Ontario Premier rejects use of Shariah law

The premier of Ontario has finally done something that I think the majority of Ontarians believe was the right thing -- he said "No" to religious arrogance and encroachment denying those seeking "the use of a set of centuries' old religious rules called Shariah law to settle Muslim family disputes". The people who sought to make this change in Ontario law have demonstrated new heights in bad-neighborliness and social arrogance. And really, I they really ought to consider leaving this secular world and returning to the caves and sand and 11th Century societies they fled in the first place. Where Islam is the law of the land.

When my grandfather immigrated to Canada from Ireland, he came to contribute to Canadian society -- not turn his tiny corner of it into a miniature Ireland. He became a Canadian citizen -- even though pledging allegiance to the Queen caused him actual physical pain. He did not move to Canada to make other people Irish, nor did he come here to perpetually wave the Irish flag. He came to Canada to seek a new life, a better life than he might have had in 1930s and '40's Ireland.

Maybe it's a provocative thing to say, but I'll say it -- I'm tired of immigrants coming to Canada only to have them create their own little cocoon-like, isolated microcosms of the lands they fled. Particularly when they fled countries with horrific human rights records, arcane and hostile attitudes toward the treatment of women and children, or religions that require them to carry deadly weapons. I'm glad that Canada is know as a "mosaic" society rather than a "melting pot." Yes, people coming here from other cultures bring a richness that is welcome and necessary to our development. However, I draw the line when immigrants arrive in Canada seeking only to carve out a miniature version of the lands they left.

In the neighborhood in which I grew up there are now full-sized billboard signs that are completely in foreign languages. Am I advocating Quebec-styled language gestapos to skulk around my city scrutinizing and measuring such signs and issuing tickets and citations? Absolutely not. However, there's no denying that signs like these have an isolating, divisive effect on communities. It's not neighborly. That might sound like hokum to some people, but I hardly call Yuppie-condo-alienation a sophisticated alternative.

There is something utterly contradictory and provocative about religious fundamentalists coming to a secular nation like Canada looking to spread or deepen their fundamentalism. That's like me going to a vegetarian restaurant and clamoring to be served a T-bone steak -- rare. There's an inherent, off-putting arrogance at work in such a move.

To be clear, I group all fundamentalism and all fanaticism under one umbrella term: crazy. Like the comedian George Carlin, I believe that all religion is a form of mental illness. Sometimes benign, often malignant, sometimes injurious. I'd have to really comb through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to see if it spells out a separation of Church and State, but I think for any country to function -- particularly to function in the 21st Century -- this separation is crucial.

I write this fearing no fatwa.

Further reading on the subject: OPEN LETTER TO ONTARIO PREMIER DALTON McGUINTY: Don't ghettoize women's rights