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Mohammad Fadel: Striking a balance between individual rights and democratic norms
Original address: http://www2.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/local/story.html?id=26058622-bc2c-496d-99d6-4989b0cac67b
Author: Angela Hall
Reference: Saskatoon Star Phoenix, March 4, 2011, p. A6
EXCERPTS:
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms aims to strike a balance between individual rights and democratic norms, creating a regime of pluralism, Fadel said.
“If you’re going to be committed to pluralism, you’re going to end up with multiculturalism. But it’s not a multiculturalism that allows the kinds of things they talk about,” Fadel said.
“They’ll raise issues like honour crimes, and honour crimes have nothing to do with legal multiculturalism. Nobody defends honour crimes.”
If someone from a majority culture commits a crime, it’s understood to be an individual’s crime, he said.
Original title: Lecture targets cultural biases
Who comes to mind when you think of a Muslim woman?
A woman in another country clad in a burka?
Or a leading Canadian female academic?
Mohammed Fadel, an assistant professor in the faculty of law at the University of Toronto, raised that example in an interview Thursday prior to delivering the 2011 Stapleford Lecture in Regina on multiculturalism and gender.
Biases, including those around Islam and Muslim women, are sometimes used to try to attack the policy of multiculturalism that exists in Canada, said Fadel.
“The only way to overcome that is to affirmatively choose to take a critical stance and try to interrogate our own assumptions,” said Fadel, who in his speech planned to talk about some examples of “real-life” Muslim women.
A sampling of clips from YouTube of women speaking during the recent events in Egypt show people who are passionate, well-spoken and politically sophisticated, he said.
“They’re all different ages. . . . One covers her hair, one doesn’t, just showing the incredible diversity and complete lack of passivity and articulateness of real Muslim women, just to sort of change the framing of the question,” said Fadel.
“I think, ultimately, right now in Canada, we have a very good legal regime, but there are sort of certain cultural attacks on multiculturalism that are based on stereotyped images that have very little do with reality. But, nevertheless, they’re sort of deeply part of the culture.”
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms aims to strike a balance between individual rights and democratic norms, creating a regime of pluralism, Fadel said.
While he contends that’s the right approach for a democratic state to take, some people are reluctant to agree.
“If you’re going to be committed to pluralism, you’re going to end up with multiculturalism. But it’s not a multiculturalism that allows the kinds of things they talk about,” Fadel said.
“They’ll raise issues like honour crimes, and honour crimes have nothing to do with legal multiculturalism. Nobody defends honour crimes.”
If someone from a majority culture commits a crime, it’s understood to be an individual’s crime, he said.
“The cultural attack on multiculturalism is really based just on appeals to prejudice and bias. It’s finding a straw man that doesn’t exist.”
The Stapleford lecture series was established in honour Ernest W. Stapleford, a former president and principal of Regina College, and Maude Stapleford, who had a particular interest in the arts and in the advancement of the rights of women and children.
