RSS FeedNew Brochure on Righteous Among Nations
Earlier this year I pointed out how in the Western context hatred towards Muslims and Jews are usually linked, meaning someone harbouring hatred to one group is more likely to hate the other as well.
The natural conclusion I advanced was that the two groups should work collaboratively to fight hatred against them all.
A British group called Faith Matters has developed a new brochure, pointing out some of the roles Muslims took on during the Holocaust in protecting the lives of Jews.
The narrative of Muslim individuals in different contexts, including Albania, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovnia, help illustrate the role that many individuals played in opposing Axis forces.
There’s even a story of a contemporary Muslim lawyer living in Palestine, Khaled Mahameed, who has founded the first Arab Holocaust museum in Nazareth called The Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education. Mahameed believes the political backdrop of the Holocaust is an important component for Arabs to understand in order to foster greater dialogue between the two groups.
The intent behind the publication is to promote greater understanding and cooperation between the two groups,
Today, unfortunately, xenophobia and fear ‘of the other’ still continue to plague societies and the United Kingdom is not immune to these issues. The caricaturing of communities continues in some quarters and the lessons of history are not learnt. Yet, history should teach us and guide us so that we preserve the stories of our common humanity and social links which should not be forgotten. Furthermore, these stories should not be physically or mentally shelved as though they have no significance in the modern world. If anything, they have a greater significance today then they would have had 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
The Righteous Muslims booklet shows us that there are many stories of positive Muslim and Jewish interaction, even at the darkest moments in history. It shows a common bond and a link between people of two faiths who believe in the compassion of God and in the sanctity of life. Whilst the politics of the Middle East may block such stories out of the public narrative, there is a duty on us all to ensure that they get their rightful place in our social and educational narratives.
Of course there are some misgivings about the brochure already, with some expressing misgivings that the brochure glosses over Muslim involvement in supporting the Nazis.
But that’s a narrative we already hear enough of, even on full-page advertisements in Canadian newspapers.
This brochure provides a more nuanced perspective, demonstrating that people of a global faith could be found on all sides of the political spectrum, thereby avoiding gross generalizations and stereotypes of normative relationships between the faiths.
Another recent initiative that could help foster better relationships between these communities is a project by Robert Harush, an Israeli businessman from Ashkelon who has decided to renovate a major mosque in France. He’s doing this despite living in Ashkelon during Operation Cast Lead, and even having a rocket land in his house.
There are other great resources that expand on these complex relationships during WWII such as the PBS documentary and website, Among the Righteous, based on a book by Dr. Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands. The Faith Matters brochure was also originally modeled off Satloff’s book.
Watch the full episode. See more Among the Righteous.
Satloff claims that the reason why these stories haven’t been told for so long is that Jews didn’t look hard enough, and Arabs didn’t want to be found,
Somewhere over the past 50 years it became toxic in Arab societies even to recognize this wonderful act of humanitarianism.
Here’s a video by Dr. Satloff telling the story behind his book:
The Life and Times of Ivan C. Rand
From Volume III, Issue II of Amicus Curiae, Western Law’s Student Paper
Canada was a different place before Trudeaumania swept the nation, and the man we know as Ivan Rand, founding Dean of this law school and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was a product of his times. It would be easy to dismiss Dean Rand as an intolerant bigot, but as William Kaplan explained to an audience at Western Law on Nov. 11, [2009,] Rand was complicated character.
“Canadian judicial biography has been, with a few exceptions, mostly uncritical and largely celebratory, written by unabashed admirers,” Kaplan writes in his new book, Canadian Maverick – The Life and Times of Ivan C. Rand. “To my great surprise, this book turned out to be different.”
Ivan Rand was born and raised in the Maritimes and graduated from Harvard Law in 1912. It was his exposure to the American Bill of Rights that, according to Kaplan, differentiated Rand from other Canadian lawyers. And it’s Justice Rand’s decisions as a Justice of the Supreme Court that make his legal legacy so difficult to reconcile with his private views, which have been largely hidden until now.
By 1951, the court in Noble v. Alley assessed a restrictive covenant against selling property in the Grand Bend area to Jews, blacks, or those with “coloured race or blood.” It was Justice Rand who interrupted oral submissions by the respondent saying,“If Albert Einstein and Arthur Rubinstein purchased cottages there, the property values would increase, and the association should be honoured to have them as neighbours.”
Despite his position on restrictive covenants in this case, he was a member of two restrictive clubs that excluded Jews. He defended the right of Communists to hold elected positions, and famously opposed the internment of Japanese citizens, all the while refusing to meet his sister’s Acadian husband for 30 years because of his background.
“It’s this hypocrisy – because he did know better – that ultimately leads me to conclude: first-rate mind, third rate temperament,” said Kaplan, noting that the most influential judges are rarely collegial consensus builders. “Not such a bad combination.”
