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The dignity of a country may be in ruins, but the dignity of its citizens cannot be shattered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7quSGeU7lWo

As the Park51 community center and mosque project near Ground Zero is painted as an issue of the rights and future of the American Muslim community, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been challenged to demonstrate that he is a moderate voice for Islam. By portraying the mosque issue as one of American Muslim rights the community is forced to align itself with an Imam who may not represent our true center.

I first met Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in 2002 at his NYC apartment where a group of young Muslim professionals had gathered for a study circle. After the events of 9/11 many Muslims in NYC were struggling to find their place within American society. Imam Feisal and his wife Daisy Khan filled the void and continue to create venues for Muslims to meet and discuss their faith without prejudice. This work is exemplified by the projects undertaken through their American Society of Muslim Advancement (formerly the American Sufi Muslim Association), the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow Project (MLT), the Cordoba Initiative, the Listening to Islam documentary, and the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, amongst others. I, along with many other Muslims, have been privileged to be part of some of these programs.

The inclusive spirit however has its shortcomings as well. At the first MLT gathering in 2004,we contemplated Islam’s stance on homosexuality, the status of women in the legal code, and what it meant to be a progressive or modern American Muslim. While important, and soul-searching, questions were raised there was little offered to guide the perplexed and Imam Feisal does not necessarily bear the “Islamic” credentials to successfully engage those within the faith: he is not an Islamic scholar.

This point was exemplified in 2005. As the War on Terror in full-swing, Imam Feisal became more an international figure. His book What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West was published, and his interfaith work began to be supported the US State Department. In the televised Doha Debates, it was Imam Feisal arguing that the War on Terror was not a War on Islam, while Mustafa Ceric, the grand Mufti of Bosnia, argued the opposite. The apparent discrepancy in stature might have been lost for the non-Muslim audience, but not for its Muslim one. On one side an Imam from a small mosque in New York City, and on the other a grand Mufti who represented an entire nation.

The Doha debate demonstrates a critical failing in championing Imam Feisal as a voice to speak to the Muslim world. The Imam, unlike his father, and his opponent at the Doha Debates, is not a formally trained Islamic cleric, nor is he a university-trained Islamic studies expert. Thus, both within the Muslim world and in the American Muslim context, one struggles to properly assess Imam Feisal’s place.

In 2007, the RAND Corporation issued a report entitled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks“. The policy paper urges the United States government to ally itself with moderate Muslims. RAND argued that capable partners would found within “Sufis.” Since Imam Feisal’s trips to the Middle East are at times sponsored by the State Department, as noted by a recent NY Times article, it seems that RAND was heard. However, Imam Feisal may be on the fringe of the American Muslim fold in several important ways. Firstly, most American Muslims do not consider themselves Sufis, and if they do the belong to those Sufi orders which are backed by Islamic seminaries across the globe and tied closely to the Sunni Islamic schools of law. These orders such as the Naqshabandi, Chisti, Shadhili, Ba-Alawi, and Muhammadiyya are organizational giants with histories dating back hundreds of years. Imam Feisal’s Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi order is less than a few decades old and does not allay itself with an Islamic legal tradition. If the idea is to have the Imam spur change his limited traction within the Muslim tradition posed an obstacle.

Imam Feisal’s greatest strength is his ability to engage people from other religious traditions and foster interfaith collaboration. One of the aims of his work is to foster Abrahamic ethics with Christian and Jewish groups. While the Imam’s accomplishments in this arena are many, it is curious to note that he is not on the roster of mainstream Muslim interfaith programs. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), arguably the largest civic organization representing American Muslims, is heavily involved in interfaith dialogue. Yet, Imam Feisal is rarely seen at their events and is not part of the initiatives through ISNA’s Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances. Similarly, Imam Feisal is not part of many university-based interfaith initiatives either. Nazareth College recently inaugurated the Center for Interfaith Study and Dialogue and tabbed Muhammad Shafiq, a former Imam and author of Interfaith Dialogue: A Guide for Muslims, as its director. Imam Feisal is conspicuously absent from this group as well. Imam Feisal’s absence is in part due to the perception that he is not representative of the Muslim middle. As organizations attempt to foster dialogue between the center groups within each religious group he may be perceived as a little removed.

