There's growing hysteria against the prayer space for Muslim students at the Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. It's claimed that it gives special treatment to Muslims, undermines public education and imposes sexism on society, and that we should support a supposedly broad-based multifaith coalition that opposes it. But this is based on a series of myths.
MYTH: The prayer space gives special treatment to Muslims and undermines secularism.
FACT: The prayer spaces promotes secularism by providing equal access to public education.
According to Toronto District School Board Education (TDSB) Director Chris Spence: "As a public school board, we have a responsibility and an obligation to accommodate faith needs." With its weekends and vacations, the school calendar already accommodates students who pray on Saturday or Sunday, and those who observe Easter and Christmas. Furthermore, as Omar Qayum, a TDSB teacher pointed out,
"At my school we have Christian invocations every year during our Remembrance Day assemblies and during the Christmas holidays through carols -- nobody complains! Furthermore, some schools partake in Hanukah, Diwali and Kwanza to honour their Jewish, Hindu and African-American students."
The prayer space for Muslim students ensures that they are not excluded and forced to choose between their education and their faith. Rather than demanding the cancelling of Friday classes or having Muslim students miss class, the Friday prayer space ensures no disruption to non-Muslim students while promoting access to education for Muslim students. This is the essence of secularism: equal access to public services irrespective of religion.
Banning prayer spaces undermines this principle, and there's a history of such discrimination towards Muslims. As an article in the Ottawa Citizen reminds us:
Advertising
"It's the same as the flap about civil arbitration back in 2005. For more than a decade, the government of Ontario had a system that permitted Orthodox Christians and Jews to settle family disputes according to their faith's rules provided the outcome did not violate generally applicable laws and principles. Not controversial in the least. Then a handful of Muslims asked to do the same, there was a mighty backlash, and the government scrapped the whole system."
MYTH: The prayer space undermines public education.
FACT: Opposition to the prayer space is scapegoating Muslims for government cuts.
The Toronto Sun claimed that "the taxpayers are funding religious schools after all. Or at least one that we know of. If it's not stopped now who knows where this will end up or how much it will cost."
Firstly, taxpayers are not funding a separate Muslim prayer space, it is happening in the existing school cafeteria, organized and paid for by the local Muslim community. Secondly, we know of many religious schools that receive public funding: Catholic schools, which segregate boys and girls not only in separate prayer spaces but in separate schools.
Most importantly, the erosion of quality public education is not because of accommodation to religious minorities. Prayer spaces have not reduced education budgets and extra-curricular activities, or increased class sizes, budget cuts have. It's no coincidence that minorities are being scapegoated in times of economic crisis and austerity measures. Britain's conservative government is imposing massive cuts to jobs and services, including the tripling of university tuition. At the same time it's blaming "multiculturalism" and giving confidence to extremist groups like the English Defense League who target Muslims.
MYTH: The prayer space is imposing segregation on education and society.
FACT: Muslims are being scapegoated for segregation that pervades society and all its institutions.
The hysteria against the prayer space gives the impression that girls and women would be liberated were it not for an optional weekly half hour Muslim prayer at one school. But segregation of the sexes exists in all religions -- including the segregation of menstruating women in some orthodox Jewish communities. As Aisha Sherazi, a formal principal wrote recently, "Growing up in a Hindu family, men and women always sat separately…It is up to the Muslim community to have a debate about whether they want to have mixed prayer or not." But the Islamophobic campaign against the prayer space does not open up space for this debate, it closes it.
Furthermore the campaign suggests segregation is isolated to Muslim prayer space. But throughout society women face segregation -- in pay, reproductive choice, media images that shame their bodies, and levels of violence. Campaigns in Western countries against Muslims are scapegoating them for these far broader forms of segregation, while denying that Muslim women have any agency in their own lives. In France where less than 25 per cent of MPs are women, the government has claimed to liberate women by banning those who wear niqab from public space.
