Post 137—Ex-envoy Criticizes New Human Rights Office

The Harper government established an office to monitor religious freedom in various countries. It is interesting that, to the best of my knowledge, Canada was not among the nations to be monitored. Why do you think that was? No problems with religious freedom in Canada? Are you kidding? Many of the previous posts hint at restrictions on religious freedom in Canada, but it’s not usually identified as such and so no one recognizes it. I will try to make that more clear as we go along.  In the meantime, think about or even check out various earlier posts and see if you cannot find evidence or instances of it.

The Trudeau government has closed down that office and merged the concern for religious freedom with a new Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion. No more special attention for religious freedom; only freedom in general. Marie-Danielle Smith wrote a piece about this development in which she summarizes and quotes various statements on this merger by Andrew Bennett, formerly in charge of the Harper office. I encourage you to access it at this URL:

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=ex-envoy%20criticizes%20new%20human%20rights%20office

Pay special attention to Bennett’s critique of the new situation. The concept of inclusion in the merged office is, he said, “ill defined and thoroughly vague” so that it “could muddy the water and distract from specific religious persecution issues faced by minorities abroad.  More training is needed for the staff, “because there is a ‘relative ignorance’ of religion in the public-service ranks and a ‘false understanding of separation of church and state’ still seems prevalent.

Ask yourself what Bennett said about ignoring the public role of religion. Yes, the office’s attitude is out of step with recent scholarship. It used to be said that religious issues were basically a sub-set of economic and political. You solve the latter two, and the religious issue will be solved as well. It is now widely recognized that this is not the case: religion is an issue in itself.

What is “historically inaccurate” according to Bennett? 

What are Canada’s allies wondering about with respect to our government?

Post 136--Justice in the World of Clothing

Frankly, I just cannot keep up producing posts regularly, even though I love to share my thoughts with you. The past month I have been hindered from writing them for various reasons. These have included: the priority of developing my website— www.SocialTheology.com--; health issues; visiting far-flung children and grandchildren; local church and society obligations; occasional but needed recreational activities.

I have come close to throwing in the towel, for I am tired of the tension between my blogging and all those other activities. But I have just come with a partially satisfying solution, namely to pass on to you writings by others that reflect my own and, hopefully, your interests. I will mostly do this by just presenting you with the URLs of such articles that you can then easily access with a single click. I may write a short introduction or make some other comments, if only to let you know I’m still around!

So, today I am treating you to a URL that discusses justice in the world of clothes, a world that includes all of us every day and that thus involves most of us in situations of injustice that you may never have thought about. Well, here it is, for you to consider a change in your life style, specifically clothing style: 

 http://churchforvancouver.ca/new-justus-video-series-guides-viewers-through-issues-of-poverty-and-justice/ .

I do have a question about one specific recommendation, namely to buy your clothes online. You should ask yourself what that could mean for your own local businesses.  Online buying can and does lead to your local stores closing. And when you buy clothes online, you likely buy other stuff there as well and you end up with a whole lot of “For Lease” signs on your Main Street.  Is that what you really want to happen?  I leave you with the question.

Post 135--Muslim Reaction to US Election

       

Today, I welcome a special guest for the occasion.  Many Christians have problems with the secular establishment of both Canada and the USA, even though that establishment includes many Christians, including both our Canadian Prime Minister and the American President.  In my opinion, though I appreciate some of their decisions, I am dumbstruck at some others. In both countries the secular establishment is slowly putting the screws on religious liberty. However, no time today to deal with that in detail.

Many Muslims are having similar problems. So, today I welcome Abdul Malik Mujahid, who sends out emails under the name Sound Vision. This is what he circulated today:

Assalamu Alaikum (Peace to you)

Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, whom we love so much, would get all sorts of questions. One day, while sitting in the wilderness, someone asked him about trust in God: “Should I trust in God and not tie my camel?” 

