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rfmcdonaldLast June, I fisked a badly-argued article by Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui on the subject of Ontario's rather dangerous decision to allow for the selective implementation of shari'a. Since then, I've enjoyed his articles with a critical eye.
Until yesterday. At the end of an otherwise good article examining the arguments of Gilles Kepel, French specialist in Islamic affairs and author of the recent The War for Muslim Minds, Siddiqui came out of nowhere by saying that Kepel didn't consider Muslims to be equal citizens.
Where Siddiqui got this, I've no idea. Read this November 2004 interview for a representative sample of Kepel's thought on the subject. The only thing that can possibly approach this is his argument that conservative and radical Muslims in the West have the same sort of relationship to Muslims generally that Amish do to Protestant Christians and Orthodox have to Jews, that is, as an unrepresentative minority of a larger population led by a conservative minority heavily invested in traditional structures and hostile to the laxity of the majority population (to say nothing of non-coreligionists). Kepel argues, correctly, that the standards of this minority should not be given legal sanction, by a secular state, over all nominal members of a particular religious community, never mind control.
Last March, after Irshad Manji's visit to the Queen's campus, some hostile audience members made misleading and inaccurate statements about what she actually said, perhaps visiting briefly from an alternate universe. Mr. Siddiqui did the same thing yesterday with Kepel.
A pity; I was beginning to trust him again.
Until yesterday. At the end of an otherwise good article examining the arguments of Gilles Kepel, French specialist in Islamic affairs and author of the recent The War for Muslim Minds, Siddiqui came out of nowhere by saying that Kepel didn't consider Muslims to be equal citizens.
Where Siddiqui got this, I've no idea. Read this November 2004 interview for a representative sample of Kepel's thought on the subject. The only thing that can possibly approach this is his argument that conservative and radical Muslims in the West have the same sort of relationship to Muslims generally that Amish do to Protestant Christians and Orthodox have to Jews, that is, as an unrepresentative minority of a larger population led by a conservative minority heavily invested in traditional structures and hostile to the laxity of the majority population (to say nothing of non-coreligionists). Kepel argues, correctly, that the standards of this minority should not be given legal sanction, by a secular state, over all nominal members of a particular religious community, never mind control.
Last March, after Irshad Manji's visit to the Queen's campus, some hostile audience members made misleading and inaccurate statements about what she actually said, perhaps visiting briefly from an alternate universe. Mr. Siddiqui did the same thing yesterday with Kepel.
A pity; I was beginning to trust him again.
