“The polemic on the possible introduction of the so-called sharia law in Ontario … highlights the double standards against Muslims and Islam. It exposes the polarizing methodologies of our media. It tests the Dalton McGuinty government’s commitment to the core liberal-democratic principle of the equality of all citizens. The dominant theme of the news coverage is clear: Medieval Muslims want to import the misogynistic Islamic penal code to Canada. And Queen’s Park is crazy to even consider it. There are sub-themes: Muslims have been plotting for long to supplant our secular laws with Allah’s. They are using multiculturalism to undermine it. Why would we let them, given what they do to women in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc.?”
Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 11 September 2005
Siddiqui asks: “why are journalists drawn to the same handful of critics? … Is it that the critics are media savvy? If so, it only confirms our vulnerability to manipulation. Or, is it that the critics are saying what the journalists want to hear? It seems so. Is it an accident that the only Muslims the media idolize are those who attack Islam or the broader Muslim community?”
Of course, some of the most prominent “Muslim” opponents of the Ontario proposal, who have been boosted by the Canadian media, are not Muslims at all, but members of the Islamophobic sect, the Worker Communist Party of Iran.
Sharia issue trumps media and McGuinty
By Haroon Siddiqui
Toronto Star, 11 September 2005
Controversial issues shine as much light on us, and our institutions, as on the subject. The polemic on the possible introduction of the so-called sharia law in Ontario is no exception.
It highlights the double standards against Muslims and Islam. It exposes the polarizing methodologies of our media. It tests the Dalton McGuinty government’s commitment to the core liberal-democratic principle of the equality of all citizens.
The dominant theme of the news coverage is clear: Medieval Muslims want to import the misogynistic Islamic penal code to Canada. And Queen’s Park is crazy to even consider it.
There are sub-themes: Muslims have been plotting for long to supplant our secular laws with Allah’s. They are using multiculturalism to undermine it. Why would we let them, given what they do to women in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc.?
In examining the ethics of news coverage (not opinion), it does not matter which side of the debate you are on. What does matter is that none of the above is true or logical.
No sharia is coming. What is proposed is voluntary, consensual, arbitration between adults, as practised by Jews, Christians and, in fact, Ismaili Muslims.
Muslim women will be as vulnerable as those of other faiths, unless we want to say that Ontario Muslims are a lesser breed that cannot be trusted – the not-so-unsaid subtext here.
There is no conspiracy. The debate has been open since the Arbitration Act came into force. Yet none of this seems to make a dent in the story line, fed to the media by the critics.
Even their hostility is replicated in the news coverage, which is rarely balanced with the views of imams, rabbis and priests, or for that matter, Marion Boyd, who studied the issue. If included, their views are buried.
Nor are we informed about the experience of the rabbinical courts, church mediators and Ismaili arbitrators, even while we are fed the horror stories from abroad. We live in Canada, not Saudi Arabia, no?
Some of this selectivity is explainable. Media like conflict. We often let the extremes define the norm. We are crude in covering social conflicts, especially if they involve immigrants.
Still, why are journalists drawn to the same handful of critics?
Feminist affinity does not fully explain it. Boyd’s feminist credentials are a whole lot stronger than those of the agitators.
Is it that the critics are media savvy? If so, it only confirms our vulnerability to manipulation.
Or, is it that the critics are saying what the journalists want to hear? It seems so. Is it an accident that the only Muslims the media idolize are those who attack Islam or the broader Muslim community?
Such selectivity also explains the willful blindness to the problems faced by some women who choose religious arbitration in the Mennonite, Protestant Catholic and Jewish faiths. Islam is in the news, is being examined and should be. But, in amplifying only one perspective in a wide-ranging debate, the media erode their credibility.
What of Queen’s Park? It turned to Boyd, hoping she would say No. She didn’t, as most people who’ve thought the issue through cannot. This is seen in the unanimity of the editorial stances of the Star, The Globe, and the National Post.
Some Muslim women opposed to religious arbitration have lobbied the Liberal women’s caucus. But there are different points of view on the subject in the Jewish and Christian communities as well. It is not the job of the government to referee religious differences, let alone align itself with one side.
Equally, to say that Muslim Ontarians may transplant the practices of their homelands here is to accept the notion that Serb Canadians could have replicated Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in Canada.
It is said that allowing Muslim religious arbitration would set a bad example for the world. The reverse would be true: Canada, with Ontario in the lead, finds the right balance between competing rights, as always.
McGuinty not only has to do the right thing but he has to find the right words to say so, declaring that his Liberal government will not treat one group of citizens any differently than others.
This principle, along with the ability of our media to convey the complexities of pluralistic Canada, is far more important to our democratic polity than whether or not a few dozen Muslim women get religious arbitration, just like their believing Jewish and Christian sisters.