criers call — all across cities — the Muslim faithful to prayer) would be a violation of the secular nature of Swiss governance. And one can kind of see where they’re coming from — a call to prayer is all well and good, but if one religion (above and beyond all others) is enabled and allowed to loudly call its faithful to prayer (cries from minarets can be heard over a long, long distance) in a highly visible, highly public way…what message does that send about a) the rights and value of other religions in the nation and b) the character and “face” of the nation, including its government?

It’s not unreasonable to assume that a city in which prayer calls from minarets are commonplace ought to have a government that reflects the prevalence of the religion most clearly on display, is it?

Especially when the religion in question is also a much more political animal than either of its Abrahamic counterparts?

Nations ought to be allowed to make informed decisions — even if there is an element of discrimination (taken here to mean “to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately”) at work in the process. A country should have the right to say that it expects certain qualities and contributions from those who seek to immigrate to it, and that it does not want certain things to happen within its borders (especially when said things include the sort of ongoing violence one sees in other parts of Europe).