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LONDON, Ont.–A magazine article suggesting Muslims pose a threat to North America is Islamophobic and “promotes prejudice towards Muslims,” the Ontario Human Rights Commission says.

Despite strongly worded condemnation of the Maclean’s article, the commission announced yesterday that under the Ontario Human Rights Code, it could not legally proceed to hear a complaint led by local lawyer Faisal Joseph.

“We are concerned about the content … We think it fosters stereotypes and has a negative impact on the (Muslim) communities,” chief commissioner Barbara Hall said.

In Ontario, magazines are not covered under the rights code, she said.

In October 2006, Maclean’s published “The Future Belongs to Islam,” an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

“If you said these things (in the article) in a workplace, we would certainly take the complaint and it is very possible we could find discrimination in the workplace,” Hall said.

A human rights hearing of the case is set for June in British Columbia. Its code covers publications.

In a statement, Maclean’s said it is pleased the commission decided not to proceed, but rejected the suggestion Maclean’s is “biased against a particular community.”

The Canadian Press

Noor Javed
Staff Reporter

On the corner of Dundas and Chestnut Sts., Ahmed dumps a handful of pennies and quarters on the sidewalk, and begins counting his day’s earnings.

“Asalamu alakum, can you spare some change?” he shyly asks two men as they rush past him and into Masjid Toronto, a downtown mosque.

A former teacher, Ahmed left war-torn Iraq five years ago for Canada. “I came here but couldn’t find a job, couldn’t make money,” he said. “Now I am homeless. I live in a shelter.”

The exact number of Muslims in Toronto who live below Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off, the country’s unofficial poverty line, is difficult to determine, as socio-economic data is rarely gathered through the lens of religion.

But among those on the front lines in the Muslim community, those who work in mosques, community centres and the few charitable organizations, there is growing concern about the magnitude of poverty in the community, the lack of resources available to deal with the problem, and the reluctance – among all social classes – to admit the problem even exists.

For the Muslim poor, an admission of poverty is shameful. To the rich, the problem is invisible, or at least not so obvious when compared to the stark conditions of poverty they have seen back home.

“It is a cause for concern,” said Uzma Shakir, former executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, and member of the Colour of Poverty campaign. “The repercussions of poverty and systemic poverty are not just economic but have serious social impacts as well,” she said.

“Already we can see the formation of ghettos in some parts of the city,” said Shakir, referring to neighbourhoods where overt race-based poverty is glaringly obvious, and where halal meat stores are in abundance.

The scant data available paints a troubling picture of a growing community of nearly 300,000 Muslims, which includes a mix of refugees, recent immigrants, and those who settled in Canada decades ago.

The four poorest of all ethno-racial groups, with more than 50 per cent of their members living below Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off, were Somalis, Afghans, Ethiopians and Bangladeshi populations – all from predominately Muslim countries. At least 30 per cent of Pakistanis and West Asians also qualified as poor, according to a study done by the Institute for Social Research at York University in 2006, which looked at the demographic and social profiles of ethno-racial groups in the city.

According to the low-income cut-offs, a family of four in Toronto with an annual income of $33,221 after taxes would be considered poor. Bangladeshi women earned the lowest median income of any group at just more than $15,000.

In 13 neighbourhoods deemed “at-risk” in Toronto by United Way, more than half have significant Muslim populations, including Flemingdon Park, Regent Park, Etobicoke North and Jane-Finch.”Every year, we see more and more poor people coming to the mosque for help,” said Omar Farouk, president of the International Muslims Organization, based in Etobicoke, which has opened a food bank and distributes food to shelters once a month. More than 200 people regularly access the food bank.

“People will work two or three jobs, and still not have enough money to make ends meet at the end of the month,” said Atulya Sharman, a community legal worker with the South Asian legal clinic. “But nobody wants to admit they are poor, partly because of the stigma, and because they think it’s just part of the settlement process.”

That is where they are mistaken, said Mohamed Boudjenane, director of the Canadian Arab Federation, which is part of the Colour of Poverty campaign.

“The Muslim community is faced with tremendous barriers, like the issue of foreign credential recognition, and the issue of racism and stigmatization of simply being Muslim post 9-11,” he said.

