From the Montreal Gazette, with thanks to Tom and RB:
Islamic law has no place in Quebec or the rest of Canada, a provincial cabinet minister and several MNAs said yesterday.With the Ontario government expected to decide shortly on whether to allow the Islamic legal code, known as sharia, to be applied to settle family disputes among Muslims, Liberal and Parti Quebecois MNAs warned yesterday that using sharia would lead to blatant violations of women's rights.
"I think all political parties in Quebec must say loud and clear that not only do we not want it in Quebec, we don't want it in Ontario and we don't want it in Canada," International Relations Minister Monique Gagnon-Tremblay said at a conference.
Why, Monique, how un-multicultural of you.
The former immigration minister said Quebec should refuse immigrants who believe the Islamic system should be applied."We must rework the social contract (for immigrants) so that the people - Muslims who want to come to Quebec and who do not respect women's rights or who do not respect whatever rights may be in our Civil Code - stay in their country and not come to Quebec, because that's unacceptable."
"On the other hand, if people want to come to Quebec and accept our way of doing things and our rights, in that instance they will be welcome and we will help them integrate."...
Monique Gagnon-Tremblay should be Prime Minister of Canada.
"We've seen sharia at work in Iran. We've seen it at work in Afghanistan, with the odious Taliban regime. We've seen it in Sudan, where the hands of hundreds of innocent people were cut off. We've seen it in Nigeria with attempts at stoning," she said.Salam Elmenyawi, chairperson of the Muslim Council of Montreal, was outraged when told about the comments made at the conference.
"When you talk like that, you are attacking me and my faith," he said in a phone interview. "This is total ignorance. Bigotry and ignorance have no limits."...
OK, Salam. So please explain how Sharia as you see it is different from what Gagnon-Tremblay pointed out about Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Nigeria.
Liberal MNA Fatima Houda-Pepin [who was born Muslim] argued Islamic law would infringe on women's rights and open the door to polygamy."One of the strengths of Islamists is that they know you very well. They know our history, they know our culture, they know our justice system, the Charter of Rights," she said.
She said those lobbyists are trying to impose a political agenda, not necessarily a religious one.
Elmenyawi suggested Houda-Pepin was posing as a representative of the Muslim community when she does not speak for it.
He said the Islamic community in Montreal is looking at creating family tribunals, independent of the courts, to settle religious issues and to protect the rights of both women and men. It is an internal debate that has nothing to do with Quebec's Civil Code, he said....
Nothing to worry about, just little family tribunals settling family matters....no, nothing to worry about...Move along...Nothing to see here...Time to catch up on the Michael Jackson trial...
One just cant help thinking that how can Canada's legal foundations be so weak as to even consider alternatives to their established legal system. Hopefully they don't make the mistakes of appeasers and multiculteralists. How did things ever get to this point? What where these people thinking? This kind of discussion should have never entered the halls of the Canadian Government.
I was pleasantly surprised (that's an understatement) when I read the article in the National Post last week (same ownership as the Montreal Gazette). All the more so when it came from a Quebec politician.
Mackie: The arbitration system isn't a reflection on Canada's legal system which is much the same as that found in the U.S. (Quebec's civil system is somewhat different). The arbitration system may work within many communities where there is a respect for cultural norms and acknowledgement that this arbitration system is at all times subservient to the formal legal system and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I believe this arbitration has been used for some time within the orthodox Jewish community. The problem lies with the belief (probably correct) that with the Muslim community it's a case of give an inch and they'll take a mile.
johnb:
"Give an Inch they will take a mile". --I think that is where the greatest concern is when dealing with muslims and their totalitarian Ideology brought to you by Sharia law. I was aware of the civil and family law practices in Canada which tries to reflect cultural sensitivities from another Jihad watch article. I don`t know how long Canada has had those practices in place but it still seems as if you could be opening up a pandoras box with such a multiculteral approach to family law and hopefully not beyond when it comes to muslims
"The former immigration minister said Quebec should refuse immigrants who believe the Islamic system should be applied."
I am very encouraged to see a high-profile official in liberal Canada echoing what I proposed about three weeks ago:
LETTER TO CONGRESS
Even in its "mildest" form, Sharia law is clearly nothing more than a political system that is subversive to both democracy and equality under the law. Hence, the following proposal:
1) All mosques in America which want to maintain their status as places of worship must reject Wahhabism, Khomeinism, and the application of Sharia law in modern times. Any mosque or Islamic organization that does not comply with this pledge will no longer be eligible for faith-based tax breaks and privileges.
2) Any mosque or Islamic organization that receives funds from a country that applies Sharia law will longer be eligible for faith-based tax breaks and privileges.
3) Any Muslim who wishes to come to the U.S. must accept this pledge in order to be eligible for a visa.
