Mosque offers sympathies to human trafficking victims
By Letter to the Editor on August 21, 2021.
Editor:
We at the Lethbridge mosque would like to express our deepest sympathies to the victims and the families of the victims of the recent trafficking ring arrested by the Lethbridge police.
Like most who heard the news, we felt a mixture of shock and revulsion. Yet we are also concerned about the anti-immigrant and even outright racist sentiments that are being openly expressed, especially online, in response to the news story.
We would like to remind our fellow citizens that the Canadian Islamic mosaic, like any other religious or cultural community, is extremely diverse.
The vast majority of our congregation comprises upright, law-abiding citizens who respect the values of a country we all cherish as our home.
We are more than eager to work with the authorities, in whatever capacity they consider necessary, to play our own role in safeguarding this beautiful city, whose goodwill we have never felt deprived of.
Imam Zubair Sidyot
Lethbridge Muslim Association
-1
I fully appreciate your overall sentiment, including why you want to distance yourself from the recent trafficking ring. I’m also assuming that when rightly pointing out the existence of diversity in ANY religious or cultural community, your variation on the word “extreme” as a descriptor acknowledges the unique degree of that feature in yours. The recent return of the dreaded Taliban and what that will mean to women and girls (who they claim will be “included,” but “within the bounds of Islamic law”) reassures no one, and the underlying parallels with the traffic ring stand out, except with no “rule of law” there to curtail them. Women’s rights are still relatively new here, after all; the battle continues, so what’s happening right now in Afghanistan is beyond appalling.
The fact remains that choice is a big deal here; there is freedom of religion in the charter and a premium is placed on “tolerance” of religion, even when the religion in question epitomizes the complete opposite. Quite an impressive and sophisticated accommodation really. There IS supposedly the caveat of separating church and state, but a lot of people are concerned about that in practice when a group (or community, if you will) of evangelicals in the UCP currently governs Alberta, and SO badly.
Also, this is on top of the myriad of daily, intractable societal problems presented by adherents to “faith” creeds, many of whom seem to inhabit an altogether alternate reality where vaccines, masks, climate change, and science itself are denied in favor of their particular deity somehow deciding…
I often get the impression that Muslims feel that people simply don’t understand their religion, and in a genuine spirit of solidarity (much applauded) want to do outreach to answer the questions. Truthfully, although most people don’t want to be labelled “Islamophobic,” and are indeed tolerant of difference and diversity, they naturally react to Islam much like everyone is right now to Catholicism since the unmarked graves were discovered. Sorry, it’s not you personally, but…..
We hear you and your concern.
This is perhaps, interesting, and pertinent, from WISE (Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality)
“Eradicating Sex Trafficking”
http://www.wisemuslimwomen.org/sex-trafficking/
And, from an article on human trafficking corridors in Canada…”No single age range or ethnic group is commonly associated with trafficking. Responses to the question of who the traffickers are varied greatly across interviews, and were broadly reflective of demographics in Canada and the geographic locations of respondents. The most common characteristic of traffickers is that they are able to assess and manipulate vulnerability to their own benefit; that ability transcends class, ethnic, and gender boundaries.”
We need more than an apology; we need your Imam and those at the helm to reign in ‘your people’ via open discussions on Canada’s rule of law, customs and values. Unfortunately your culture is very much associated with abuses towards women and children (men still marry little girls; female mutilations still occur as do honor killings, floggings, beheadings, harsh Sharia penalties imposed on women, etc. etc.) It’s sickening and primitive. There is a stark contrast between the western world and what Muslims have built for themselves. You have the privilege to come here and enjoy all we have fought for over the centuries: freedom, democracy and more. The villains that did this to those young girls need to be counselled into civility because it’s this kind of crud that your culture ultimately is judged by.
Yes, it’s uncomfortably true that the Taliban (rightly called “seventh century psychopaths) and ISIS (a death cult), DO follow the same book, but with more attention to detail is all. Which just makes them “purists.”
If it’s all about the particular “interpretation” (one of the realities of texts; each individual reader imparts meaning) then the creed of Islam undeniably sanctions monsters and barbarians, which pretty much eradicates the plaintive insistence that it is a religion of “peace.” But the very word means “submission” and despite the men (only ever them of course) touching their foreheads to the ground in apparent submission, we all suspect the directive is primarily focused on women. Further proof that what all religions have in common is that they are “man-made.”