“It’s not about settlement; it’s about systemic barriers in the system. We are receiving well-educated people. They are … engineers and doctors, but they are still doing dishes, or driving cabs.”

But many don’t even get those menial jobs. In a 2005 Canadian Labour Congress study on Racial Status and Employment Incomes, Arab and West-Asian visible minorities had the highest overall unemployment rate at 14 per cent.There are internal barriers within the community too. There is an obvious divide between the haves and have-nots, the second-generation Muslims and the new arrivals who have little interaction with each other outside of “Friday prayers at the mosque.”

While charity is a fundamental part of the Islamic faith, many established Muslims in the GTA are ignorant of the growing need within their own communities and instead see poverty in their countries of origin as a more worthy cause.

“The image that comes to mind when you think poverty is that beggar on the street in Pakistan. You don’t think of a family in Scarborough,” said Sadaf Parvaiz, a chartered accountant and second-generation Pakistani-Canadian.

Attitudes are slowly changing among some second-generation Muslims, who feel little connection to their parents’ homeland. Parvaiz is organizing a walk for poverty in the summer with proceeds going to a local food bank.

The Muslim Welfare Centre, one of the few organizations addressing poverty, runs a halal food bank and emergency women’s shelter, funded by donations from the community, said CEO Qaiser Naqvi.

In most neighbourhoods, mosques have become places of service as well as worship.

It is a concept that Waris Malik put to use three years ago, when he launched a weekly Hot Soup Day at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, a mosque in Scarborough – the first to launch a project of this kind in the city. The initiative now serves and distributes 750 meals each week. Masjid Toronto will be starting a similar soup kitchen at downtown’s Scadding Court at the end of this month.

“The mosque can’t play all roles,” said Boudjenane, of the Canadian Arab Federation, who believes Muslims need to shift their focus from building mosques to creating civic structures and social agencies.

“We have the foundations, what we need now is to start building the community.”

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Thomas Walkom
National Affairs Columnist

History will record June 2, 2006 as the day when police arrested members of what they claimed was Canada’s first homegrown Islamic terrorist conspiracy. But in a modest middle-class section of Oakville, Rukhsana Gaya – then a department store cosmetics manager – remembers that day as the moment her family’s life was shattered.

“The phone rang about 11 p.m. My husband answered. It was the RCMP. They said Saad (her son, then 1 had been arrested on terror-related charges. My husband told me and I said: `What do they mean, terrorism?’ Of course, I knew about 9/11. Everyone does. But not that it would affect my family. Not that it would have anything to do with me.”

In the lexicon of terror trials, Rukhsana Gaya is what is known as a family member. Her son was one of the 17 young Muslim Canadian men arrested that night in June (an 18th was picked up later) when police swooped in to forestall what they claimed was an Islamist plot to blow up buildings and behead the prime minister.

Today Saad remains jailed at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton awaiting trial on charges of terrorism and intending to cause an explosion. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

But 22 months after his arrest, the case of the Toronto 18 – which at the time was lauded by politicians as a spectacular intelligence coup – appears far less clear-cut. Three of the 18 have had their charges stayed (in effect, dropped) and been quietly released

A preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence to bring the 14 adults to trial was abruptly short-circuited by the Crown last fall, midway through the testimony of key witness Mubin Shaikh – a paid RCMP informant who has had his own brushes with the law.

The defence cried foul, and some suggested that the government was merely trying to avoid the embarrassment of having a judge throw out some charges for lack of evidence.

Indeed, a 44-year-old Mississauga man, who at the time of his arrest was portrayed as the radical firebrand of the alleged plot, has already had his charges reduced and is out on bail.

And in a document filed in court last month, a lawyer for one of the defendants claimed that it was informant Shaikh who provided the 9-mm ammunition used for target practice at an alleged terrorist training camp.

The first trial, of the only youth still facing charges, has just started. The trial of Saad and the 13 other adults may not begin for another year

For the Gaya family, all of these developments are cold comfort. They are baffled that anyone could believe that Saad, an easygoing (and, confesses his mother, somewhat lazy) first-year student at McMaster University would be involved in anything as hateful and complicated as a terrorist plot.

