As the fuss/tantrum/tumult over the Muslim community centre in south Manhattan, or "Ground Zero Mosque" to its opponents, continues, Guelph's Sikh community's recent attempt to build a new gurdwara has found strikingly similar opponents.
Significant numbers of the gurdwara's opponents' racist mentality and conflating tactics display significant parallels to the divisive rhetoric surrounding the Manhattan centre. There are distinct parallels in the mentality in which the arguments are forged and how the proponents are framed. Despite Canadian portrayals as more tolerant and without a War on Islam, sorry Terror, when it comes to Sikhism the same accusations and complaints are lodged.
The Guelph Sikh Society recently received planning permission to build a new temple in the south end of the City despite significant negative reaction. They plan to replace their existing space, a converted beer store, with a new gurdwara on a major road backing directly onto a residential subdivision begun in the last 10 years. The gurdwara's opponents have been careful to frame themselves as neighbours or taxpayers, and have resisted local media attempts to label them with the simple tag of racists, fearful of any people of colour in their neighbourhood. Just as the community centre in Manhattan has seen reaction from those who cannot fathom a community of diverse people, sharing a common space, the Guelph project has seen opposition which is inherently racist and fails to fathom the fact that Sikhs have formed a significant part of Guelph's community for some decades.
One quasi-public meeting was hosted by the succinctly named "Stop-the-Temple" group. The meeting was attended by a couple dozen neighbourhood residents and an undisclosed number of local citizens (including the myself) who came as a result of the meeting's advertised claim (subsequently acted on) that the press would be barred entry.
At the meeting there were assertions that the Sikh community is part of a conspiracy with local developers and that the local municipal council is in cahoots, an assertion not unlike the ones faced by the developer in Manhattan but on a more global scale. Just as the centre in Manhattan has been construed as a forward base for foreign influence the Guelph temple was construed as a headquarters for regional Sikhs (laughable with the temple's modest size) and the first step in a massive influx of population. That either community is just addressing a shortage of space within their current location is in neither case ever entertained.
Both the Guelph gurdwara and the community centre are designed to offer community space in areas which are not already over served. Although the Islamic centre added the prayer room later in its development, the Guelph gurdwara was from the outset designed to serve both a community and religious purpose. The oppositional rhetoric in both cases inflates the bogeyman of prayer space in the buildings.
The rhetoric opposing the Muslim community centre refers to it as a mosque, negating to note that the prayer space is interfaith and only a minor part of the plans. In the case of the Guelph gurdwara, an acknowledged prayer space, the calculations done by its opponents have attempted to include the entirety of the building. They suggest that people will be praying in the lobby, the bathrooms, the closets and the kitchen. This is farcical. But just as in Manhattan, Guelph is burdened by those who refuse to accept that the religious centre of a minority is not a beachhead for cultural invasion. At a Guelph City Council meeting one gurdwara opponent showed just how he viewed the development. Commenting that the decorative style of the gurdwara was not in keeping with the rest of the neighbourhood this opponent stated his opposition to the domes which he referred to as "turrets."
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Although the Muslim community centre in Manhattan has many community amenities built in it, it continues to be viewed mistakenly as an exclusive centre. The idea that it could actually be a community centre simply run by a religious group (like the YMCA) is implicitly denied because to the opponents Muslims are inherently not part of the public the way Christians are. Similarly in Guelph numerous opponents claimed that the gurdwara should be located in a different neighbourhood because it wouldn't be "useable by the whole community" as one letter to council put it. The idea that somehow a neighbourhood needs to ghettoize by religion before it may build a temple actually reinforces the exclusion of immigrants. Ironically, many opponents of the temple claim immigrants supposed decision to self-exclude as the reason for their opposition.
In both cases location issues came to the fore. The community centre, two blocks away from Ground Zero, is presented as too close. Why would peaceful Muslims place a "mosque" so close -- ask supposedly unbiased opponents. But they have conflated Al-Qaeda and an entire religion as if it was Islam that attacked. Similarly in the case of the Guelph gurdwara, Sikhs were openly asked, at a city council meeting, why they would want to situate a gurdwara in a community that didn't want them. The argument that "peaceful Muslims" should show due reverence and locate elsewhere is not unlike the Guelph situation where opponents were "concerned" that the Sikh community should rather build elsewhere and were just picking a site without proper consideration for the neighbourhood. Building bridges to a community is in both cases thrown out as an option at the planning stage.
The Muslim Canadian Congress's stance to oppose the Manhattan community centre has interesting parallels with the Guelph case. The MCC has given in to the idea that it is too pushy to place a Muslim community centre so near ground zero, conceding to a point of view which sees Muslims as a suspicious in New York. Similarly, despite a very much white-dominated planning culture which rarely sees ethnically diverse groups at public meetings, a number of people of colour came out to oppose the gurdwara's location, arguing that the temple should follow what other religions practiced by racialized immigrants have done and locate in an industrial area. Some talked of how their desire to push the Sikhs out of their community to the opposite corner of the city showed how much they cared as they found an appropriate place to put the Sikhs.
The assumption that the positioning of a Sikh place of worship should follow the Canadian norm of locating in an industrial area is supported by the precedent of ostensibly professional and unbiased planners. That is planners who have managed to understand that a church is not a religion factory but not until quite recently do the same with minority faith temples. At the "Stop-the-Temple" meeting an opponent, with a notably thick accent, commended a proposed placement of the gurdwara in an industrial area near English as a second language classes. That the Sikhs who are immigrating come from Commonwealth English-speaking nations was lost. Opponents attempted to portray the Sikh community, in much the way Manhattan's Muslim community was, as one made up of solely recent immigrants.
