BlueBerry Pick'n
03-02-2007, 07:08 PM
Survey: 'Islamophobia' Rare In Canada
([Only registered and activated users can see links])By Staff, Feb 9, 2007
An international survey of 23 western countries finds that, among them, Canada is least afflicted by "Islamophobia."
Only 6.5 percent of Canadians said they would not like to live next to a Muslim, CanWest News Service reported.
Researchers questioned 32,000 people in 19 European countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Researchers interviewed 2,000 Canadians.
The highest percentages of people not wanting Muslim neighbors were found in Greece with 20.9 per cent; Belgium, 19.8; Norway, 19.3; and Finland, 18.9. In Britain, 14.1 percent of those surveyed want to keep their distance, and the figure is 10.9 percent in the United States.
The average for all the countries surveyed was 14.5 percent.
The survey was done by economists Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and John Mangan of the University of Queensland in Australia. They are the authors of a paper -- "Love Thy Neighbor: How Much Bigotry Is There in Western Countries?" -- to be published in the journal Kyklos.
“Islamophobia is the way in which the Muslim community is constructed as an enemy, a civilizational other,” she said. “[It's] the idea that Muslims as a whole are completely homogenous unto themselves, there is no differentiation between Muslims. As a whole, Muslims occupy the opposite of everything that is good in the West.”
Syed said that this framework portrays Muslims though they're “out of the march of history [and] stuck in medieval times”.
“It underpins the war on terror; it underpins the rhetoric of the war on terror ([Only registered and activated users can see links]),” she said. “It also underpins the way support is mobilized. But beyond that, it is also at the basis of the kinds of egregious human-rights abuses that we've seen in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and here in Canada as well.”
Syed cited as an example the issuance of so-called security certificates against mostly men of Middle Eastern or Arabic backgrounds. Some of these detainees, held indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence, are incarcerated at the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre in Ontario, which is dubbed by civil-rights activists “Canada's Guantánamo North” ([Only registered and activated users can see links]).
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“The fact that Canadians are allowing these civil-rights violations to continue to take place in Canada is part of Islamophobia,” Syed said. “We are a country of civil rights but we allow for these exceptions.”
Syed also cited the controversial code of conduct for immigrants adopted last January in Hérouxville, a rural Quebec town. The code provides for, among other things, allowing women to show their faces in public. By tradition, Muslim women wear head scarves. The CBC reported that on February 12, the town council amended the code, removing references to “no stoning of women in public” and “no female circumcision”.
“Inherent in the way in which that declaration was framed is basically Islamophobia,” Syed said. “It creates an idea where everything in the West is completely egalitarian, completely democratic; everything is completely perfect, and on the other side, everything is completely barbaric, completely oppressive.”
On December 7, 2004, Kofi Annan, then the United Nations' secretary-general, addressed a UN seminar called “Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding”. He noted that the term seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ...
([Only registered and activated users can see links])By Staff, Feb 9, 2007
An international survey of 23 western countries finds that, among them, Canada is least afflicted by "Islamophobia."
Only 6.5 percent of Canadians said they would not like to live next to a Muslim, CanWest News Service reported.
Researchers questioned 32,000 people in 19 European countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Researchers interviewed 2,000 Canadians.
The highest percentages of people not wanting Muslim neighbors were found in Greece with 20.9 per cent; Belgium, 19.8; Norway, 19.3; and Finland, 18.9. In Britain, 14.1 percent of those surveyed want to keep their distance, and the figure is 10.9 percent in the United States.
The average for all the countries surveyed was 14.5 percent.
The survey was done by economists Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and John Mangan of the University of Queensland in Australia. They are the authors of a paper -- "Love Thy Neighbor: How Much Bigotry Is There in Western Countries?" -- to be published in the journal Kyklos.
“Islamophobia is the way in which the Muslim community is constructed as an enemy, a civilizational other,” she said. “[It's] the idea that Muslims as a whole are completely homogenous unto themselves, there is no differentiation between Muslims. As a whole, Muslims occupy the opposite of everything that is good in the West.”
Syed said that this framework portrays Muslims though they're “out of the march of history [and] stuck in medieval times”.
“It underpins the war on terror; it underpins the rhetoric of the war on terror ([Only registered and activated users can see links]),” she said. “It also underpins the way support is mobilized. But beyond that, it is also at the basis of the kinds of egregious human-rights abuses that we've seen in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and here in Canada as well.”
Syed cited as an example the issuance of so-called security certificates against mostly men of Middle Eastern or Arabic backgrounds. Some of these detainees, held indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence, are incarcerated at the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre in Ontario, which is dubbed by civil-rights activists “Canada's Guantánamo North” ([Only registered and activated users can see links]).
...
“The fact that Canadians are allowing these civil-rights violations to continue to take place in Canada is part of Islamophobia,” Syed said. “We are a country of civil rights but we allow for these exceptions.”
Syed also cited the controversial code of conduct for immigrants adopted last January in Hérouxville, a rural Quebec town. The code provides for, among other things, allowing women to show their faces in public. By tradition, Muslim women wear head scarves. The CBC reported that on February 12, the town council amended the code, removing references to “no stoning of women in public” and “no female circumcision”.
“Inherent in the way in which that declaration was framed is basically Islamophobia,” Syed said. “It creates an idea where everything in the West is completely egalitarian, completely democratic; everything is completely perfect, and on the other side, everything is completely barbaric, completely oppressive.”
On December 7, 2004, Kofi Annan, then the United Nations' secretary-general, addressed a UN seminar called “Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding”. He noted that the term seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ...