TORONTO - The Shafia murder trial has cast a shadow over Canada's Islamic community, further tarnishing an image that has not yet recovered from the events of 911.
Muslims across the country, however, say the revelations in a Kingston, Ont., courtroom have shone a light on problematic aspects of their culture and illuminated new ways to tackle the issues.
For months Muslims say they've recoiled in horror at testimony alleging three members of the Shafia family plotted the deaths of four others in what prosecutors describe as an attempt to restore family honour.
The crown alleged three teenage Shafia sisters were killed after bringing shame upon the family by dating, shunning traditional religious garb and skipping school. The fourth victim, the family patriarch's first wife in a polygamous marriage, allegedly endured years of abuse and feared for her life in the weeks before she died.
http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/shafia-case-tarnishing-for-islamic-community
Monday 30 January 2012
Friday 27 January 2012
Violence against Women Must Stop
First of all when talking about men killing women, we have to leave the religion out of it. Real Islam does not condone the abuse and slaughtering of innocent women and girls. This is the work of abusive men. For every one Muslim man who abuses his female family members there are thousands who embrace and love their families like any normal human beings. We live in a patriarchal world where men always ruled and women went along for the ride.
Times have changed and women are reclaiming their voice. In the case of women from Islamic tradition, men uses the Koran to hit women on the head and keep them in subjugation and in a manner than the Prophet Muhammad would not have approved of.
In recent years we have heard more killings happening in the name of Sharia law, perhaps it is the publicity these incidences receive that we hear it more often. Of course there is racism and Islamophobia that are mixed in with genuine concerns for women in these situations. There should also be a clause that if at any time during their residency in Canada if a crime of this nature is committed then the family members must return to their countries of origin. Perhaps this might help to save many young women from the perilous plight of endangerment by their own family members.
We have to tackle all forms of violence against women and girls. Similar violence are happening in the mainstream society as well, however, not in the same way as is carried out by some men who claim to do so in the name of their religion. In these latter cases, young girls can be killed off because they want their own ways. It reminds me of the Sikh family in BC who arranged to kill their own daughter just because she was marrying for love and not for family connections.
Canada needs to protect women and girls more and perhaps this ought to be done through the immigration system. Families with these strong held values who bring young children to this country must know the risk they are taking i.e. that their children might turn away from tradition at least temporarily during their teenage years as they try to fit in with their Canadian society. People ought to be questioned as to whether they can embrace such a child and this should be a serious criteria for accepting or denying immigration status to people with these strong held autocratic views about right and wrong.
The Jury is still out on this Case.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, 19-year-old Zainab, 17-year-old Sahari, and 13-year-old Geeti, with 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, were found dead inside a car in the Rideau Canal back in June of 2009, murdered in a quadruple honor killing by their Muslim mother, father and brother.
Jury selection starts today in a Kingston, Ontario court in the murder trial of a Montreal couple and their son, who are charged with killing three members of their own family. The girls’ father, Mohammad Shafia, “believed his daughter had dishonoured him and the family by having a romance with a young Pakistani man in Montreal.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Shafia+murder+trial+Sibling+tells+court+lied+police+about+abuse/5852884/story.html
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Day in History
Supreme Court of Canada upholds Robert Latimer's 10-year sentence for murdering his daughter who had severe disabilities.
Robert Latimer believed he was doing something good for his daughter as she was in constant pain and he could not fix it. After much soul-searching Latimer took matters into his own hands and ended his daughter's life on October 24th 1993.
Source: Steps in the Rights direction 365 Human Rights celebrations & tragedies that inspired Canada and the world. by Stephen Hammond.
Robert Latimer believed he was doing something good for his daughter as she was in constant pain and he could not fix it. After much soul-searching Latimer took matters into his own hands and ended his daughter's life on October 24th 1993.
Source: Steps in the Rights direction 365 Human Rights celebrations & tragedies that inspired Canada and the world. by Stephen Hammond.