As the Park51 project near Ground Zero has become painted as an issue of religious freedom, American Muslims are confronted with championing the cause of a man who may not accurately represent them. While Imam Feisal is in the middle of the debate, he may not necessarily be at the center of the Muslim tradition.

Dr. Padela is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and Islamic bioethics researcher at the University of Michigan, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding, and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in the UK. His opinions here are his own and do not reflect those of his sponsoring organizations.

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OTTAWA — At least 600 foreign women and girls are coerced into joining the Canadian sex trade each year by human traffickers, says a newly declassified RCMP report.

As many as 2,200 other newcomers are smuggled into the United States from Canada to toil in brothels, sweatshops, domestic jobs or construction work, estimates the intelligence assessment obtained by The Canadian Press.

And the RCMP says the numbers may represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as it is widely believed only one in 10 victims of trafficking report the crime to police.

A public furor recently prompted the federal government to halt a visa program intended to help Canadian strip clubs hire foreign women.

The RCMP report highlights an ugly phenomenon in which traffickers use deception or force to exploit the vulnerable people they bring to Canada, making them work in slave-like conditions in the sex business and other trades.

Anywhere from 700,000 to four million people are trafficked globally each year, though it is difficult to tell “how much of this activity is occurring in Canada,” the assessment says.

“The failure by law enforcement to recognize and identify this type of crime creates significant problems in terms of investigation and information gathering.”

The report, marked Canadian Eyes Only, is the result of Project Surrender, a groundbreaking effort by the RCMP’s criminal intelligence directorate to document the extent of human trafficking to Canada.

A censored version of the assessment, completed last January, was obtained under the Access to Information Act.

In compiling the report, analysts sifted through data from the RCMP immigration and passport sections, the Immigration Department and municipal police forces, as well as criminal data banks, international studies and media reports.

Most of the illicit activity occurred in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

A “conservative estimate” indicates about 600 women and girls are introduced into the Canadian sex trade annually by traffickers, says the report.

The number of persons “easily increases” to 800 when expanded to include migrants brought into the country by criminal organizations to support illicit operations such as selling drugs or tending marijuana growing operations, and others who are forced to work off debt or pay fees to crime groups.

Women have entered Canada for the sex trade under a variety of circumstances, the report says.

“They have been tricked, forced, obligated to a debt payment schedule or, as a permanent commodity, are trafficked from city to city through Canada and the U.S.A.

“There have also been cases of Canadian girls, coerced or kidnapped, fraudulently entering the U.S.A. and forced into prostitution.”

Large organizations operating in Canada, active over decades, can move 30 to 40 people into the United States each month.

Case figures indicate that between 1,500 and 2,200 people are trafficked from Canada into the U.S. annually, though the RCMP stresses the numbers may be only a fraction of the actual total.

Other case examples include:

• The smuggling of Polish nationals through Toronto and on to Chicago, many destined to work for vehicle “chop shops” for gangs dealing in stolen cars.
• Asians brought illegally to Canada’s west coast who have moved to New York, Los Angeles and other American destinations to work in sweat shops or criminal networks.
• The smuggling of Hondurans to Canada to serve as drug couriers on Vancouver streets.
• Abuse of “mail-order bride” programs by East European crime groups to bring women into the country and exploit them.

The 17,000 seasonal agricultural workers from abroad who tend Canadian farms and orchards each year may also be open to exploitation, the report notes.

“Some of these workers have entered Canada illegally, making them vulnerable to inadequate pay and conditions,” it says.

Trafficking in persons became an offence in Canada in June 2002, but there had been no cases brought before Canadian courts at the time of the report.

The RCMP moved this year to redirect resources into a new unit to fight human trafficking.

The Canadian Council for Refugees wants the government to protect victims of the crime.

Many of the abused and exploited are routinely treated as people who have simply broken the immigration law, says the council. As a result, they are detained and deported.

“And they often are going back to the same situation that put them in jeopardy in the first place,” said Amy Casipullai, the council’s vice-president.

The Mounties had no immediate comment on the intelligence report.

