Limits of Multiculturalism

bulleya:

Here is a reality check on "enough is enough". Politicians are not leading, they are just following the opinion polls.

Most want limits on demands of immigrants
Only 18 per cent say minorities should be fully 'accommodated,' new poll shows
Chris Cobb, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Most Canadians want limits on accommodating the cultural demands of new immigrants and religious minorities, a poll to be released today suggests.

According to the poll, conducted last week by Ottawa-based SES research, only 18 per cent of Canadians say cultural and religious minorities should be totally accommodated in Canada, with 53 per cent saying immigrants should fully adapt to the Canadian way of life.

The remaining respondents fell somewhere in between.

Two out of three Canadians said that they have heard of the term "reasonable accommodation," which is at the centre of a debate that has raged in Quebec since the town of Hérouxville adopted a set of societal rules for immigrants who might want to settle there.

More than 90 per cent of Quebecers are aware of the term and are overwhelmingly opposed to accommodating minority cultures and religions. Only 5.4 per cent of respondents said reasonable accommodation reflected their views and 77 per cent said immigrants should adapt to Quebec and Canadian society.

Older Canadians tend to be less tolerant of reasonable accommodation of minorities. However, while they want limits, a significant number of Canadians of all ages hold more moderate views.

"A sizable portion of Canadians have a relatively fixed view of Canada and what it is," said SES president Nik Nanos yesterday.

"Part of that fixed view is a willingness to accommodate new Canadians, but not at the price of compromising what Canada really is.

"In Quebec, the message is loud and clear. They see Canada through the lens of two founding peoples, two founding language communities -- and anyone who comes to Canada should fit into that framework. They see this vision of two founding peoples being eroded."

Reasonable accommodation was a major issue in the Quebec election earlier this year, and the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, created by Premier Jean Charest to examine the issue, is receiving extensive media coverage in the province.

Ontario's election wrangling over public funding of faith-based schools is a variation of the debate in Quebec, Mr. Nanos said.

The majority of Quebecers, he added, have reached their limit of tolerance, but the poll results, and the faith-based school debate in Ontario, suggest the issue is going to spread to other provinces.

"In Quebec," he said, "people are saying, 'We want to accommodate new Canadians and minorities, but hold on a minute.' What we are seeing in the province is a build up of accommodation after accommodation after accommodation. It's reached a tipping point in Quebec and our leaders outside Quebec should be watching because it is coming to their neighbourhood."

The online poll was conducted among 1,083 Canadians (295 in Quebec) for the Quebec-based public policy magazine Policy Options. SES says the results are accurate to within three percentage points 19 times out of 20.

Roughly half of respondents say religious and cultural minorities should be accommodated "some of the time." About 22 per cent said they should be accommodated "most of the time." About 14 per cent said they shouldn't be accommodated at all, and 5.6 per cent said they should be accommodated all the time. The rest are unsure.
When respondents were asked whether prayer spaces should be provided free of charge in public places to accommodate religious minorities, 58.6 per cent of Canadians were "to greater or lesser degrees" opposed, with around 31 per cent in favour. In Quebec, more than 80 per cent were opposed to some degree.

SES asked respondents three separate questions to determine in what public venues Canadians might find accommodation of religious and cultural minorities acceptable.

In Canada as a whole, just 36.7 per cent said there should be no accommodation in places "like schools, hospitals and public buildings." Around six per cent said there should be full accommodation, and the rest were between those extremes. Nearly two out of three Quebec respondents said there should be zero accommodation, with just 1.7 per cent in favour of full accommodation.


About 45 per cent of Canadians were opposed to religious accommodation in the workplace (65 per cent of Quebecers were opposed), and the opposition was more intense when respondents were asked whether similar accommodation should be part of amateur sport and leisure activities.

Among Canadians as a whole, 48 per cent opposed that option; among Quebecers, 72 per cent were opposed. Only 1.7 per cent of Quebecers and 3.3 per cent of Canadians overall were totally in favour.

The issue first hit the headlines in late February when Nepean's Asmahan "Azzy" Mansour, 11 at the time, was ordered to remove her hijab or leave the field during a soccer tournament in Laval, Que.

Canadians in regions with fewer cultural and religious minorities were more inclined to favour accommodation than those in larger urban centres.

"It's because they're not dealing with the issue on a personal basis," Mr. Nanos said.

"(The poll) should be a bit of notice to Canadians that we're going to deal again with the vision of Canada as two founding peoples, or whether we have become a multicultural country where the two founding peoples are subsumed within that."

Re: # 216

Inter rascial marriages are rare considering percentage wise.A hindu is not suposed to marry out side the cast,Exception do happen.In both cases if marriage is forbidden for women to marry out side the caste e.g. Brahmin girl to Sudra and neither a sudra brahmin boy to sudra girl.Both muslims and Hindu marriages are protectd by indian constitution,
Nikah or Mandap is irrelivent for those who cross the border .
India is not Shariat based country so what koran says is only butt of joke
over played only in the media for the same reason
when there is 'fatwa' against crossing the caste line also but in both cases you can break the law and in both cases its an exception not the norm.And as any law there is excetions in both communities of breaking the law.