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Viola Desmond honored with a stamp
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/01/14/ns-viola-desmond-commemorative-stamp.html
==
Nova Scotia civil rights activist Viola Desmond will soon be featured on a commemorative stamp from Canada Post.Desmond, a black woman, went to jail in 1946 for sitting in a segregated section of a New Glasgow theatre reserved for whites.
Her sister, Wanda Robson, is thrilled by the national recognition of her struggle, 47 years after her death.
"It's beyond my dreams that this would come about. It's overwhelming, really," Wanda Robson said.
She has a copy of a first draft of the postage stamp featuring her sister and the theatre where she refused to move from the whites-only section.
Robson made sure the final version was accurate, down to the title of the movie on the marquee.
"It's a picture of her with her hair [in the style] of the '40s, swept up, superimposed over the theatre. The story itself — the whole story — is important, of course," Robson said.
The stamp that will be publicly unveiled Feb. 1 to kick off Black History month in Nova Scotia.
Robson hopes the stamp issued in her sister's honour will prompt those outside the province to ask who she was and what she did.
Her struggle recently became the inspiration for a film called Long Road to Justice.
Apology and pardon
"She was beautiful, she was well dressed and she was very well spoken, and they carried her out to a patrol car, hauled her off to jail and she spent the night in the town lock-up," the film tells viewers.Her family received an apology and a pardon from the province in April 2010, and the town of New Glasgow paid tribute to Desmond in August 2010.
Desmond, then a 32-year-old beautician, was driving from Halifax to Sydney on Nov. 8, 1946, when her car broke down in New Glasgow. She decided to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre while she waited for repairs.
Desmond sat downstairs, unaware of the theatre's rule that blacks could sit only in the balcony seats. She was asked to leave but refused. Eventually, the manager and a police officer pulled her out.
Desmond spent the night in jail. The next morning, she was convicted of tax evasion. Prosecutors made no mention of race. They told the judge that Desmond didn't pay the full price to sit up front and therefore didn't pay the proper tax — a difference of one cent.
She was fined $20 and sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Desmond, who owned her own hairdressing business, fought unsuccessfully to appeal both her conviction and fine.
Thanks to her public court battle, the Nova Scotia government dismantled its segregation laws.
Monday 16 January 2012
Immigrant Women are fighting back
January 10, 2012 09:46 ET
Media Conference: Women of Toronto Say NO to Mayor Ford's War on Women and Children
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Jan. 10, 2012) - Toronto Women's City Alliance (TWCA), Good Jobs for All, the Steelworkers Women's Committee, Community Recreation for All, Immigrant Women's Health Centre, Women working with Immigrant Women, Newcomer Women's Services Toronto and the International Women's Day Committee representing the interests of women, immigrant women, workers, young people and children call for a halt to budget cuts.
| When: | Wednesday, January 11th 2012, 11 a.m. |
| Where: | Colin Vaughan Media Lounge (rear of city hall ground floor) |
| City Hall | |
| 100 Queen St. West | |
| Toronto | |
| Who: | Prabha Khosla, Toronto Women's City Alliance (chair) |
| Venise Antoine, sole-support mother of two. | |
| Arabi, Rajeswaran, Rexdale Youth TTC Challenge Team | |
| Ayesha Adhmani, Immigrant Women's Health Centre | |
| Amy Katz, Community Recreation for All | |
| City Cleaner, CUPE | |
| What: | Speakers will focus on how Mayor Ford's cuts to TTC bus and street car routes and fare increases; Priority Centers and recreation services; library hours; child care; community grants; and jobs at the city, will all reduce the quality of life of Toronto women and their families. They will be especially harmful to diverse low-income women and increase poverty in the city. |
Immigrant women more hesitant to report abuse
Although this story was written in 2004, the facts remain the same. Immigrant women are not forthcoming in reporting violence. They consider how this will reflect on their family and many fear they will be rejected by their community.
