Let her cover her face

I am 100% against the offensive and oppressive edict from the Conservative government that muslim women who, as an act of faith, choose to cover their faces must remove their niqab to take the oath of citizenship.

I have heard no good argument in favour of this measure. There are other ways of confirming identity, and their are other ways to accommodate the very few new Canadians with this particular religious conviction. This move is based neither in principle nor in necessity. The Tories have an axe to grind, and they don’t care if they chip away at our freedom of religion.

Neutralize anti-Islamic dress laws by paying fines

This is too beautiful:

“J’en appelle aujourd’hui à une désobéissance civile”, déclare-t-il à France 24. “Je voudrais dire aux femmes de ne pas avoir peur de sortir voilée intégralement. En payant leurs contraventions, je neutralise la loi. Je veux montrer qu’elle ne fonctionne pas, que c’est un échec pour les acteurs politiques qui l’ont promulguée.”

— Rachid Nekkaz, 38 years old, real-estate businessman in Paris.

Focus on families, my immigration message to the Tories

In their quest to shuffle around the Canadian Immigration policy, I hope the Conservatives do not make family unification more difficult for Canadians.

As far as I am concerned, family reunification should be the top priority over and above any social engineering to increase the Canadian workforce. Strong families breed responsible people. People who want to unite their relatives demonstrate family values that I think are more honorable than any other. I would rather live among such people than take a gamble with over-educated unmarried foreigners.

Daniel Dion: death of a Mexican businessman

For the past few days, I have been digesting the frantic cries to ban travel to Mexico and I do not understand them. I have never been to Mexico and I have no plans to visit — not that I have anything against the place, it is just that travelling to far off lands where I have no power to secure my own safety just is not the type of thing that I consider intelligent. Oh, well. We all take gambles.

Be that as it may, I found the news of Daniel Dion’s murder to be quite disturbing but probably not in the way that most folks would. The first things that stood out to me are:
1) he was a businessman
2) he was peddling “eco-bags”
3) his “eco-bags” were manufactured by Mexican prison inmates.
Daniel Dion comes across to me as an opportunist of what is essentially slave labor.

[Coincidentally, I got a free "eco-bag" as a sales pitch delivered to me from one of my potential suppliers the next day at work. I did not need the bag and I did not need the business from that supplier.]

I have a hard time believing this was a simple robbery. It is useless to blame the Mexican legal system for brushing Dion’s execution under the rug because that is what the Mexicans do. Everybody knows that. Daniel Dion should have known where he was going and the risks he took.

I do not mean to be callous. I sincerely want to offer a lesson for the future: Do not do business with nefarious folks. That is what Canadians should learn from this tragedy — a tragedy that includes the misfortune of all the incarcerated Mexicans who are being used.

Which Party–Liberal or Conservative–Believes in Multiculturalism?

The Liberal Party condemns the Conservative Party for choosing “again and again to divide communities–by race, religion, language and national origin–for partisan advantage.”

But in reality there is little daylight between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party when it comes to multiculturalism policy. Both parties even use the same metaphor.

Conservatives recognize the “regional, cultural and socio-economic diversity of Canada” and are committed to “embracing our differences and respecting our traditions, yet honoring a concept of Canada as the greater sum of strong parts.”

For their part, Liberals “believe that Canada is much more than the sum of its parts, and that we are stronger not despite our differences, but because of them.”

So, which party believes in multiculturalism?

The answer is both.

Is the wind blowing that way now?

With Quebec struggling through reasonable accomodation issues in order to preserve their heritage, France has just voted 335 to 1 on a total ban on of face-covering veils in public spaces.

Similar laws are pending in Belgium, Spain and some Italian municipalities.

Is this the way the wind is beginning to blow in Western Societies? I’m both encouraged and dismayed if this is true. Not specifically about the veils, but rather by the attitudes behind it.

As far as being encouraged goes, I’m pleased to see countries and societies standing up for their own way of life and culture and protecting it from being trampled over by the stampede of Cultural (Reasonable) Accommodation.  I’ve previously discussed this issue in other aspects here, and here.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The reason why so many people want to come to Canada is because it was such a wonderful, stable, and respectful country. We had clear values and respect for one another’s differences. What brought us to that status was a legacy inherited from Britain and France of a predominately Christian philosophy and a structured but flexible legal system based on basic Christian values.