4) The Department of Homeland Security must reserve the right to deport or rescind the citizenship of any immigrant or visitor who violates this pledge either by the promotion of Islamism or by collaboration with any mosque or Islamic organization that has not taken the pledge against Islamism.
The third and fourth measures may not always prevent closet Islamists from gaining entry to the U.S. and preaching "underground," but they can no longer brazenly recruit impressionable youths in mosques, universities, and prisons as they do now. Furthermore, Islamist organizations like CAIR and MPAC will be relegated to the KKK fringe where they belong. No public school will consult them, no congressperson will be caught dead with them. This will seriously undermine their Islamist agenda.
Definitely, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay for PM. Heck, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay for President (if that were possible).
And if it is discovered that in making the pledge in #4, and in taking the oath of allegiance that is an essential part of naturalization, a Muslim (or anyone else) has committed perjury, then that should be grounds for promptly stripping that person of citizenship, and deporting him, or her, forthwith, along with all those family members who were the beneficiaries of such perjury.
End of story. No more nonsense need be tolerated.
Robert:
The rest of Canada (ROC) may be "multi culti", but Quebec is decidedly French and utilizes codified law and not the English-inspired Stare Decisis. While I am glad that a Canadian politician of Ms. Gagnon-Tremblay's status has raised the Canadian flag on the issue of Sharia, her concerns would be the rights of women and any infringment on sovereign Quebec law and not a broader understanding of the modus operandi of Islamists.
As for Fatima Houda-Pepin, bravo for publicly outing her former co-religionists. I'm sure she speaks for as broad a section of Quebec Muslims as does her detractor, who is merely chair of the Muslim Council of Montreal, which probably boasts a much smaller membership than the number of electors in Ms. Houda-Pepin's riding.
BTW, Daniel Pipes addresses this on his website and he gives a conditional OK to "voluntary" participation in Sharia courts, but doesn't offer any means as to how you can insure that no duress or undue influence will be deployed against an otherwise unwilling litigant.
waterdragon52:
That is another good argument when it comes to family, and business law. Was there coercion or threats made to draw a person into voluntary sharia law? Certainly a lot of arbitration practices barely reach the courts at times, but how can we always be sure that the parties have gotten the benifits of what they wanted from sharia or the Canadian legal system? Does the Sharia arbitrator ask if there has been any threats or coercion in the decisions before him?
Folks:
Here is the legal basis for Canada's Multiculturalism:
The Canadian Multiculturalism Act
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-18.7/text.html
Now have fun when you are reading this kids but please, play safe. Don't get hurt!
Here is a link to the Ontario Attorney General's report regarding using Sharia law:
Dispute Resolution in Family Law: Protecting Choice, Promoting Inclusion
http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/boyd/
Now you kids be careful when you are playing with this report. Remember, never play with a "loaded" report. It's all fun and games to have an "open mind" just until somebody's brain falls out!
Here is a little brief on the subject:
http://www.nawl.ca/brief-sharia.html
International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada:
http://www.nosharia.com/
Mackie:
I am sorely tempted to come up with some smart-alecky reply about the number of male vs female witnesses required to establish duress and undue influence, but the thought of the kind of abuse many immigrant women, Muslim or otherwise, experience in wretched isolation is no joke.
Recently, Ali Sina posted a communication from a young Canadian Muslim male at faithfreedom.org about the physical abuse his mother is suffering at his father's hands, justified of course by the Quran. Sina advised the boy to explain to his mother her legal rights and recourse under current law. Imagine the outcome if this should become deemed a private family matter to be referred to a Sharia court instead.
Quebec is still reeling from the 1989 Jihad by a Muslim student that slaughtered 14 females at his school,his Algerian father beat his wife and declared women a chattle.
Gamil Gharbi learned about guns from his father
and also learned to hate female,Muhammed was a pedophile and misogynist so Gamil commited "Jihad"
for Allah and killed the 14 females then turned his rifle on himself to be in paradise with
Muhammed and Allah.
Read it at the CBC website or check the Toronto Star archives from November 1989-January 2000,Gamil change his name to blend in and earn trust with the ones he wanted to kill,this is how Muhammed slaughtered a whole village of non-Muslims.
Click the "Did you know" Tab and read it for yourself folks,the media blamed the whole thing on men and that's what create the Gun-Registry
that has yet to see the criminals listing their gun on file with the RCMP.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-70-398-2237/disasters_tragedies/montreal_massacre/clip3
Quebec has the right to be worried since Montreal is the center for Militant Mosques
that raise money for terrorism.
The Millenium bomber (Ahmed Ressam) came from that Mosques in Montreal,and the Khadr Klan had their Dad in that Mosque and in Afghanistan running the Bogus Orphanage that laundered money.
