The
Last Bastion Of
Acceptable Prejudice...
By Bahija Réghaï
10 October,
2008
Countercurrents.orga
The elections on both sides
of the Canada-US border have revealed that prejudices against Arabs
and Muslims are the last bastion of acceptable prejudice in North
America.
Most recently, Liberal MP Ken Dryden while on the campaign trail at Beth Emeth synagogue in Wilmington called for Canada to “stop all aid that flows into Gaza. While that may seem a harsh measure that will hurt Palestinian civilians… it is the right thing to do at this time.” Collective punishment of civilians is never “the right thing to do”, and indeed constitutes a war crime under international law. Even Stephen Harper’s government has not cut off all aid to Gaza, but funnels it through appropriate UN agencies.
On 10 September,
Corus radio network’s 98.5 FM Montreal broadcast an interview
between their radio host, Benoît Dutrizac, and Samira Laouni,
a Muslim candidate running for the NDP in north-end Bourassa riding.
Mr. Dutrizac called Ms. Laouni’s headscarf “sexy”,
wrongly accused Islam of forcing children to fast and wear headscarves,
and said that were he to rape her there and then she would never be
able to prove it because under shari’a law she would need four
witnesses. The Montreal Gazette reported the incident, but no media
or public outrage has resulted, except a joint call on 26 September
by CAF and CUPE Ontario for Mr. Dutrizac’s dismissal. In response,
Mr. Dutrizac denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was “insulted”
by the suggestion that he is a racist. He protested that he
had treated Ms. Laouni “with respect”. If this is what
passes for respect for women and Muslims these days, then our battle
is surely very steeply uphill.
In the US, Rush Limbaugh recently (and falsely) reported that Barack Obama is an Arab- rather than African-American. Racism against African-Americans in the US may not be sufficient to block Senator Obama from the Presidency. But Limbaugh hopes the suggestion that he is actually of Arab ethnicity could do the trick. To compound the insult, the incident was widely reported as a “smear” on Mr. Obama, just as false accusations of him being a Muslim are frequently recounted.
And when
we look at the climate of racist impunity in Canada, we need look
no further than the Gear Up Motors website where Muslims were referred
to as "rag-headed, heathen, bastards". Women and Liberals
were also fair game. The fact that Gear Up was not some obscure small
business, but a Department of National Defense supplier, suggests
that commercial operations need not worry about their social reputation
when it comes to openly displaying insulting attitudes towards Arabs
and Muslims. Indeed, parents caution their children against posting
tamer material on their Facebook pages for fear of losing job and
university entrance opportunities as a consequence. Gear Up only removed
the offending material when Liberal MP Scott Brison complained. However,
the basis of
Mr. Brison’s complaint was not that such comments about Muslims
are unacceptable, but such sentiments voiced by a Canadian military
supplier could endanger our troops in Afghanistan.
These are not isolated incidents, but instead are part of a pattern of representation and public discourse about Arabs and Muslims in North America. In movies and television, Arabs and Muslims are overwhelmingly portrayed as blood-thirsty terrorists, irrational, dishonest,anti-Western, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israeli, ignorant and rabid. The fact that Little Mosque on the Prairie does not represent Muslims in this way made national and international news.
Instead of asking why open racism and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims persists when similar sentiments against other visible minorities and religions are not acceptable in polite North American society, one perhaps should ask what they serve. During the World Wars, stories portraying the inhumanity of the Germans and Japanese served to mobilize public opinion in favour of the war and justify the war effort. Canadian war efforts also included persecution and internment of German and Japanese Canadians at home, although there was and is no evidence that Japanese and German Canadians posed any threat.
But today, no Arab or Muslim state is at war with Canada. Instead, Canada is involved in a war against an amorphous “terror”—amorphous because terror is not geographically bound or defined but is a tactic. Yet this very lack of corporeal definition leaves open who is a terrorist. Instead of internment camps, Canada has employed a pinpoint approach: security certificates, domestic anti-terrorism laws and security agency surveillance of Arab and Muslim Canadians.
Canadians
of all backgrounds want to see the election candidates express more
than cheap talk denouncing unfounded prejudice against and mistreatment
of Arabs and Muslims, both here and abroad. They want to see a repeal
of draconian laws and polices and a return to rule of law along the
time-proven principles of habeas corpus and civil liberty. They want
to see reform of our foreign policies so that international human
rights and humanitarian laws are equally applied to all people. And
they want to see real changes in how our public officials and those
they deal with speak about and to Arabs and Muslims—and meaningful
challenge and
consequence when boundaries of respect and dignity are transgressed.