Being part of a community, being respected and included is something many immigrant women hold dearly. How do we unloosen their tongue and their courage?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2004/03/08/immigrant_violence040308.html
Being part of a community, being respected and included is something many immigrant women hold dearly. How do we unloosen their tongue and their courage?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2004/03/08/immigrant_violence040308.html
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Immigrant Women's Services in Jeopardy
Popular sexual-health program geared to immigrant women in jeopardy
Cam Tran, right, a counsellor at the Immigrant Women's Health Centre in Toronto translates for client Guangqun Xia, left, during an exam with Dr. Sheila Wijayasinghe, physician and medical director at the clinic Jan. 3, 2011. (Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail)
Winnebago is a sexual health service that operates out of a mobile home. It provides services such as translation, medical and other support services for women who are poor, lack health coverage and having trouble accessing proper medical care. This service has been around for 20 plus years. This service is supported by City of Toronto which recently proposed a $200,000 cut to Winnebago's budget.. The proposed cut amounts to roughly 25 per cent of the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre’s city funding which amounts to almost 25% of Winnebago's budget. This comes in the face of growing demands for the service. The organisation will be left with some tough choices if this goes through.
Politicians such as city councillor Mike Layton are rallying support in an effort to spare the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre from the axe.
The agency currently provides outreach, counselling and translation in Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Italian and Vietnamese. “We see a lot of women who have faced abuse, who come from countries where rape is not uncommon. To be able to provide culturally sensitive care in that situation, it’s a vital service for that reason.”
I hope the City of Toronto realises that this is a small price to pay for what they could pay if these women are not treated. They could end up in the hospitals, psychiatric wards and in other institutions where it would be much more costly to maintain them.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/popular-sexual-health-program-geared-to-immigrant-women-in-jeopardy/article2290712/?service=mobile
Thought for today
Life istn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It is about learning how to dance in the rain.
Anonymous
P.S. I heard someone say that anything that is written by anonymous was probably written by a woman because in the old days women were not allowed to think or write so they wrote under the pseudo name
Anon.
Anonymous
P.S. I heard someone say that anything that is written by anonymous was probably written by a woman because in the old days women were not allowed to think or write so they wrote under the pseudo name
Anon.
Sisters in India is having a breakthrough the glass ceiling
...In March 2010, feminists and women’s organizations had celebrated the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the upper house, after a fierce 13-year debate among political parties. It seemed then that a battle of some significance had been won.
The bill would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of seats in Parliament and in state assemblies for women. Despite sometimes chaotic proceedings in the upper house, the final vote was nearly unanimous, with 191 votes for and one against. When it passed, Brinda Karat, a member from the Communist Party of India and a longtime campaigner for women’s rights, spoke for many when she said: “The bill will change the culture of the country, because women today are still caught in a cultural prison. We have to fight stereotypes every day.”
...
Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/04iht-letter04.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all
The bill would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of seats in Parliament and in state assemblies for women. Despite sometimes chaotic proceedings in the upper house, the final vote was nearly unanimous, with 191 votes for and one against. When it passed, Brinda Karat, a member from the Communist Party of India and a longtime campaigner for women’s rights, spoke for many when she said: “The bill will change the culture of the country, because women today are still caught in a cultural prison. We have to fight stereotypes every day.”
...
As 2012 begins, even the bill’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that India’s female members of Parliament have a battle on their hands. But some took heart from a statement made by the president of the Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
As the winter session of Parliament drew to a close with parties debating a proposal, which ultimately failed, to set up an anti-corruption ombudsman, Mrs. Gandhi mentioned the Women’s Reservation Bill and pledged to fight for its eventual passage in the lower house.
The first female president of the Indian National Congress party, the poet-politician Sarojini Naidu, would have approved. As a young leader of India’s independence movement, Ms. Naidu was among a score of women who campaigned for the right to vote. It took them from 1917, when the Indian National Congress party backed women’s sufferage, to 1926, when women could vote and run for some state legislatures, to see the first changes, and then several more years before all women in India had the right to cast ballots.
Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/04iht-letter04.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all
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