What, if anything, changed during his lifetime?
Kaplan suggests that Rand’s exposure to Jews in the Palestine Mandate may have led him to develop a more favourable impression of Jews. Rand was impressed by the largely secular, often highly educated and industrious, and was sometimes even disdainful of the religious establishment of the Holy Land. He believed that rational law could resolve all human conflict, and was a social engineer at heart.
Robert Mackay, one of Rand’s colleagues at Western who would eventually succeed him as Dean, recalls Rand’s rants against Jews and people with ethnic names that ended with a vowel: “Rand would declare he had enough of them.”
Yet he continued to donate to Hebrew University in Jerusalem for the rest of his life. A forest in Israel was named after him, and he would tour the country receiving awards.
So what is Rand’s legacy for this school?
Kaplan tellingly notes, “Almost all of his great civil libertarian decisions reversed the actions of state authorities in Quebec.” Mackay explained, “Rand had to decide who he hated more – the French-Canadian Roman Catholics, or Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Rand believed that ethics could not be taught – either you had them or you didn’t. Western is now known as a pioneer in legal ethics education.
The Ivan Rand window in the Moot Court Room looms menacingly above all those who dare try their hand at advocacy. Rand himself believed that mock trials courts were entertaining, but not educational. He preferred his old 1909 Harvard law texts for the students.
Rand felt that women were good as solicitors but did not have the fortitude for criminal law, a notion that would not bode well for our classes in which women outnumber men , the legal aid clinic, or our struggling criminal law program.
Dean Rand defied utilitarian economics by taking surplus budgets and returning them to the university, much to the chagrin of his staff. He abandoned the administration of the law school only months after its opening to attend to a coal crisis in Cape Breton.
Yet the students loved him.
The Rand formula, where workers pay union dues irrespective of membership, is still one of the hallmark characteristics of Canadian labour law. One of Rand’s recommendations (which was never adopted) was that unions be recognized as legal entities that could sue and be sued [directly, and not through agents]. Another was abolishing picketing altogether.
Overall, Kaplan describes Rand’s own hand at labour relations as nothing less than “disastrous,” with nearly every stakeholder and political party expressing strong criticism. “Reforming labour law,” Kaplan said, “is best done incrementally.”
As our own Dean Holloway acknowledges, “it’s difficult to write fairly about Ivan Rand… What emerges is a picture of a principled man, who thought deeply about the best way to enhance the standards of this profession.”
Kaplan suggests that what makes Rand impressive is his ability to draw bright lines between his public and private life, especially when on the Court. And for a man whose vision in many ways may have been ahead of his time, perhaps that is the most we can ask for.
Hatred Towards Jews and Muslims Linked
A person who hates Jews is more likely to hate Muslims as well, and vice versa. And people who go to a weekly religious service are less likely to hate a Muslim.
These findings come from Gallup poll results published this morning in a report, Religious Perceptions in America: With an In-Depth Analysis of U.S. Attitudes Toward Muslims and Islam.
Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post said,
… the Gallup poll was prompted partly by Obama’s outreach to Muslim-majority societies and a desire to understand more about what shapes Americans’ views on Islam.
In a note accompanying the poll results, Gallup makes the argument that Americans’ prejudice against Muslims is at least partly fueled by misinformed beliefs. For example, people who believe Muslims worldwide oppose equal rights for men and women tend to be much more likely to report prejudice against Muslims.
The report states,
…feeling “a great deal” or extreme prejudice toward Muslims is not borne out of the absence of any information about Muslims, but rather arises from being exposed to negative media coverage of Islam and its followers.
This misinformation, especially through portrayals in the media, have a particular significance in the role of radicalization, as indicated in my published letter in the Globe yesterday. Daniel Simard and I also put together a paper related to this, Media Narratives in Times of Turmoil: Depictions of Minorities in Canada Post 9/11.
Boorstein also points to a Pew Forum poll showing that Muslims experience far more discrimination than any other group, by a wide margin.
The Gallop Poll found that 53% of Americans admitted to having negative views towards Islam, and 43% acknowledged some prejudice towards Muslims.
The report also states,
Variables Associated With Self-Reported Prejudice
Links Between Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim Prejudice
The variable most strongly linked to self-reported prejudice toward Muslims is self-reported prejudice toward Jews. Respondents who say they feel “a great deal” of prejudice — or extreme prejudice — toward Jews are about 32 times as likely to report feeling “a great deal” of prejudice toward Muslims. While Jewish-Muslim relations sometimes suffer because of the turbulence of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, among other reasons, these findings point to an area of potential cooperation for the two communities in addressing a common concern of prejudice toward each group. Previous Gallup research indicates that, compared with other religious groups in the U.S., Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans are most similar in terms of political ideology, education, and political party identification.
The findings should spurn greater cooperation between the Muslim and Jewish communities to work together in overcoming hatred and bigotry.
