History doesn't repeat itself but it is suggestive.
A Toronto radio show this morning raised concerns that the large Muslim population of Toronto would eventually over run the city.
Let's ignore, for the moment, the point that there isn't anything wrong with a Toronto with a Muslim majority (or Hindu, or Catholic, or anything else; provided minority groups are still free to worship).
My point is to look back a hundred years.
Toronto had a Jewish population that was, depending on whose statistics you accept, as high as 15% of the total population and growing. The Jews of Toronto were, or some of them were, very strange to the earlier residents of the city. They wore odd clothes, ate strange foods, spoke a weird language and were very foreign.
Today the Jewish population of Toronto and surrounding is less than 3% of the population and while there remain religious Jews who do dress and act differently from the mainstream, apart from a few superficial differences (other than faith), mostJews are totally mainstream.
And it is hard to argue (save in an anti-Semitic screed) that Jews over run the City of Toronto. As for the rest of Canada the population is even less prominent.
If in 2110 Toronto is made up of a population of 70% Muslims, living in harmony with other faiths, that's just fine. But I suspect the projections of a Muslim majority Toronto are likely to be as accurate as pre-World War One fears of a Yiddish Scarborough... .
16 comments:
Are you crazy? Muslims don't blend. They swallow up. Might as well ask the Borg to immigrate to Canada.
Muslums have an agenda to dominate. How are they going about doing that? By having as many children as possible. It's the same concept as the Roman Catholic Church.
It's rather telling that both those prior anti-Muslim screeds were posted by anonymous individuals.
The city I was born and raised in for a quarter of a century was taken over by Muslims.
We never had a single Mosque in the city and now we have four. Over 40% of businesses are Muslim owned.
Every election has a handful of Muslims running--ward elections, school board elections, city counsel elections.
Entire neighborhoods have been bought up, sometimes several houses at once.
And all this began happening after September 11th.
Don't call me a racist because Islam is a religion, not a race. Don't call me intolerant of religion, because some of my best friends are religious and my partner is a devout Catholic. Don't call me a right winger, because I'm a card carrying member of the Liberal party since 1991 and I need a daily blood transfusion for my bleeding heart.
Comparing T.O. with it's Jewish population does not compare, because Jews are about 1% of the world's population. Muslims number over 1 billion.
Like Anony 1 wrote, Muslims take over and engulf and refuse to blend in. Like Anony 2 wrote, they dominate by increasing their numbers.
As a gay man, I know how Islamofascists treat homosexuals--in Iraq they glue their anus shut and force feed them a diarrhea inducing drug which causes their victim to die a slow, painful death. That alone makes me suspect of their true intentions--and it makes me despise them.
They have been a menace to liberal and progressive ideals since the early 1950's. If we don't figure out to stop their advancement on society and liberal ideas, we are lost, simply because they will die for what they believe--while we shrug our shoulders and hope for the best.
Great Post.
A 100 years ago, Toronto was nicknamed the "Belfast of the North" in recognition of the size and power of the city’s Orange Lodge.
It was common then to question the fitness of Catholics for democracy. Because of temperament and culture, Catholics were unsuited for responsible, democratic governance. They were too emotional. Too corrupt. Too given to hierarchy. Catholics were controlled by the Pope. Its large Irish population made Cabbage Town a scary, dangerous no-go area for many of Torontonians. Later, Italian and southern European immigration was officially discouraged. Immigrants from the Mediterranean basin were considered incapable of assimilating; they were just too foreign.
It all seems laughable now. Like setting quotas on the numbers of Jewish guys admitted to U of T because Jews weren’t considered ‘clubbable’, or whatever other reasons were trotted out.
All this talk about Muslim-hordes swamping us is just more of the same. Mark Styenian lies and half-truths. Lucrative though. You’re never going to be poor if you earn your living scare-mongering about some swarthy, foreign ‘other’. There is always going to be some new group to be afraid of.
