On top of a clear trend in increased discrimination against Muslims in the country over the past ten years, Canadians now also think that Islam and western values are irreconcilable.
According to a recent survey by Leger Marketing, commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies in Montreal, 56% of the 1,500 Canadians that participated believe that Western and Muslim societies are waging an ideological battle that has no room for moderation. A contest between two systems of morals and values that are completely the opposite of each other.
Unfortunately, I know very little about Islam, with the exception of what I heard from my Muslim friends and co-workers, all of whom are decent, hard-working and educated individuals. As far as I can see there is no difference between say my Albanian co-worker and myself.
All of my Muslim acquaintances are in fact law abiding, almost indistinguishable from any other Canadian, citizens. They wake up, recite their prayers, go to work, take care of their families and dine and sleep at the end of the day just like the rest of us.In fact, if they wouldn’t have told me they were Muslims, I wouldn’t have noticed.
So why then is it that most Canadians think that Islam and western values are irreconcilable? Could it be because most Canadians take their advice about Islam from the mass media, which is American media here in Canada, or from so called experts like Christopher Hitchens, Geert Wilders and Mark Steyn?
Regardless of the source of information from which Canadians derive an understanding of Islam and Muslims, whether this understanding is negative or positive, sufficient or insufficient, Canadians need to re-focus by viewing their Muslim neighbors as human beings and Canadians first, rather than some religious group. Very often we tend to see the extremes of both Islam and the Christian right here in Canada and the U.S., first, before we realize that they have nothing in common with the average Muslim or Christian citizen.
The extremes are prescient of course in both western and middle-eastern societies and they are violent, this is precisely why they get so much coverage.They also tend to overshadow the Islam that is a part of our communities, families and neighborhoods, the mosques that are at the corner of an intersection, the women wearing head-scarves and the prayer rooms in our schools.
The truth is that average Muslims would like to practice their religion without fear of discrimination and an overwhelming majority would like to practice it in the most moderate way possible. It is flatly untrue that Muslims take the Qur’anic edicts word for word, or the injunctions in the Hadith as uninterpretable in more than one way. There is such a thing as debate among Muslims as well, over the best interpretation of these edicts.
Just like Christianity, the most unintelligible elements in the teachings of Islam have been shelved. They are no longer relevant. And also, just like the Christian Bible, the Qur’an has not lost it’s universal appeal as a book of timeless wisdom.
Therefore, I personally have always gotten along well with my Muslim friends and neighbors and I would never judge them by the actions of the most extreme groups and individuals that call themselves Islamic.
For more information about Muslim discrimination in the U.S., where it’s relatively pervasive, check out the My Fellow American project found at http://myfellowamerican.us/, great people doing great work to combat the issue.