Just as Quebec and France and other countries have been trying to do, I agree that if faced with protecting my culture (which is what has made Canada for example, a wonderful place to live and why people want to come here) that there should be conditions upon migrating to my country.

Foremost, I want to ensure that migrants understand that when they come to Canada, it is to pursue a better life in a Canadian manner, not to seek to rebuild the country in an image of how they would have rather seen their country of origin under those cultural rules.

Increasingly, other countries are saying ‘We are not some place to be considered a tolerant blank-slate-state that you can come in and change to suit your own beliefs’.

I say that there is nothing wrong with this.

I appreciate the differences that other cultures and individuals bring with them, but I recognize that not all of it can, or should be tolerated in Canada. (see Sharia Law, Honor “Crimes”,  etc). Those things are not Canadian and have no place in Canadian Society or Culture. Time and again, I’ve seen other countries stomp on those who say “In my country…” with an immediate and sometimes hostile “You are not in your country!”.

Why are we in Western Societies so afraid to do the same? Is this some form of White Guilt/Wealth Guilt/Survivor Guilt etc? Are we so ashamed of our own cultures and ways of life that we are unwilling as citizens to stand up and defend it?

And why should I be dismayed by this? Frankly, I’m dismayed that there is only a small handful of countries getting on board with protecting themselves and their own ways of life and culture from outside influences.

Personally, I’m willing to say “This is my country and my way of life and my home. If you choose to come to live in my house, there are different rules you’ll have to live by. If that’s unacceptable to you, then I respectfully suggest you find someplace else more to your liking.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Accommodating Honour Murder

With Aqsa Parvez finally resting peacefully, her murderers — her very own father and brother — sentenced to the Canadian-style “life in prison” with no chance of parole for 18 years, it’s time for the religious equivalence and multiculturalist types to step forward again and declare that “honour killing,” which I more accurately define as honour murder, is not just Islam’s problem.

Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal MP – it’s the bloody patriarchy, stupid!

There is a huge misconception that these crimes occur because of certain religious beliefs. There is no religion that condones the murder of women. It’s the feudal/patriarchal culture of male dominance and control that’s the culprit.

Dr. Amin Muhammad, Professor of Psychiatry at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador – it’s not just Islam, stupid!

While many recent cases in Western society involve Muslims, Dr. Muhammad said honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity.

To which I say: While it may be true that “honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity,” the numbers pale in comparison to the thousands of females murdered each year around the world in the name of Islam for the sake of family honour.

United Nations Population Fund:

Throughout the world, perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are murdered by members of their own families, many of them for the “dishonour” of having been raped, often as not by a member of their own extended family.

It is dishonest at best to survey the numbers of honour murders committed by Muslims, along with the allowances for honour murder within the legal structures of Islamic nations, such as Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan, which can be seen as a tacit endorsement of the practice, and then suggest equivalency among faiths when a handful of honour murders are committed by members of other faiths. Honour murder is a much greater problem for Islam than it is for other faiths and it is ludicrous to even suggest otherwise.

As for endorsement within religious texts, Dosanjh and Muhammed are correct that no religion condones honour murder per se, but they should have been more careful to point out the caveats under Islam that have led to the widespread acceptance of honour murder within Islamic tradition. As an example, Christianity, the faith I know best, provides no justification whatsoever to murder one’s own children or one’s wife, whereas the Qur’an Sura 18 arguably allows for the killing of children not even your own as long as you’ve accurately determined a child will grow up as a non-believer. (How that determination is made, I have no clue.)

Does honour murder occur in other faiths? Yes. Under which faith is it most prevalent, by far? Islam. Which nations tacitly endorse the practice through caveats of law? Islamic nations. That’s the point that must be accepted before reform can be realized, and it’s the critical point that Dosanjh and others prefer to gloss over to our collective detriment.

I credit Dosanjh in one respect, though; his reference to the role political correctness in shaping the response to honour murder.

… political correctness prevents us from demanding that the cultural norms that justify such heinous practices as honour killings have no place anywhere in the world. We must never be too sensitive to call a spade a spade.

As if on cue, some on the pro-dhimmi side are already suggesting Canadian judges should take “cultural practices,” such as honour killing, into consideration out of respect for (I say genuflection at the altar of) multiculturalism. Scaramouche, via Mark Steyn:

John Oakley is seriously entertaining the question of whether Canadian judges should give those who commit “honour” killings a break because they have different “cultural practices” and may not be aware of our norms and laws; defence attorney Lawrence Ben-Eliezer thinks judges should  take these differences into consideration because we have “multiculturalism”.