They are saddened that Canada, a land the Pakistani parents chose and the country in which all three of their children were born, would countenance actions that they find blatantly unfair.

Unnerved at being the centre of media attention, they agonized for months before agreeing to have their story published in the Toronto Star; they still don’t want their pictures in the newspaper.

They keep referring to themselves as “normal.” But they are struggling to keep afloat in a world in which normal has been turned upside down.

All have dealt with it differently. Saad’s father, who asked not be identified by name and who chose not to be interviewed for this article, simply doesn’t speak of what happened. An engineer, he goes to work each morning and returns home each evening to pray.

“He doesn’t want to deal with the outside world,” says Saad’s 24-year-old sister, Beenish. “He doesn’t think there is any point. He wouldn’t go to the preliminary hearing; he didn’t want to see his son in that environment. Who wants to hear your son called a terrorist? He just talks to Saad when he phones.”

Beenish, too, feels her life has been derailed. Before June 2, 2006, she was a highly motivated chartered-accountancy trainee working long hours at the downtown Toronto firm KPMG as she prepared for her final exams.

If she thought about terrorism at all, she says now, she saw herself as a potential victim.

“After 9/11, I thought, `If Al Qaeda strikes here, they’ll hit me,’” she says. “I mean, I work in one of the tallest buildings in the city; I take the Lakeshore GO train. I hate Al Qaeda more than anyone.”

She is Muslim. But in the days before her brother’s arrest, this fact did not greatly affect her. She doesn’t wear any of the clothing so often associated with Islam, such as the headscarf, burqa or veil; her friends are from all backgrounds. She takes her religion seriously, but it neither dominates nor uniquely defines her life.

She sees herself as Canadian rather than Pakistani-Canadian. And why not? She was born in Montreal, raised in Oakville, educated at McMaster University in Hamilton. Who could be more Canadian?

On the day before Saad’s arrest, she and her youngest brother (now 15) were helping their father widen their driveway. Saad, she says laughing, offered to pitch in. “But he’s so skinny, he couldn’t shovel without standing on it.”

Then came the arrest, the publicity and the subsequent media circus at the Brampton courthouse, as Muslim family members tried to make their way past the gauntlet of journalists while police officers armed with submachine guns looked on.

To someone who had always viewed herself as a normal Canadian, the experience came as a shock. Beenish might have thought she was like everyone else; the world, it seemed, disagreed.

“Suddenly you are portrayed as the other,” she says. “One minute you are scared of terrorists; the next minute you are the enemy.”

And so the family members kept their heads down. Beenish took a leave of absence from KPMG to focus on her brother’s court hearings. Rukhsana, even more devastated, was sure she’d have to leave her job.

“I was scared at the beginning to tell anyone,” she says. “But I didn’t want to lie to my co-workers. They were all so supportive; they were wonderful.”

She offered to quit. But her manager persuaded her to stay on, saying she could shift to part-time work if she wanted to devote more time to Saad’s case.

Still, the effect has been paralyzing. The normally gregarious 43-year-old no longer goes out to see friends and relatives. She has been twice hospitalized since her son’s arrest. During conversation, her voice will suddenly break. Sometimes, she says, she cries uncontrollably.

“Even still, at 3 a.m., I will wake up with my heart breaking.”

To Saad’s family, his description of life in jail was terrifying. At first, he was permitted neither a mattress nor his glasses, he later told Beenish. (A corrections ministry spokesperson, while declining to comment on Saad’s case specifically, says that mattresses are sometimes removed from the cells of “special management inmates” considered to be security risks and that their spectacles may be confiscated for the same reason.)

Each time Saad was removed from his cell, shackled, to attend court or use the shower during those first few days at Maplehurst, he was hustled along by a four-member crisis intervention team in full riot gear.

Because he had initially been deemed a young offender, Saad and four other youths were soon moved to a less rigorous juvenile detention centre. That didn’t last. Three months later, the Crown decided Saad had committed his alleged offences the day he turned 18. He was reclassified as an adult and moved back to Maplehurst. For the next 12 months, Saad, like the other adult detainees, was kept in solitary confinement 23 1/2 hours a day.