We would all be infinitely better off if the forehead to the ground was in submission to the ground, or the earth, or nature, from whence we all ACTUALLY came. That’s what we should all be worshipping at this point in time.
I also see in the letter that there is a mention of “racism ” in the usual nasty drivel online, but that inaccurately conflates religion and race when they’re not the same at all. Race is immutable while religion is just a set of ideas, and is therefore, theoretically at least, a choice. Avid, entrenched indoctrination (is there any other kind, but praying five times a day takes the cake) makes short work of true choice. I do have empathy for women subjected to that; I was not. Attributing the covering of women in various degrees to simple, natural “modesty?” Once you get to the full tent where they peer out from a gauze panel at the world, all we see is disturbing, unwarranted shame and pure, abject submission. It makes many of us here very angry towards the religion behind it, and the ghastly men who perpetrate it.
Muslim women brush that aside too, expressing their own innate, unquenchable fashion sense via beautiful, colorful, and tasteful headgear, but when you remember the dictate, apparently straight from their particularly formidable deity (there’s no god but GOD, and compulsive muttering in almost every sentence of “god willing, god willing”) with HIS, always HIS, misleadingly musical name, it’s really quite ominous.
the ignorance in this entry is disappointing. beheadings and a few other punishments aside, we are not too far removed from from our own utterly grotesque treatment of women as far lesser citizens than males. much has changed just in my relatively short lifetime…barely a 100 years now since women got to vote; barely a generation since women have been able to access almost all employment/career/educational opportunities here (before then, females were virtually entirely dependent upon men- not because they were actually lesser but because society pinned them down as such…and what percent wound up with an abusive speck of a “husband” was well high. in those situations there was little opportunity for a woman to get out from under.
fast forward to today, and women remain overly victimised by males, they are still not at equal standing in terms of income and opportunity…so, you know what? get a grip. this holier than thou entry is far too lacking in acknowledgement of how pathetic is the human condition; it chooses to smear an entire group into one simpleton niche of extremism, when in fact muslims have quite a degree of variance…as do christians.
“Disappointing” is it? And your “entry” is full of passive aggression and false equivalencies. You know perfectly well that this is not about “variance” among individual followers of Islam, it’s about the creed and doctrines of the religion itself.
you do not agree there are practitioners of islam that are not extremist – perhaps you may wish to take another look.
Most of the comments reveal the impossible position Muslims are put into when it comes to Islam in the news. If they remain silent, their silence is interpreted as complicity or endorsement for some crime, and they are blamed. If they speak out, they are accused of being apologetic, irrational, reactive, naive about their own religion or simply duplicitous. And they are blamed. It is as if the only time we are willing to respect what they have to say is if they tell us what we want to hear.
More to the point, as for the recent arrests of the traffickers, we need only to ask a simple question. If they were white, homegrown Albertan men with names likes Dick and Harry, would we expect the churches to apologize? Would we strain to find links between their actions and every crime ever committed in the name of Christianity, and then use these links as proof of how backward and barbaric their culture is? Or would we simply recognize, in the back of our minds, that their presence simply reflects a criminal element found in every society?
The Taliban: Let us not forget who created them. This fundamentalist movement emerged out of the ashes of the mujahideen whom the Americans funded and armed to fight the Soviets. They were our heroes until the Soviet Union fell. Remember Rambo? A CIA report commissioned by Rumsfeld after 9/11 to examine the root causes of Islamic extremism found that it was directly proportional to Western military intervention in Islamic lands. Read the report yourself. Muslim extremism does not grow out of a vacuum. Like any other religion, Islam is shaped by political, economic and social realities on the ground.