The camel was the primary mode of transportation at the time in Arabia. If you lost your camel, you’d lost one of your key assets. And if you were traveling far in the desert, losing your camel could mean death.  

The Prophet’s answer: Tie your camel, then put your trust in God.

That principle does many things for us. 

As Muslims, we have been become political footballs, first in Europe, then in Canada, and now in America. We are the number one victims of ISIS, as well as war and terror. Yet, we are blamed for causing terrorism. 

We had two choices in this election: Someone who hit us where it hurt us the most. Then there was the other presidential candidate who swung right back, defending Muslims and the diversity of this country. 

For many of us Muslims, who spent millions of dollars and votes supporting Hillary Clinton, we tied the camel - I guess. 

Now is the time to trust God. He controls the world. We do not. He sees the whole picture and truly knows the best for everyone. We love Him, we trust Him. He is the Creator of us all. He created you and I, as well as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He strategizes and He is the best strategizer (Quran 8:30).

Houston Rockets NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon illustrated this beautifully. He had always been a good basketball player, and was always a Muslim. However, when he truly embraced his faith in a mosque in Houston in the 1990s, he transformed. 

He would still lose games, but he ultimately led the Rockets to victory. And this is what he told me about trusting God (Tawakkul). 

"Before I started practicing my faith, I used to completely rely on myself,” he said. “When I had done my best, I would be extremely frustrated if I didn't win. It would irritate and anger me. And that was causing me to be bad to others by fighting and swearing.

"But when I started practicing my faith, I learned that results are not my property. I started doing my best but then I left success and failure to my Creator. Now I was not irritated by failure and was not over-inflated by success. That caused me to calm down and improve my behavior towards others on my team and we became a team."

So trust God. Don’t despair (Quran 39:53), and don’t give up. That is not Sabr (patience). Sabr is to do your utmost and endure whatever it takes to achieve that goal. 

I have a personal goal. And I would like you to be my partner in achieving that goal. To liberate America from fear, hate, and anger, which were there before Trump, and may not end with this election cycle. 

We must engage with America to end the cycle of war, terror, and hate, which has caused us to lose trillions, kill millions, and dehumanize each other, despite all of us being God’s creation, Who created us from the same man and woman (49:13).

Seek help with Sabr (patience) and Salat (prayer). That increases trust in God. Open your hearts and minds for your neighbor, white, blacks, and all shades in between. 

And pray that God opens the hearts of our neighbors toward us. 

It is time for reflection as well. It will take many Sajdas (prostrations to God) and many Duas to achieve balanced, thoughtful conclusions. But for now, I will say this: American Muslims are achievers. They achieve what they set their mind to. We wanted to build mosques and we have doubled the number of mosques since 9/11; we wanted to build Muslim schools and we have tripled the number of Muslim schools since 9/11; following the beautiful example of the Prophet, we have responded to disasters in America and abroad by rushing to help, thus multiplying our relief organizations. 

But what we have not done is devote resources to take America forward. We have not invested even one percent or .01 percent in what we have invested in mosques, schools, and relief organizations. 

So for now, I would just say, let’s do a personal audit: An audit of our personal time and money. What percentage are you committing to your empowerment to take this country forward? That is the camel that still needs to be tied before we expect God to do miracles for us. 

Peace

Though there are significant core differences between our two religions, we also have many similarities that we need to capitalize on. Much of what Abdul writes today resonates with me. I similarly feel that Christians spend way too much time, money and effort on “religious” matters when they should instead be religiously engaged in society by contributing to its welfare, to the common good. But religiously, not secularly. With the Spirit of God in their hearts not only but also in their minds, in how they create images of a just society according to the insights of their religion.

So, thank you Abdul. Perhaps we ought to sit down together and see how far we can work on this together.