Canadians, of course, are already aware of what “taking these differences into consideration” means: preferential treatment of en vogue “victim” groups of the political left. What Canadians are less aware of, in my opinion, is the tangible threat posed to Western society by ardent multiculturalism, our Achilles heel.

“Trudeaupian legerdemain”

Mark Steyn at his best. Brilliant.

Mr. Siddiqui was not impressed by the arguments mounted against the head-to-toe body bag—for example, the notion that it is a “symbol of oppression”:

“Let’s assume that [the niqab] is,” [Haroon Siddiqui] wrote. “Whose business is it to end the practice—that of the state?”

That’s pretty cute coming from a guy who, during this magazine’s long battle with Canada’s “human rights” commissions, argued at length that it was most certainly the business of the state to end the practice of Maclean’s carrying Islamophobic Steyn columns. If the state can regulate what you write and say and think and even (as in the lesbian heckler case at the British Columbia Tribunal) what you quip, it can most certainly regulate what you wear. In Canada, it would be quicker to list what isn’t the business of the state. “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation,” said Pierre Trudeau, unless, of course, you’re tucked up with a nice mug of cocoa reading an Islamophobic edition of Maclean’s. It was a classic bit of Trudeaupian legerdemain: if you’re allowed to roger anything that moves, or doesn’t, according to taste, you won’t notice all the other parts of your life the state has a place in. In Canada, it’s the state’s business when you get your hip operation, not yours: if the state has jurisdiction over your hip, why shouldn’t it also have jurisdiction over which garments the hip can be sheathed in? In Canada, a resident alien is not permitted to own a bookstore, on grounds of cultural protection. If “cultural protection” can prohibit a homosexual from San Francisco opening up a gay bookstore in Vancouver, why can’t it also extend to a Muslim woman’s dress?

And Quebec is Canada without even the residual restraints of the Britannic inheritance. In the interests of la collectivité, the province regulates not only the public usage of language but the very size of lettering in which your words can be displayed. If the state has power to set a maximum font on the ladies’ room door, why can’t it also set a limit on the yards of cloth you have to hoist up once you get in there?

Emphasized portions mine. Do read it all.

Who are Muslim women?

As much as I have a hard time siding with Quebec statesmen, I have to wonder what masked muslims are thinking. It is just silly for them to expect to live in a cosmopolitan community while simultaneously wearing a mask.

Some Thoughts on the Proposed Anthem Amendment

• I unequivocally loathe the suggestion.
• Is the CPC conservative or not? If so, should not a “conservative” government act to conserve or preserve the nation’s traditions?
• Following the thought line of a National Post commenter, the vast majority of people who have served and laid down their lives for this country are male, they are the nation’s sons. The vast majority of those who will further serve and lay down their lives for this great nation are male, they are the nation’s sons.  Do we change the anthem because women are now more prominent in the military and are becoming battle casualties? Is this reason enough?
• Isn’t the whole thing a bit like straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic? I mean, we’re in the hole up to our nostrils, we continue to be taxed on birth, life and death, government is no smaller than it was five years ago, we still involved in war in Afghanistan, and we’ve got people suggesting we should add air pistols to the list of licensed firearms. There are a thousand higher priorities than fiddling with the anthem.
• Misplaced priorities aside, what is there to gain in this enterprise?  Was there some sort of national outcry over the anthem that I didn’t hear about?  Seems to me Canadians sang the living heck of our anthem for two weeks in February, to the point of being hoarse, with tears on our cheeks and pride in our hearts, all of us — male and female and the transgendered/unknown/confused/experimenting.  I didn’t see or hear any females, full or quasi, having identity crises or feeling somehow slighted and emotionally damaged by singing “in all Thy sons’ command.” Tinkering with the anthem is likely to create more headaches for government than having left it completely alone. It causes me to wonder who is the imbecile whispering these dumb suggestions in the PM’s ear? Or is it the man himself?
• Speaking of sexual identity, how far would the government have to go to make a phrase completely sex neutral? And what certainty do we have that whatever is contrived will stand the test of sexual identity evolution, which seems to result in another letter being appended to the acronym each and every year?
• Are there any truly sacred national icons or traditions?  Seriously.

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