Today, three of the accused adults are still in solitary confinement at the Don Jail. At Maplehurst, where Saad remains, conditions have eased significantly. Now the seven still imprisoned there (four others are out on bail) are allowed to associate with one another in a common wing.

But to Rukhsana, it remains inconceivable that her child, who has still not been convicted of any crime, could be locked up for so long. Saad celebrated his 19th and 20th birthdays in jail. Unless he gets bail, he will almost certainly turn 21 there – and this before he stands trial. Her once bubbly son, she says, has become quieter, more introverted.

“They have taken away his smile,” she says.

Now, her life and that of her family revolve around the criminal justice system. The centrepiece of each day is Saad’s phone call from jail. The highlight of the week is the regular visit to Maplehurst, where Rukhsana can talk to her son through a Plexiglas barrier.

At first, says Beenish, the Gayas received virtually no help from the Muslim community, or indeed from anyone.

“Other Muslims were scared to help,” she says. “We know a lot of people, but when we tried to raise money (in an unsuccessful bid to have Saad released on bail), so many of them wouldn’t help. They were afraid that if they did, they’d be accused of aiding terrorism.”

One long-time family friend, she says, cut off all contact with the family.

Beenish approached Amnesty International. They said such cases did not fall under their ambit. She contacted local MPs. Those who agreed to see her said they could do nothing while the matter was before the courts. One (she doesn’t want his name used for fear of causing offence) told her frankly that politicians did not want to put themselves on the line lest they be thought soft on terrorism. Today, she says, Muslims are less wary about speaking up on behalf of Saad and the others. But in the bleak early days, the only support the family received was from their Italian and Lebanese neighbours and a group of Toronto anti-violence activists called Homes Not Bombs.

Throughout, Beenish has borne most of the burden of dealing with the outside world. For months, she attended the on-again, off-again preliminary hearing.

She and Rukhsana became such regulars at the Brampton courthouse that some began to assume they worked there.

Even now, Beenish is the one who deals with Saad’s lawyer, Paul Slansky. As well, she is trying to arrange a correspondence course for her brother. When the world comes knocking, it is she who runs interference for the family.

She is also torn about acting publicly. On the one hand, she is horrified by what she sees as the unfairness of a process in which the government appears to hold all the cards. She devotes whatever time remains from her work and court duties to a website supporting the Toronto 18. She has spoken up for the detainees at university rallies.

Yet at the same time, she is hesitant about being identified in the daily press. She is not sure she trusts what she calls the mainstream media. She fears that employers will see her as a liability rather than an asset. “I’m starting a career,” she says. “I don’t want it destroyed.”

In interviews over several months with Beenish, and more recently with Rukhsana, the conversation keeps coming back to their sense of bewilderment.

How could this happen? They are law-abiding (Rukhsana says she has never had a parking ticket); they are patriotic Canadians; they are unfailingly polite.

When police were searching her home for evidence to use against her son (they took clothing and most of the family photographs), Rukhsana offered them tea and coffee.

Nor can the two women believe Saad was involved in anything sinister.

“How could he do what they accuse him of?” asks Rukhsana. “His friends are from all over, not just Muslims: Christians, Jews, Chinese. He was part of the interfaith dialogue at McMaster … Everyone loves him.”

Beenish says that even if her brother were inclined to violence (which, she insists, he is not), he could not have managed to involve himself in anything as complex as a terror plot without awakening the suspicions of the ever-vigilant women in his family.

She and Saad used the same computer with the same password. Rukhsana, meanwhile, kept constant watch on her eldest son.

She cooked all of his meals, sending him off to McMaster each week with 18 individually prepared and packaged breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

She did his laundry each weekend when he came home. She phoned him every day at university and routinely eavesdropped on his telephone conversations at home.

“Until he marries, I am his mother,” she shrugs. “This is my job.”

Ironically, given the government’s assertion that Saad was involved in a religiously motivated conspiracy, his arrest has caused Beenish to draw closer to Islam. The only thing that makes sense of this madness, she says, is the Qur’an, with its message that people must struggle against adversity.

She says she now looks forward to the day when she will have enough courage to brave popular prejudice and don an Islamic headscarf.