Post 134--A Rose by Any Other Name

Remember the cold I suffered last week? Well, it ain’t over yet. It still has me down and out, something that has hardly ever happened to me. I get one about once a year; it comes and goes quickly and I’m my old self again. Not this time. But I don’t want you to think I’m slacking off. So, another postponement of the third prostitution post and, instead, an easy one that will not take a lot of stamina on my part.

I utilize two prepared documents laying on my desk and I will use some of each. They both report on various situations of persecution. When we think of persecution, we often think of Muslim persecution of Christians and others. Well, that will be one side today. The other side, however, may well surprise you…but let me keep you in suspense for a few more moments.  Just remember Shakespeare’s adage above.  Persecution may come in very different forms and from very different quarters, but it’s still persecution. So, though today’s info will not take much stamina from my reduced stock, it does weigh heavily in me and carrying such burdens takes another form of stamina.

First, a few items of Christians under Muslim persecution—a few from what could take up innumerable tomes, believe  me. These are reported by BarnabasAid, a UK ministry to persecuted Christians all over the world.

Aasia Bibi languishes on death row in Pakistan for years on basis of totally false accusations of blasphemy, a tool used frequently by Pakistani Muslims to take revenge for personal reasons.  Check out her name on the Internet!  In that same country, “Christian girls and women are kidnapped by Muslim men, raped, forcibly converted to Islam and forcibly married to Muslims. Of course that happens in many Muslim countries. Another Pakistani situation is that of bonded Christian laborers in brick kilns. They cannot escape the grueling work for substandard pay. Their cruel bosses trick and exploit them, keeping them in permanent debt. Some Christian children are even held as slaves.

21 brave Christian migrant workers in Libya refused to deny Christ. They will killed by ISIS militants. If I were more computer savvy, I would reproduce a picture of all of them on their knees in orange outfits with masked militants standing behind them, poised to kill them momentarily. 

Ugandan pastor, Umar Mulinde, is a convert from Islam. Muslims three acid in his face. He was terribly burned and lost one eye, but he continues to evangelize and preach boldly.

Nissar Hussain and his wife, from Bradford in the UK, are condemned as apostates. They and their children are persecuted for following Christ. Their home was burned to the ground. Their car was attacked. Nissar was beaten up and hospitalized. Falsely accused to the police, he was detained in a cell for many hours. The same thing happened to his wife. Rejected by church, law enforcement, and society, they continue to follow Christ. They can no longer live in Bradford. Yes, in the UK—and this is by no means the only incident in that country.

And now a totally different scene that at first sight you might not dub “persecution,” but remember that adage…. This time the persecutor is no one less than the US government, and not about religion this time, but about science they don’t like. The following is a long quote:

Picture being an an award-winning scientist -- you've just published your latest findings. And then your government tries to stop you speaking about your research. And when you refuse, you're suspended -- then fired. That's exactly what happened to Jonathan after he discovered a link between bee die-offs and bee-killing pesticides. Now he’s attempting to continue his research in the private sector, and the USDA is STILL harassing him by blacklisting him from USDA-funded research grants and pressuring other scientists to not collaborate with him. It’s time for the USDA to end their attacks on scientific freedom. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is notoriously friendly with giant corporate agribusinesses, and lobbyists for big pesticide companies like Monsanto and Bayer don’t want government researchers looking into the impact of bee-killing pesticides. But rarely have we seen such a blatant and ongoing assault on scientific freedom, even at the USDA. SumOfUs members have donated tens of thousands of dollars to help our friends at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) defend Dr. Lundgren. With our help, Dr. Lundgren has fought back by filing a whistleblower complaint, a scientific integrity complaint, and a federal lawsuit. Dr. Lundgren’s case has gotten enormous press coverage, and he was personally honored with the Joe A. Calloway Award for Civic Courage—a prestigious award for public-interest activism. But the USDA continues to harass Dr. Lundgren, and as long as that continues, it’s sending a chilling effect to researchers everywhere. That’s why we must continue to fight for his right to conduct research freely, without lobbyist interference or government censorship. A rose by any other name….