How time flies. It seems like just yesterday that it was the South Asians who were taking over Toronto. Ethnic migrants come and go, but ethnocentric paranoia lives on forever.
Roman Catholics account for 31.4% of the population of the City of Toronto in 2001, followed by Protestants with 21.2%. The city also has Muslim (6.7%), Christian Orthodox (4.9%), Hindu (4.8%), Jewish (4.2%), Buddhist (2.7%), Sikh (0.9%) and other communities; 18.9% reported no religious affiliation.
What Raposo and the first two anonymous commenters say has been said about Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Chinese, etc. This is just the latest flavour of intolerance.
Which is not to say Raposo is wrong to be concerned about extremist Muslims and their treatment of gays and women and non-believers. There is some horrible stuff going on out there. Not sure that strongly devout Christians, Jews, Hindus etc in some corners of the world act any better towards women, gays and non-believers, but that doesn't excuse the extreme intolerance of extremists and we should always be on our guard.
However, I can only think that these fearmongers have never worked or lived beside or befriended any Muslim. I have and no first hand what nonsense they speak.
Morton is paranoid about Muslims. He has posted this in the past too.
We are being swamped by people of no religious affilation.
Morton's post was anti-Muslim?
Muslims love being tickled.
This is not even worthy of a post. We are all humans. The fact is that retarded beliefs are causing problems not race. More of the same thats been going on forever. If everyone had common sense and morals and we did away with crazy antiquated beliefs we'd have no issues with "just people from somewhere else" moving into Toronto.
I don't think that Morton's message was neither anti-Muslim nor Islamophobic. In fact, he is pointing out that ignorance will be proven wrong in time. It is true that Muslims are a large group, but they don't have as much in common with one another as people assume, there are sects within the religion and there are major, I emphasize major cultural differences among them. Allowing a generation of people to settle in will allow them to integrate, we have all gone through it and why are not allowing the natural generational development to take place. Collective Guilt and Ignorance killed over 6 million Jews in WWII.
I am a strong proponent of secularism of the state, in the meantime, allowing anyone who wants to practice their religion, the freedom to do so. Isn't that stated clearly in our Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Karl Marx said "Religion is the opium of the people", lets clear the air.
If my post read as anti-Muslim that was bad drafting. My point is quite to opposite.
I cannot imagine anyone interpreting your post as anti-Muslim in any way at all.
I quite agree with Ted Betts when he wrote "This is just the latest flavour of intolerance."
I still her my mom talk about anti-Catholicism and how she was sometimes treated because of her faith.
Re Anon #1 and #2, I think you are being a bit unfair "Muslims don't blend. They swallow up."
Where is it written that they have to blend? What, just because they don't wear Gap or Roots clothing?
That is a ridiculous statement and a gross generalization. Take the time to get to know different people of ALL faiths and I think you will find that the vast majority of people are moderate, even if some of their views and beliefs are different from our own. Those who are more recent immigrants to our country probably have no agenda OTHER than what our grandparents or great-grandparents did: to provide a better quality of life for their children and families.
MarkhamMom said....and others. I happen to be Anon #2. All of you who are apposed to what I said haven't got a clue. I've lived and worked overseas for a long time and have talked to many Muslums. Always acosted in Thailand where they go for medical treatment thinking I am American. They are very open about how we in the West are living a bad life. As for Roman Catholics.....when a religion is not supposed to practice medical birth control what does that mean? I've seen what religion does and just because in Canada everyone is given the right to practice their beliefs doesn't mean Canadians know what is going on in the rest of the world. Canada is 34 million people that is all. Pit that against the population of practising religions who fight with each other and then tell me if I am racist.....which I am not. How many years have the Chinese been living in this country? For the most part they haven't assimilated yet! Brain washing is brain washing...it just happens to be a fact. Religion is man made in its practices and has nothing to do with God. We are also allowed in this country to question anything that is detrimental to our existance why not religion. Also, I know exactly what Morton was getting at. So you take a good look at yourselves for making assumptions. Morris
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