In Canada the federal Harper government refuses to investigate missing and murdered Aboriginal women, purged funding from women's groups, imposed a maternal health plan that denies reproductive choice, and told women's groups to "shut the fuck up." As women are segregated into lower socio-economic status, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's massive proposal of cuts will disproportionately hurt those who rely on city services -- from bus routes to dental care. Why aren't the groups up in arms over prayer space organizing protests against these policies of segregation affecting far broader population?
MYTH: A broad multi-faith coalition opposes the prayer space.
FACT: A small number of fringe groups with a history of Islamophobia oppose the prayer space.
Far from being a large multi-faith opposition, the main organized opposition to the prayer space are fringe political groups with a history of Islamophobia: the Jewish Defense League (an extremist Zionist group), the Christian Heritage Party (a fringe right-wing party that calls for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries, and that opposes women's choice), the Canadian Hindu Advocacy (a Hindu nationalist group whose spokesperson claimed that Islamic civilization had contributed "less to human advancement than a pack of donkeys") and the Muslim Canadian Congress (a small group whose spokeperson Tarek Fatah has become a media darling for supporting campaigns against religious accommodation for Muslims).
It's obvious that what unites these groups is not their love of public education or their commitment to women's rights, but their Islamophobia. Despite their fringe numbers and beliefs, the media has helped them spark a hysterical reaction against an optional weekly half hour of prayer that doesn't interfere with non-Muslims and which allow Muslim students to better integrate into public school -- but which like all religions and most of society has some form of segregation. These groups are trying to import the politics of David Cameron and the English Defense League, paying lip service to women's rights and public education as an excuse to whip up Islamophobia, providing a scapegoat to economic crisis and austerity.
I am appalled at Mr. McLaren's use of the designation "fact" for statements that are clearly highly debatable matters of opinion. Go and have another look at the list. This is just one example: "FACT: Opposition to the prayer space is scapegoating Muslims for government cuts". This is not a fact. It's an opinion, and it's intellectually dishonest for him to claim that this statement as a fact.
Mr. McLaren, as someone who supports the vast majority of commentators on this matter, who are convinced that the TDSB is wrong, I would be happy to have a debate about whether or not your claims are true. But making blind assertions about the motivations of those who oppose this blatant case of religious discrimination is petty and unproductive.
In your list of organizations that oppose the Imam-led service , you forgot to mention the Canadian Secular Alliance. The CSA has also been featured in the media on the issue and has no history of Islamophobia. I suggest that everyone read the position papers on our web site, especially the one on banning the veil, which we oppose, and the one on the public funding of religious schools, which to a great extent informs our view on the Valley Park issue.
As with the Catholic school issue you cite, the problem at Valley Park is that one group is being given privileges not given to other groups, both religious and secular. It is, simply put, unfair. If it is so important to these families to have Muslim preaching in their children's schools, they are welcome to pay for such an institution themselves. When public money is involved, we either need to accommodate everyone or accommodate no one. Accommodating everyone is not practically possible. Furthermore, Ontarians don't want it. Remember what happened to John Tory's campaign in 2007 when he suggested we extend funding to all schools. It was a train wreck.
These are some of the reasons why we must not allow exemptions to generally applicable laws and policies. It is the best way to maintain the core liberal-democratic principles of fairness and equality.
Mike Evans
Have to agree with the above comment about trying to dress up opinions as "facts".
In fact, secular orgs and secular people are opposed to bringing these religions into the public schools.
Many difficult aspects to this arise. For example, for students, the peer-pressure of attending these prayers would be very high. As well, the permission slips required by parents, also exerts a very high social pressure to attend, which has been ruled against in the courts.
This has been dressed up in various ways, but its very obvious that in fact there are religious groups who are trying to get their religion into the public schools, to reach children with their religious beliefs.
If this is allowed to happen in public schools, there will be mass Christian prayers at other schools, even Scientology will be given a room for their "run-downs" and will also be allowed to bring a Scientologist into the school. There is no end to it.
Of course, a simple solution would be to release the school at 3:15 or so on Friday, and leave religion a private matter.