“I call myself a Muslim and I call myself a Canadian,” she says. “What is my country? Canada is my country, even though it is treating me like a second-class citizen. I’m not Pakistani. I’m Canadian. I plan to stay here and work here and marry here and raise kids here.

“I take pride in being a Canadian. What’s going to happen if this (the treatment of the 1 becomes the norm?”

Rukhsana’s hopes are simpler. She just wants her life and her son back.

“I have nothing to hide,” she says. “My son did nothing wrong. We are an average Canadian family. We are normal.”

Thomas Walkom’s national affairs column runs Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Human rights activists and family of Huseyin Celil are calling on Ottawa to put more pressure on China to reveal where the 38-year-old Canadian citizen is being imprisoned.

Celil, a Muslim and member of China’s Uighur minority group, was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court last April. A year earlier, he had been arrested in Uzbekistan and extradited to his native China to face terrorism charges.

Celil’s whereabouts in the Chinese prison system are unknown to his family and Canadian officials. His southern Ontario-based wife and children have sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging him to intensify pressure on Beijing to provide more information.

“Prime Minister, we call on you to renew and fortify Canada’s efforts to ensure Mr. Celil’s human rights are protected,” the letter says.

In the message to Harper, the imprisoned man’s family expresses concern that “Canda’s attention to Celil’s fate appears to have waned.”

Read More Via FREECELIL.COM

Muslim girl’s teammates at Canadian school don head covering to show unity, support during final competition

Everyone asks Mozynah “Moza” Nofal questions. Why does she wear a scarf on her head? Why does she always dress in long sleeves? What’s it like to be Muslim?

Nofal graduated from Cobleskill High School and is attending Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, where she is a member of the fencing team.

Her teammates asked how it felt to fence with her scarf under her face mask. They also wanted her to know they love and support her. So in the final competition of the year, when other teams dyed their hair the same color to show unity, her teammates donned head scarves, called hejab or hijab.

“We’ve always noticed that she’s the only fencer in Ontario that wears a hijab; it must feel lonely or different,” said Rachael Gardner, a sophomore on the fencing team. “We all really respect the confidence she has in her religion.”

Read All Via Oppressions To The Hijab

Yilmaz Alimoglu
Community Editorial Board

The current state of Muslims is downright depressing, conflicted by internal, ideological wars, pagan nationalism and tribalism.

As Muslims, we love to blame the West and Israel for our current terrible state. This is pure denial and a convenient way of not doing much to change our situation because change for the better is difficult to achieve. Real change starts with individuals who make the choice and commitment to change. It also involves a lot of hard work and asking some serious questions.

Relative to the 15 million to 20 million-strong Jewish community worldwide, there are more than 1 billion Muslims living on this planet today; yet the Jewish community has produced many more scientists, writers, poets, musicians and statesmen than Muslims in the last 200 years and generally is a more active, productive and influential player in the global economy. Both communities continue to waste precious time, energy and resources fighting each other – bookends of the same prophetic lineage. We have fallen victim to power struggles; in the process, the weakest members of our societies end up suffering.

Ironically, between the 8th and 14th centuries in Andalusia (southern Spain and Morocco today) it was a different story. During that time, Christians, Muslims and Jews all lived together in a golden age of intellectual creativity, tolerance, respect and harmony.

Andalusia was a shining light for the world, producing great scholars like the philosopher and scientist Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes, who some credit with being the founding father of secular thought in western Europe, and the great Islamic mystic Ibn al-Arabi. Ibn Haldun laid out the foundation for modern management, psychology and sociology. Abu al-Qasim, known in the West as Abulcasis, is regarded as the father of modern surgery.

Had Nobel Prizes existed during that era, many Muslims would have won them.

The Muslims of Andalusia were as devoted to serving humanity as they were to the study of the sciences and commerce, if not more so. They asked challenging questions and worked hard to find reasonable answers using their intellect.

Media-savvy individuals claim to speak in the name of Islam or on behalf of all Muslims, but they do more harm than good, falling prey to the fame they gain from being controversial over their use of unwise words. They do an injustice to non-Muslims by creating false perceptions of Islam and play a major role in creating a prison of prejudice.