hooray! an intelligent and encompassing entry. indeed, why should the muslim community need to apologise? does the christian evangelical community apologise for all christians whenever a string of christians gets caught raping kids? human trafficking, of kids AND adults, is a massive issue. it is large in canada, and worse, it is an embedded worldwide issue. and, it remains an issue because there is an utter lack of will by most govts worldwide to take on human trafficking. it is enough to make one wonder just how deep it all goes, and raises questions as to just how powerful are those involved. when we look at just the short list of those that chummed about with epstein – a gruesome pack to be sure – one’s skin should begin to crawl in horror. given the level of power and prominence and wealth of those in just epstein’s kiddie theme park, it emerges somewhat as to why so very few govts – canada among the do-nothings (note: canadian govt is not considered a muslim fundamentalist govt) – are doing anything to bring an end to human trafficking.
aletheia’s final paragraph is further telling: it suggests to me that we can yet again thank – NOT – the usa for making the planet a far worse place for the vast majority of people. the usa: a country that has taken trillions of public dollars lining the private purses of those well entrenched in the industrial military complex, under the guise of bringing freedom to the world…however, it has never brought freedom to anyone. its primary focus is to hood robin: steal from the poor to give to the rich…and they do this the world over.
So where does ISIS fit in then? I’m just assuming that being among the legions of “believers” has made you an apologist for ALL religion? Either that or you think that religion is as immutable as race, and therefore inherently human and respectable? We’re kind of at a crossroads here on this inclination to keep hauling delusion along as if its on a par with our evolving reality. The strain is showing.
But if it’s the former, then of course that’s awfully nice for you, and helps keep your bubble of belief aloft (no one talks enough about just how much effort that must take to keep convincing your SELF; pesky reality does have a way of intruding regularly) but I’d say you’ve got your work cut out for you with Islam. Defending the indefensible tends to pull one alongside, making them partly complicit. Kind of like the Republicans floundering right now with THEIR “big lie.” But religion is the original, and as we comfortably marginalize much as simply being an example of “extremism,” we never talk about how extreme the very idea of some deity actually existing truly IS, all on its own.
The heady feeling of out-tolerating everyone else, hands down, wins the day I guess…. you can always trot out the usual thoughtless argument that they aren’t ALL like that, it’s just a few bad apples, utterly ignoring the fact that the same book, the same doctrine sanctions all of it. Interpretations of text vary, as I said, but the god idea (yes, of course it’s just another IDEA) hovers above it all, replacing critical thought with feeling, just like a familiar hug from your REAL Dad. I do remember the Santa Claus idea from when I was a child; it was hard to give up, but I knew it didn’t make sense, really; I’ve never been good at suspending disbelief. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And there simply is none.
Truth is so infinitely superior and so much more interesting. No one talks enough about just how straight-up boring religion is, as well as childish. Wild “nature” so easily trumps the mere supernatural, every time, because the latter is a “manufactured article.” Manufactured by men primarily to control capricious women, to nail them down and put a boot in their face (constant childbearing will do that to you), as well as relegating and subordinating them as basically minor human beings from the beginning (which makes me angrier than anything else, as it should ALL women.) Also, it cruelly controlled the unruly mass of humanity with hope and fear so helped with the “ruling of the world” thing, and then there was the bonus–they wouldn’t have to die! God, how old are we all?
Also, if only 5% of this cozy, depressingly large club are “extreme,” but there are unfortunately billions of members, then that still adds up to many thousands, enough to wreak havoc when they’re men, and we all know how “substantial” male egos are, and how wildly tribal they can be…you especially should know that, being a woman. Again, I assume.
Tony, you had a few respectfully articulated concerns in your first comment, but they quickly descended into anti-Muslim ramblings as you began to hog the thread and reveal your true colours. (And what precisely does ISIS have to do with any of this? With that logic, you might as well find links between Epstein and Harvey Weinstein and every crime committed in the name of Israel)
That’s disingenuous. Well, unlike you, I don’t respect delusion; I acknowledge it as I do any mental aberration.
Again, ISIS is obviously the most earnest interpretation of Islam, and interpretation of a text is actually what “this” is all about. A written text. Written by a man, long ago. Call it an anti-Muslim “rant” if you will, but it’s actually anti-religion, period, is rather “pro-truth.” If you consider religion as a continuum of human “belief,” then new-age “there must be something” is on one end and ISIS is on the other. Stepping off the continuum altogether is the only thing that truly makes any sense.
With existential climate change looming, and “believers” being disproportionately represented among this highly disturbing bunch of science denialists (also mainly conservatives), we’ve never needed truth more.