But that is not the objective. The objective is to bring religion back into public schools, using the backdoor. And the last thing we need, is for religous believers of all opposing stripes, to start bringing their belief systems into schools, to turn Canada into a religious battleground like most of the rest of the world.
Very strange that so many on the "left" refuse to see this. Don't think they would be saying the same thing if Harper was bringing Evangelical Christianity back into public schools with a weekly prayer rally for Jesus.
Judges have already ruled that "voluntary" prayers of this type exert peer pressure. So it seems this needs to be taken to the courts, and hopefully this backdoor religion into public schools will be closed immediately.
And please refrain from painting those who are against this as being some fringe group. This is a hot-button issue, that lost John Tory an election.
We'll see how those on the "left" will react when the Harper backed Evangelicals seize on this, and religious anti-abortionists get a plan together, and begin massive campaigns to get Jesus back into public schools this fall. After all, if the Muslim students are allowed about an hour after lunch in the Cafeteria, then so is everyone else. And everyone else will be allowed to bring their own preachers into the school as well. Won't be long until Pro-Life preachers are hitting the public school lunch hour circuit.
The significant links of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) to the neo-nazi English Defence League(EDL) and Anders Behring Breivik's connections to these same Islamophobic networks, reveal the origins and true nature of the protest against what the JDL's website refers to as 'Radical Islam'. Breivik's own website is quite clear: "Let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists."
See also:
Was The Massacre in Norway A Reaction to BDS
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july252011/norway-bcs-ga.php
There were, as I recall, a bunch of us opposed to religious family law having equal status with civil family law in the Ontario courts even before the Sharia thing came up. We were always concerned that Orthodox Christian and Orthodox Jewish women were getting a raw deal out of that, and rightly so, as the result of trying to enforce the Citizen writer's "... provided the outcome did not violate generally applicable laws and principles" was more litigation in the civil courts to try to get religious arbitrations overturned on that basis, if I recall correctly. Good riddance to bad law, in that case, the State should not be involved in reinforcing religious law!
NDPP, I suggest you stop trying to discredit those who oppose the TDSB on this issue by labelling them "islamophobic" and instead repsond to the real issues being discussed.
"Fact" #3 is a good example of a tu quoque fallacy: the fact that my accuser believes or does the same thing is taken to be evidence that that belief or practice is not problematic. Because something happens elsewhere, it is taken to be acceptable here. In this case, because women are discriminated against and segregated in other social spheres, both religious and non-religious – some examples are nicely enumerated here – segregation of Muslim girls during prayers – in a publically funded space – is taken to be acceptable, or at least not open for debate. On the contrary, if the forms of harm that the author mentions are indeed wrong, surely the segregation of Muslim girls during prayer is also wrong, as it is the same kind of thing. I’m not even sure why this should be a matter of debate. Imagine if a group wanted to segregate members based on race or ethnicity: that that would be problematic would not be open for debate, that it would not be alright for it to take place in a public school would also be clear, and that there are other instances of racism in society would surely not make it any less problematic.
It is beyond absurd to try and link the mass murders on Norway, with some others being opposed to bringing religious practices into the school-day, through the backdoor.
This is not a simple right/left issue.
There are secular folks on the center-left, who are utterly opposed to bringing these types of prayer services into the school-day, on school property. That applies to all religions. Lets be clear, its simply about religions trying to target children who's beliefs are not yet formed.
If the Friday prayers are allowed, then every religion will be allowed to bring their preachers into the school to have a go at the kids brains.
So its not Islamophobia in the least to oppose bringing these religious practices into the schools.
This is not a random thing happening. There is a post on Rabble, that actually puts forward a plan of action, where parents bring their religion into the school through the school board, and then begin tranforming the public school into a religious school.
http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/free-our-schools
http://rabble.ca/babble/feminism/mallick-time-someone-speak-shy-girls
Thank you so much for writing this article, Jesse. It's good to hear the occasional reasonable voice amid the manufactured hype.
MYTH: There is a creator God -- FACT: Secularphobia has run amok!