They are not Muslims by choice but by inheritance, like inheriting a piece of property. Accepting and practising Islam is against their way of life but they still claim to be Muslims. If you cannot agree with the texts and principles, then why bother calling yourself a Muslim? Calling some of them nihilists might be more appropriate.

Ultimately, the quest for truth demands rigorous research, clarity of thought, trust, humility, perseverance, consistency and the avoidance of judgment without understanding.

Are Muslims today up to the challenge? Do we have the intellectual capacity to respond? Are we familiar enough with Islamic scripture to have the courage to remain faithful to core principles? Are we ready to invest the time and energy needed to resolve issues and promote understanding based on the original scriptures and message of the Prophet?

Perhaps, if we can first learn from our roots, know where we come from and understand what shapes who we are today. After resolving the identity crises endemic within Muslim societies, we will then be ready to discuss with each other issues facing humanity, based on diversity, equality and common values.

TheStar

Yilmaz Alimoglu, an electrical engineer with a management degree, works as a consultant in the high-tech field.

Alex Neve
Chris MacLeod
Lorne Waldman
In three different corners of the world – China, Egypt and Ethiopia – three Canadian citizens languish in prison. Each has very likely been tortured. Each is at very real risk of being tortured again. None faces any prospect of gaining their freedom soon. All seem to have been forgotten. Each deserves more from their government.

Huseyin Celil has been in prison in China since the end of June 2006. His wife and four children in Burlington have endured anxious fear for his safety ever since. Celil is an ethnic Uighur. In the far western reaches of China a decades-old campaign of brutal repression against the Uighur people has intensified in recent years. Torture, unjust imprisonment and other abuses abound. Celil thought he had escaped to safety. But he was surreptitiously arrested and sent back to China while visiting with his wife’s family in nearby Uzbekistan. He has known nothing but injustice ever since. Last year, after a blatantly unfair trial, he was sentenced to a life term in prison. He believes that the Uighur people’s rights should be respected. He has been convicted of being a “splitist”, a Chinese government euphemism for terrorist.

Read All

Read all via www.freecelil.com

by Sheema Khan

During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I remember the stories emanating from France of young Muslim schoolgirls expelled for wearing the Hijab.

While many of the young sisters were permitted to return to school wearing the Hijab, wider questions had been raised.

How does a purely secular public school system accommodate religious beliefs? What about the issues of freedom and oppression of women? Were these girls influenced by the “integristes” of Algeria, who were aspiring to implement an Islamic government in the former French colony?

Was this another example of “immigrants” failing to integrate into French society (a favorite theme of le Front National, a national anti-immigrant party)? Was this the beginning of the end of the strict separation between church and state?

Read All Via Oppressions To The Hijab 

Turks move to ease headscarf ban

protests against hijab

Lifting Turkey’s headscarf ban

Tajikistan: New Curbs Target Islamic Students

Prince Among Slaves, a new documentary by Unity Productions Foundation, will air nationwide on PBS on Monday, February 4, 2008, at 10 PM (check local listings at www.pbs.org).

1788. The slave ship Africa set sail from the Gambia River, its hold laden with a profitable but highly perishable cargo– hundreds of men, women and children bound in chains—headed for American shores. Eight months later, a handful of survivors found themselves for sale in Natchez, Mississippi. On the slave auction block, one of them, a 26-years-old male named Abdul Rahman Ibrahima is an African Prince.

Check via UPF 

Updated by “Brother Naim”

The years-old blockade of Gaza is at crisis point: with the humanitarian crisis growing, the southern border has been breached and 350,000 Palestinians are pouring across. The situation is out of control — the world must step in.

To prevent catastrophe and protect civilians on all sides, your voice is needed urgently: we’re running an emergency global campaign to international, European and Arab leaders, calling on them to stop the siege, oversee open borders and help broker a ceasefire. We’ll deliver the petition when we reach 150,000 signatures - please add your name below, then spread the word: via

AVAAZ.ORG

SIGN THE PETITION

“On January 28-Feburary 1, McMaster MSA is holding Islam Awareness Week which includes, 3 lectures (check the attached poster) as well as a dawah booth every day in the Student centre. The lectures are beneficial for both Muslims and Non-Muslims, and address controversial topics facing the Muslim community today. See you there insha’Allah!”

McMaster MSA