You Canadians out there - did you know Marc Lepine, the mass murderer, was a Muslim?
The Toronto Star
NEWS, Sunday, December 5, 1999
Remembering the massacre points the way to progress
TOMORROW, PAUSE and force yourself to think about 5-year-old Gamil Gharbi, clinging frantically to his father's pant leg as blow after blow rained down on him till he bled from his nose and ears. His mother, a former nun and then a nurse, was forbidden to console him. She, too, was constantly cursed, insulted, humiliated, smashed up against walls and beaten. Gamil, with his little sister, was locked in his room for hours at a time so his father, a high-flying Algerian mutual fund salesman who believed all women were chattels, could have a leisurely brunch.
Gamil grew up brimming with rage and primed to hate the only creatures lowlier than himself - women. In his teens, he changed his name to Marc Lepine. If his father metaphorically loaded the weapon, our violence-saturated society showed him where to point it: at the "feminists" so vilified in macho culture for encroaching on male entitlements.
Because of Lepine and the promising young lives he snatched away, we may be the only country in the world with an official Day of Remembrance for women. Instead of poppies, our lapels sprout the now-familiar button with the red rose to commemorate the 14 women engineering students who were gunned down, in blood, shock and horror, on that ordinary afternoon at l'Universite de Montreal 10 years ago.
We need the candlelit vigils and concerts for Dec. 6 just as we need the solemn bells and silences of Nov. 11. We need the cleared space, the stopping of time's relentless clock, the ceremony and the heightened words that will unlock our feelings and make us remember.
It takes an effort of will to bring to mind the blows and the ugliness that lie just beneath the surface of so many lives around us. We must make the effort, because even as you read this, other hands are raised against other children who will grow up to take vengeance on those who never harmed them. The National Day of Remembrance is for all women killed by male violence - not in battle, not because they were criminals, but simply because they were female.
As usual, when we gather tomorrow, only the willing of heart will be present. Willing or unwilling, however, no Canadian had an option 10 years ago when the blurred, urgent, news crackled into our consciousness. We had to hear; we had to feel the sting of hatred's poison.
I didn't hear about the massacre until the next morning. I was cocooned in the welcome warmth of bed, waking slowly after a happy public event the night before - the Toronto debut of a feminist documentary - that had played to a huge, exuberant crowd. The glow of pleasure still wrapped me as my eyes opened to my husband bursting out of the bathroom, his razor still in his hand, relaying in shocked tones what he had just heard on the radio: "Somebody killed a lot of women . . ." he exclaimed. "Montreal . . . it's a slaughter. . ."
Within moments, it was clear that the young women had been cold-bloodedly separated out and executed solely because of their gender. The pain of that news was physical, like an arrow of ice stabbing my heart. Only equality - full, rich, deeply entrenched equality of respect, dignity and human worth, for all people of all colours, reflected in laws, popular culture and social mores - can ever heal that wound.
Our posters and banners for Dec. 6 all read: "First mourn. Then work for change." In these 10 years, thousands upon thousands of Canadians, women and men, have done both. The mourning was and is painfully real. For women who were activists, working at low pay or as volunteers in the front lines (a telling phrase) of the war against women, staffing the clinics, the rape crisis centres, the women's counselling centres, the incest recovery groups, the battered women's shelters, that bleak day was the final unbearable crisis. All the stifled rage and despair at the useless violence welled up and spilled over in tears, angry speeches, boiling words.
For myself, I regret now that The Star asked me, only hours after I heard the news, to write a front page reaction piece. Along with many others, I felt that at this raw moment, of all moments, I could say, without being misunderstood, how enraged and defiant we felt about the constant stream of blows and wounds inflicted on women simply because of their femaleness.
I was wrong.
Based on the angry reaction to our words, it apparently was still taboo to speak about male violence against women. As a learned man once explained to me, such blunt speech violates "men's right not to know" what their buddies are doing and what their male culture permits and even fosters.
Instantly, our hot tears and painful grief were dismissed as "political." The story, in countless broadcasts and news columns, became not the dead women but the outrage of "innocent" men, in a fury at being linked by their maleness to Marc Lepine. It was all about them - were their feelings hurt, were they being discriminated against because a few all-female vigils were planned. I regret that many of us spoke up so honestly only because it gave the backlash an opening for attack that served as a distraction from the real issue. (Sometimes it seems that anything will distract the public from the dead bodies of murdered women - 40 women a year in Ontario killed by male rage.)
Now, 10 years later, I'd rather draw people's attention to lessons we might learn from the life of Gamil Gharbi. His brutal, control-freak father - one of the real root causes of the Montreal Massacre - sued for custody, although he never bothered to visit or pay for his children after the divorce. Today, there are angry and violent men, some of them slick and plausible, who insist that they are entitled to custody of their children, and there are parliamentarians dedicated to promoting their cause.
