National Post (National Edition)
Muslims flex their political muscles
Sex-ed quarrel creates unlikely alliance
Thorncliffe Park elementary school, in a predominantly Muslim area of Toronto, reported attendance on Monday of 130, according to the Toronto District School Board — 130 out of 1,350 students. That’s just nine per cent who showed up, though on Tuesday it had rebounded ... all the way to 16 per cent.
At nearby Valley Park Middle School — best known for controversially hosting congregational Muslim prayers in its cafeteria on Fridays — Monday attendance was just 38 per cent.
Their parents are mad as hell about Ontario’s new sexual education curriculum, and they’re boycotting the entire curriculum, for up to a week, as a result.
Five years ago, when thenpremier Dalton McGuinty abandoned much the same curriculum, conservative Christians were generally considered the culprits or heroes, depending on one’s standpoint. And they’re still on the warpath against the curriculum, which with a few tweaks is finally set to go into effect for the next school year.
But the school boycott is a multicultural affair, and the most stunning absenteeism numbers reportedly come from the Muslim community, which was not nearly so prominent in the 2010 debate.
Reports from a Monday protest in Thorncliffe Park suggest concerns range from the specific (introducing the notion of “gender fluidity,” too early or at all) to the conspiratorial (accusing the government of “indoctrinating children with a minority lifestyle”) to downright apocalyptic: freelance journalist Javed Zaheer warns of the “total destruction” of his grandchildren’s generation.
“There is a somewhat stronger current of what we might call family traditionalism among Muslims than among most other groups (although not more so than among evangelical Protestants),” says David Rayside, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, “especially around sexuality and sexual diversity.”
But in the main, their complaints are similar to those of other social conservatives. And that’s hardly surprising, as Rayside says: “The vast majority of Canadian Muslims are first generation, and they come from very traditional parts of the world.”
For policy-makers, the sexed fracas is a conundrum. On- tarians can peruse the curriculum with the click of a mouse. Many have, and have formed reasonable complaints: Gregory Moore of Amherstburg, Ont., wonders why he’s enrolling his kids in Catholic school if they’re going to be taught, in Grade 6, that masturbation “is common and is not harmful and is one way of learning about your body.” (Ontario’s Catholic bishops support the curriculum, arguing they’ ll teach it “through a Catholic lens.” That’ll be some feat.)
“Some families do not believe it’s a good thing for an 11-year-old to carry a condom around in his pocket just in case,” says Moore. “I’m one of those parents.” (In Grade 8, the curriculum suggests “using condoms consistently if and when a person becomes sexually active.” Still.)
Yet many of the most fearsome criticisms bear little relation to the document itself. It supposedly indoctrinates students in the homosexual lifestyle ... by explaining to Grade 3 students that some people “have two mothers or two fathers.” It supposedly promotes anal sex ... by explaining to Grade 7 students that “engaging in sexual activities like oral sex, vaginal intercourse, and anal intercourse means that you can be infected with an STI (sexually transmitted infection).” It “puts pressure on (Grade 8) kids to become sexually active,” per the Campaign Life Coalition, by encouraging them “to get information from a credible source before making a decision about being sexually active.”
A document in Arabic reportedly being distributed in Peel Region, west of Toronto, claims children in Grade 1 “will learn to reveal their private parts.” With a world of information at our fingertips, misinformation remains alarmingly powerful.
For Canadian Muslims, however, it could be an interesting moment.
White Christian so-cons haven’t accomplished much in politics in recent years, after all: Prince Edward Island still doesn’t offer abortions, and that’s about it, really. Muslims aren’t a huge community in Canada, and of course they are not monolithically conservative. But the broader movement can use any help it can get.
“It would be interesting if this is the start of significant domestic political mobilization for the Muslim community,” says University of Regina politics professor Jim Farney, who studies the role of religion in Canadian politics. They have long had a voice on the Middle East, he notes, but little else.
Muslims may be marginalized and occasionally demonized in Canada — but as they previously demonstrated during the “mosqueteria” controversy, those in Thorncliffe Park are perfectly comfortable defending their rights.
It’s also quite possible the issue will fizzle, of course. Rayside suspects things will die down once school gets down to business in the fall.
But Zaheer and other opponents vow to return in force then. Moore, likewise, says he intends to keep badgering teachers, administrators and politicians in search of redress.
And if he doesn’t get it by September?
“We are so undecided,” he says. “We don’t know what we’re going to do.”