Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Thank you for the invitation to address this committee regarding motion number M-103. There are several issues addressed by the motion, and the language is, at least to my ear, sufficiently bureaucratic to make it difficult to understand what exactly is being contemplated. It is difficult therefore to respond with any great degree of specificity, but permit me to make four points that I think are related to the motion.
The first one is that racism and religious discrimination are different things, although this motion appears to treat them as alike. Race, of course, involves characteristics inherited at birth. Religion is a matter of faith and practice, which can change. For example, a Pakistani who decides to become Christian changes not his race or nationality but his religion.
I am honoured today to be in the presence of Peter Bhatti, brother of the martyr Shahbaz Bhatti, who was killed out of hatred for his Catholic faith by people who shared the same race but were of the Islamic faith.
Religions, of course, include many different races. For example, my church, the Catholic church, is by far the most multiracial institution on earth, yet every day Catholics endure persecution, even martyrdom, and it is not because of their race. Anti-racism efforts do not, therefore, address the problem of religious discrimination.
The second point is that the motion condemns all forms of religious discrimination and calls upon the government to advance initiatives to better reflect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I note that freedom of religion and conscience is the first fundamental freedom enumerated in our charter. I welcome a robust embrace of religious freedom, but note that it is often the government, through legislation and regulation, that impinges upon religious freedom. That is true for Jews and Christians as well as for Muslims. To focus therefore on one particular religion would be, I think, unwise.
A renewed culture of religious freedom is to be welcomed, especially in a political culture in which often all religious belief and practice is accorded second-class status. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other religious believers encounter a sort of secular fundamentalism that is incompatible with Canada's heritage of religious freedom, pluralism, and tolerance. If this motion were to lead to a renewed culture of religious freedom, that would be praiseworthy.
Point three, Islamophobia is a term, I suppose, that is meant to capture hatred of Muslims, which is rather straightforward to deplore. The question is whether Islamophobia includes a critical evaluation of Islamic doctrine in practice. For example, Christians and Muslims have quite different understandings of God. One sees this made clear, for example, in the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem that quote passages of the Quran that deny the doctrine of the Trinity, the foundational doctrine of Christianity.
Doctrinal and moral disagreements can be engaged as we live together with our differences. I don't imagine that the Government of Canada wishes to engage in theological matters, which are outside its competence, but neither should it seek to discourage theological exchange, even critical theological exchange.
My fourth point is that honest and respectful theological exchange is all the more important in the face of religiously inspired violence, regardless of what group it's directed against. I quote, for example, from former president Bill Clinton on the question he was addressing of radical Islamist violence. He asks, “How shall we respond?” and says:
We can try to kill and capture them, but we can't get them all. We can try to persuade them to abandon violence, but if our arguments have no basis in their own experience, we can't fully succeed. Our best chance is to work cooperatively with those in the Muslim world who are trying to reach the same minds as the radicals by preaching a more complete Islam, not a distorted, jagged shard.
That's from Bill Clinton's introduction to a book on religion in foreign policy by Madeleine Albright, his secretary of state. It is extraordinary to hear a statesman speak about the need for better preaching—in this case, of Islam—which is the task of theologians and clergy primarily, not of governments.
However, President Clinton acknowledges what we all know, namely that this better preaching is an urgent task. Canada is perhaps well-situated for this necessary dialogue and exchange to take place, which is primarily theological. We have here in our country an Islamic community that is able to speak freely and to carry out respectful dialogue with other religions. That is not the case everywhere in the Islamic world. Such theological work will be challenging and even provocative, but we have a tradition in Canada that will enable us to undertake it with respect and tolerance. Therefore, concerns about Islamophobia, however understood, ought not prevent that necessary work and that challenging and even provocative dialogue from being done.
Thank you for granting me the opportunity to address you. I pray God's blessings upon your work.