Most men, thank heaven, took a different path. Patrick Quinn, chair of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, swore on the spot to make a difference, and he tells me that today not only have the number of women engineering students doubled, but attitudes have changed: "The young men are used to equality in their relationships now, and many, including older men, were awakened to different values by Montreal."
Gun control, new schools of women's studies, Statistics Canada data on the levels of violence against women, anti-violence education in schools, ever-diminishing tolerance for the stupidity of sexism, progress in legislation to afford women equal protection of the law - the advances are heartening. CBC Newsworld will devote the entire day tomorrow to remembrance and reflection, an unprecedented media breakthrough.
It may be many years, however, before we can shrink the pitiful roll-call of the murdered women and children on those annual lists of the dead. Tomorrow, on the national Day of Remembrance, let each of us think of those who died, and what we can do to stop the killing.
Just to start, if you see a woman selling red rose buttons, buy one. If your workplace doesn't have a remembrance service planned, stage an impromptu one. In the moment of silence, try on the word "feminist" and see how a passion for equality feels.
Michele Landsberg's column usually appears in The Star Saturday and Sunday.
waterdragon52: I'm probably unwittingly playing devils advocate here--Of course under sharia-- a womans testomony is worth half that of a man (Hadith 1:301) ----Men are in charge of women.... As for those whom ye fear rebellion... scourge them (Sura 4:34) Women are seen as a major cause of evil and are to be kept under control (Sura 4:34-- All the more evidence to completely and uniquivically disallow the practice of sharia-- the courts call out for fair and impartial treatment of all men and women in western societies I.E. equal justice for all.
Hey guys! Important news! System of a Down is going on a third SOULS tour...named SOULS 2005...its a commemorative series of concerts for the Armenian genocide victims. The band members had families as victims too. Whoever is in key European cities for the latter part of May and early June, and who loves rock music, please attend and raise the Armenian Genocide awareness. It deeply affects Europe because of the EU referendum on Turkey. Excellent choice of dates by the band. PLEASE SUPPORT THE CAUSE!
My fellow Canadians: It's about time.
What the govt needs to keep in mind is that the largest and loudest group opposing this action are MUSLIM WOMEN....should that not ring a few bells for them??? In the interest of showing how "advanced" and unbiased they are, the govt is pushing the rights of these women back hundreds of years. I have to wonder, does sharia provide for a non custodial parent to financially support their child(ren) until they are 18 as is stated in Canadian law? My husband pays well over $1000 a month for support and has for many years and will for at least another 4 years, will a muslim man that attends sharia hearings get away with only paying for 1 year, will custody automaticly be granted to him once a male reaches 9 and a female reaches 7? (not that I think custody should automaticly go to the woman, I know many couples that have divorced and IMO the father should have gotten, and in a few cases did, get custody) The rules of sharia are at the other end of the spectrum in comparison to Canadian law there is no way to make things fair...and the govt still has not addressed the issue of who will police whether or not the muslim woman is there "of her own choice" and has not been forced either through violence, guilt and/or threats.
Vive la Belle Province! Or however you'd say it.
Here's a link to a real sad case of a Muslim couple that hacked up their daughter and then buried the parts near the lakeshore.
When the walls started coming in on the parents the Father resorted to Sharia-Law and honour killings to defend their actions.
Sharia-Law allowed Muhammed Khan to have custody
of Farah after a divorce from the biological Mother back in Pakistan,it appeared to me as a
immigration scam through marriage.
Muhammed married a Canadian Muslims with landed Status,the daughter was the sympathy angle for Immigration Officers but then she became a
inconvienence once Muhammed got in the door through Marriage.
The CBC has more detailed articles if you search stories under "Farah Khan" but this one really
shows why Shariah-Law should stay the hell out of Canada.
It was bad enough the media failed to mention the parents Islamic faith until it came out in the trial records,but Muslim Org's stayed mute on the issue and finally had to make a statement.
The usual rant about the killers not being "True" Muslims rang hollow when Muslims
began to argue over the burial that must be according to the Islamic practises.
Remember how CAIR said the 9/11 hijackers weren't "Real" muslims,and then several Islamic org's criticized the FBI for not treating the
hijackers remains with respect according to
the Quranic law for Muslim funerals.
Don't be fooled,Sharia is already being applied in Canada and Farah Khan paid the price,CAIR is now pushing for it to be a separate Court system
for Female Muslims.
Note how much focus the Muslims put on where Farah will be buried and not the fact that the Quran was used to kill her.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/news/national/2000/02/07/000207farah.html