Post 133—Public Funds for Private Schools

My intention for this post was to finish my mini-series in prostitution. Alas, it’s been almost two weeks since I did the second in the series. The reason for this long gap is that I’ve had a rough time, what with a surgical procedure topped up with a simultaneous bad cold. Since I am not exactly at home in the world of prostitution and need to do some serious thinking before I write the 3^rd in the series, I just don’t have the mental stamina for that. Instead, I will write a post on a subject matter more familiar to me and get back to that series when my mental stamina is up to it, hopefully next week.

The other day, one of my favourite Vancouver Sun columnists, Pete McMartin, blew it as far as I am concerned. He inveighed against private schools. His main emphasis was on the private elite schools but also referred to religious schools. Here’s the URL for the article, in case you want to read it yourself: http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/pete-mcmartin-this-is-egalitarian-canada-so-why-should-private-schools-get-public-money.

I am going to focus on the religious schools. I sent the following letter to the editor, but doubt it will be published, since they have already published three others on the subject. So, you are invited to read a rejected letter!  Sorry. Here goes, two paragraphs in all:

“Oh, no, not again! More secular dribble about private vs public schools!  McMartin’s (22-10-2016) is a sorry case of secular blindness. Canada is a multi-cultural/religious country, where every religion is supposed to have the freedom to express itself. However secularism insists on defining these religions as private/personal affairs, which they are not and never have been. Secularism thinks it has a monopoly on reason and operates from a neutral platform, both of which are delusions. Religious people want their kind of school as much as McMartin wants his. Imposing his kind on the rest of us is nothing short of discrimination and oppression. We’ve rejected the de facto Anglican monopoly on education in BC long ago and have replaced it with secular monopoly, exchanged one public worldview monopoly for another. Secularism is now the de facto establishment worldview, while it pretends we have no favourite establishment! Nice try!

“The only neutral arrangement is for disestablishment of secular schools in favour of equal funding for all schools that meet the basic provincial educational standards. But that would require secularists to open their eyes, know themselves and admit to the belief system underlying their faith in naked reason—a far cry!” 

Now that letter contains nothing new. The same sentiments have been expressed thousands of times in defence of Christian schools. A hefty book has even been written about the struggle for public funding and the purpose of such schools in BC, but my secular friends, including Pete, seem to have deaf ears. The arguments for such schools are clear, rational, cogent, fair, etc. etc., but they run up against the rationalistic wall secularists have built around themselves. Trump could learn a lesson or two from them about effective walls; they are not brick and mortar; they are ways of thinking in which people imprison themselves.

As Christians, we know the core of our belief. It centers on Christ and then goes on from there. You take out Christ, and the whole thing collapses. Something similar is true for secularists. Among their core beliefs—and it is a belief, not an established or proven fact—is that their perspective is the only rational and neutral one; all others, whether religious or not, are subjective and irrational. That being the case, the only rational and neutral thing to do is to educate our kids within that framework. The objective and rational argument against that position is that, since it has not ever been proved and never will, it, too, is a belief system at the same level as that of the religious. So what is so neutral about it? There ain’t—and Pete and his cohorts better begin to realize that and quit living by their mythical delusion.

But that would exact a heavy price. You take Jesus out of Christianity and you’re left with a blank. You take the sense of a neutral and objective rationalism out of secularism, and they’r stranded, also left with a blank, without any further arguments. That price may be too difficult to pay.

Religious people do not demand that secularists give up their faith; they have a right to it. They just demand that secularism recognize the same right for believers without imposing theirs on the latter.

 Believers, did I say? Yes. We’re all believers, secularists as well as the rest of us.  We all believe in the core of our worldview or philosophy or belief, whatever you want to call it. Secularists, including Pete, you’re welcome into the company of believers!  You are one of us—you believe!  Now quit pestering us and acknowledge our equal right!