The experience of the two cases shows how much racialized fear continues to exist in both small and large liberal cities of North America. They also show that even if a minority has been in a community for longer than their opponent that is no protection from racialization and the smear of foreignness. In both cases the body in charge of the planning decision has made the enlightened decision and accepted the reasonable proposals before them. In both case they now face appeal. The challenge now is for those who are anti-racist to make sure that such smears and farcical accusations do not trample attempts to physically embody the diverse communities we usually only have the ability to support in principle.
Leif Maitland grew up in Guelph but now studies planning in Toronto.
Further information:
Guelph gurdwara vandalism attack condemned.
"At the meeting there were assertions that the Sikh community is part of a conspiracy with local developers and that the local municipal council is in cahoots..."
This is really no surprise. Religious buildings, as 'community hubs,' have ALWAYS been anchors of new developments. Since the majority of new housing starts in Canada (and infills, urban sprawl) are basically the result of Canada's 250,000 annual immigration intake--much of which consists of Punjabi immigrants--a Sikh temple-centred housing development isn't a shock. And it's time to be frank, as Australia's government is, about the fact that mass immigration is nothing more than a housing market stimulus program, introduced and maintained at the request of real estate lobbies.
No 'race' is superior to another, and every culture has its good and bad attributes. However, different cultures and religious systems have incompatible values and attitudes, to non-negotiable things like women's rights and secularism. Tolerance, like everything else, also has elastic limits. Many formerly xenophilic, multi-culti Canadians are discovering that there is much more to 'culture' than music and cuisine. Simply put, much of Sikh culture does conflict with Christian-Canadian norms: interreligious dating, the role of women in society and even the 5 Ks. Something as simple as a ban on carrying weapons (i.e., including a knife) into public places have seen Sikhs collide with Canadian laws, and the turban was the subject of a failed bid to circumvent helmet laws. And the large Sikh diaspora itself is the result of intercultural friction between Sikhs and Hindus. And there's the very real concern over the presence of radical elements, like Babbar Khalsa (remember the Air India bombing?), which have set up shop in Canada, in Sikh temples.
Immigration from South Asia has also brought a large criminal element, including the so-called 'Punjabi Mafia' (Dhillon and other families). These groups now control much of Canada's transport industry, particularilly long-haul trucking, as well as warehouse and security operations. This is causing grief for people shut out of these sectors by ethnic protection, as well as shrinkage, graft and other issues. The concentration of wealthy South Asian expats in suburban ghettos (Springdale, Northeast Calgary) has also given rise to ethnic bloc-voting, and politicians pandering to certain ethnic groups. All parties are guilty of this, with Ruby Dhalla (Liberal, with a bad track record in that party) and Devinder Shory (Conservative, nominated under a cloud of alleged fraud).
Ruby Dhalla deserves special mention, in the case of Bill C-428. This is a bill to reduce the eligibility time for OAS recipients to three years of residency, if the would-be recipient hails from India, China, or certain other countries. Two things are very significant, here. First of all--unlike the U.S., Britain and other countries--India, China and the others on Dhalla's list don't have reciprocity agreements with Canada, meaning that OAS/pension obligations aren't mutually honoured. Secondly, the flow of retirees between Canada and countries like India is massively one-sided. This is simply not actuarially sustainable. Bill C-428 is causing massive outrage among voters, but both the mainstream and 'progressive' (e.g., Rabble) media outlets are tip-toeing around the issue. Furthermore, the huge influx of elderly, family-reunification class immigrants is straining the healthcare system. Hospital staff have complained bitterly of entire dialysis wards full of elderly Indian patients, who also require linguistic assistance. The Supreme Court's very ill-considered Singh Decision deserves some blame for setting this in motion. With diabetes rates among South Asian immigrants DOUBLE the national average, the explosion in healthcare costs and overuse of hospital facilities will only further strain Canadian's tolerance for immigration.
The rising level of xenophobia in Canada is worrisome, but should have been expected. No country has ever decided, on a democratic vote, to have its ethnic composition changed. The great, post-Trudeau/Mulroney demographic change was, put simply, foisted on Canadians by governments following the dictates of banking and real estate lobbyists. The almost boastful statements, from some multiculturalists, that Canada's European-Christian population will soon become a minority, have exacerbated Canadians' anxiety. The host culture never wants to become a minority in its own country, and the sharp turn to the right on the issue of multiculturalism reflects this. And bear in mind that there have never been multicultural DEMOCRACIES. Civil democracies require a certain level of cultural coherence, but state coercion is required to keep a truly multicultural society together. This has been proven time and time again, in tragically violent fashion, in a host of countries: the Roman, Austro-Hungarian, Soviet, Serbian (Yugoslavia), French and British Empires blew apart violently, when central control fell apart and democracy came. Canada's 'mosaic' is becoming more and more fractured, and this bodes very ill for our country's political stability.
It isn't about xenophobia, it's common sense. Sikhism is a radical religion, it a JIHAD religion. Please go to the Punjab and see for yourself what a corrupt wasteland it is, it looks like the Canadians have already dropped bombs there. These people will never change with their brainwashed religion. It is all about the CASTE system which is worse than RACISM. You know that you can never become a Sikh my dear? You imagine there are all about yoga or something beautiful.
Keep all religion out of Canada. If it be Judaism, Sikhism, Christianity or Islam. They have no place in Canada. Canada is place for cool thinking, science and common sense. Keep these toxic cults out!