What I am suggesting is that we may be expecting Indian sages (including the greatest ones, such as the Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Nanak, Shankara, and others) to behave in un-Indian ways. They would NEVER have accepted that (clearly confrontrationist) approach, and would have called it fundamentally misguided in ultimately creating a dharmic society.

jang, dost-mittar sahib,

In India, within ourselves, and in recorded history, we have never had much of a (or significant) "confrontationist" religious approach, or religio-politics (the way you two have used the term here), until quite recently.

Would that be a fair assessment?

bhakti movement did not confront brahmins whatsoever and there were many brahmin-upper caste bhakti poets (e.g eknath). infact brahmins who were otherwise out of jobs due to the loss of royal patronage became gainfully employed performing ekadashi and satya narayan puja etc.

borivilli#214:

I chose my words carefully. Are you denying that Islam permits the marriage of Muslim men with Non-Muslim women (of the Book) but not the other way? The fact that some Muslims do not follow the rules does not change the rules themselves.

As for India, what I said only applies to Nikahs; the Maulvis would perform a nikah of Muslim men with Hindus but not the other way round; but anyone is free to go to the courts and apply for a marriage with anyone (so far of the opposite sex!).

As far Salman Khan, he is a Muslim despite his going to the temple. As for the others you mention, I do not know about the wife and children of the others you are referring to. And I did say "in almost all cases of Hindu-Muslim marriages", which means that exceptions are there.

anil#209:

"What I have never been able to understand did caste hierarchy - brahmin's - never challenged it, or how Bhakti movement was reconciled with caste hierarchy."

A good question!

My answer is that I don't think that the Bhakti movement challenged the brahmin hierarchy in a meaningful way and all this talk of their fighting the caste system is, to a large extent, give them retroactive credit for something that has now come to be regarded as an evil. This is true of Buddha, Nanak, Kabir and even Sufis. The occasional "pravachan" about rising above zaat-paat did not hurt the brahmins.

Talking of the Sikh Gurus, Nanak appointed a man of his own caste to be his successor who chose a man of the same caste to succeed him, and so on. None of them married outside their caste, which is what they would have done if they wanted to provide an example of breaking endogamy, the root of the caste system. Sikhs until the last century, including Maharaja Ranjit Singh, continued to use Brahmins for their janam-patris, picking auspicious occasions and performing various rituals. The real challenge to the caste hierarchy was mounted in the last century by people like Periyar and Ambedkar, and a secular state led by a Brahmin.

As for my ancestors, I do not think that they were very spiritual although my father was a devout Sikh; people showed them respect and made some offerings because one of them was perhaps close to a Sikh Guru.

Dost mittar says"Islam permits Muslims men marrying non-muslim women but not the other way round, because, when the parents die, the children and the succeeding generations would grow up as Muslims in the former case."

and then contradicts himself:" In almost all cases of Hindu-Muslim marriages in India, children are raised as Muslims, despite all the whining about the difficulties faced by them in India."

if islam disowns women who marry non muslims than how can their children be muslim.

and then provides a blanket statement whit his extensive empirical research. how about sonam converting to hinduism and Mumtaz and subhash ghais wife each of whom converted and their children raised as hindus even salman khan whose father was a muslim raised his son as a hindu who worships ganpati as did shahrukh whose house a hindu iols whose puja is haram in islam

but this dost mitter is full of gao muttar or chuttar:

tahmed32#

LOL! Next time I come to chowk, I will imbibe some spirits to make my presence spiritual.:)

DM, nb

The concept is very simple really - there is nothing "promiscous" about it... there is only one god (paramatma) but many manifestations of the god. you many worship one or more of the manifestations - but ultimately you are worshipping that one god...

The confusion among arahmic faith-based fools comes from the fact that there is no one "founder" of hindu faith...

Re: # 209

Anil,

Ramadass (Ramdas) was not part of Bhakit
movement. You can say Tukaram and Namdev
were, may be, but Swami samarth Ramdas
was not.

dm writes "It is my understanding (and correct me if I am wrong) that zakat is based on the ability to pay, while jazia is to be paid by all non-muslims regardless of their income levels."

Wrong. Both are to be extracted from the "surplus"- regardless of income level, and historically Jizya percent was lower than the Zakat percent.

Re: # 201

Dost-Mitter Sahib:

Bhakti movement period produced many such "spiritualist" hindus, all over, especially in Punjab (like your anscestors for example), U.P. (Kabir), Bengal (Chaitanya), Maharastra (Ramdass - Shivaji's Guru) to name few.

What I have never been able to understand did caste hierarchy - brahmin's - never challenged it, or how Bhakti movement was reconciled with caste hierarchy. It seems to me that caste system must have been defeated during this period.

dost mittar #201 I am really disappointed at Naqshbandi being so preoccupied with lesser saints that he fails to recognize your spiritual presence, of a much higher spiritual order than Naqshaband, right here on chowk.

Re: # 197
Tokinin, I meant unfortunately for the premise of the writers.

teshah #204 Thanks for completing the translation. So "mawaakhaat" means brotherhood. As I mentioned, I had asked this persian gentleman to translate the verse, and while he was able to translate the rest, for some reason he was clueless on the meaning of "mawaakhaat". So your your knowledge of farsi is I think more than "a little".

Mazdak seems to have called for not just communal property but communal wives too, and thus was a step ahead of Marxist communists who stop with communal property. No doubt McCarthy would have had a heart attack if he had heard of Mazdakis. :-)