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HOW likely are French parliamentarians to approve the proposed “burqa ban”? Deputies get their first chance to debate the idea in parliament on Tuesday May 11th. As a first step, the National Assembly will examine a resolution, which carries symbolic value, but not legal force. Yet it will be a good test of the political mood. It is likely to be approved with thunderous cross-party support.

French backing for a burqa ban across the political spectrum is sometimes hard to understand. In many multicultural quarters of Europe, the idea is linked to the extreme or nationalist right. In Britain, for instance, the only party proposing a total burqa ban during the recent general-election campaign was the United Kingdom Independence Party, which also wants to pull the country out of the European Union. The far-right British National Party also called for a burqa ban in schools. One Labour minister replied that it was “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street. In a speech in Cairo last year, President Barack Obama argued that Western countries should not be “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear”.

In France, however, the proposal draws backing from the mainstream left and right. President Nicolas Sarkozy, from the political right, said last year that the burqa, as the French call it (in reality, they mean the niqab, or all-over face-covering veil), was “not welcome” on French soil. Jean-François Copé, the leader of the ruling UMP party in parliament, has been the most active in pushing for a total ban (The Economistinterviewed Mr Copé last week). Yet the idea is also backed by politicians of all stripes, including the Communist head of a parliamentary inquiry into a ban, and various leading Socialists.

One reason for this is France’s tradition of laïcité, a strict form of secularism, enshrined by law since 1905, and which keeps religion out of public institutions. At the time, the anti-clericalism behind the movement was largely inspired by the political left, and this legacy informs much left-wing thinking on secular matters today. When the French right proposed a ban on the headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols) in state schools in 2004, for example, the left voted massively in favour. The Socialist Party is expected to vote in favour of this week’s parliamentary resolution.

Unlike the headscarf ban, however, the upcoming law against the wearing of the burqa is not couched in terms of secularism. When a ban was first mooted, it was assumed that the legal basis for it would be French laïcité. Politicians soon realised, though, that to use this argument would be to accept that the burqa is a religious prescription of Islam. Most Muslim opinion-makers in France, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official body, and female Muslim ministers, such as Fadela Amara, reject this. The CFCM has clearly stated its “opposition to the practice on national territory”, although it also argues that a ban would stigmatise Islam.

Instead, the French are considering two grounds for outlawing the burqa, each of which—unlike laïcité—could potentially be applied in other countries. One is security, and the need to be identifiable at all times. The other is “dignity” and “equality between men and women”. Although very few women in France cover their faces—no more than 2,000, according to official estimates—it is a new trend. Politicians and researchers say that the wearing of the headscarf by French Muslims, many of whom are of North African origin where there is no tradition of covering the face, is a sign of manipulation by hardline Islamic radicals keen to test the French state. The French are unapologetic about wanting to reassert “the values of the republic” by going ahead with a ban.

How it would be applied in practice remains unclear. As it is, the Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative court, has expressed worries about the legal grounds for a ban. If passed, Mr Copé says that it will apply not only to French Muslims, but to visitors from the Middle East too. Would such women be fined while doing their shopping on the Champs-Elysées? How can the government be sure that a woman is wearing the burqa under orders from her menfolk? Would it not lead to their further isolation, as they felt unable to venture out of the home? If that were indeed the upshot, it would be paradoxical for a law designed in part to ensure equality for women.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16098516&frsc=scn/fb/wl/ar/lf

A 26-year-old Tunisian woman was fined in northern Italy while wearing a Muslim veil in public, reports say.

The woman was walking to a mosque, Friday with her husband when she was stopped by police and ticketed 500 euros, or about C$665, in Novara, about 38 kilometres west of Milan.

The city of 100,000 passed a bylaw in January outlawing clothes that ‘prevent identification by police.’

The region is home to the Northern League, a coalition ally supporting Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, which seeks a nationwide ban on the traditional Islamic garments, similar to laws being proposed in Belgium and France.

Supporters say the veils are detrimental to public security and deny woman dignity.

Opponents argue such bans violate human and constitutional rights.

In Canada, Quebec is considering barring women who wear a veil from receiving government services.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/yahoocanada/100504/canada/italian_police_fine_women_for_burqa