It's Time to Stand Up for an Inclusive Society

From turned-away Tamils to the Ground Zero mosque controversy, our world is becoming increasingly intolerant. To fix it, we need to reject the politics of fear.

In British Columbia, a boatload of 490 Tamil refugee men, women, and children arrive after a harrowing sea journey, claiming asylum from the well-documented human rights abuses in Sri Lanka – but the Canadian government claims the arrival is a threat to national security and that the ship may be filled with Tamil Tiger terrorists.

In New York, a moderate Muslim Imam plans to establish a Muslim mosque and interfaith centre two blocks from the hallowed ground where the Twin Towers fell. His goal is to promote a peaceful and compassionate profile of his faith – but he meets fierce opposition from those who assert that it would be an insult to the victims of 9-11 and a proclamation of victory by Muslims.

And in Florida, an unknown pastor with a tiny flock of 50 threatens to burn the holy Qur’an. The media go into a frenzy, blasting his incoherent ramblings and threats around the world – giving extremists the opportunity to incite thousands of excitable followers to hurl insults and threats at, and potentially inflict violence on, the entire western world.

For too long, those who preach hatred, extremism, and violence have become the main actors in the global mass communication stage.

The Canadian government’s reaction to the Tamil refugee arrivals fuelled the kind of anti-immigrant sentiment that results in polls showing larger and larger portions of the Canadian population becoming hostile to the asylum-seekers. There is no evidence that the vast majority of those arrivals were not genuine refugees.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin’s tweets about the need for “peaceful New Yorkers” to “refudiate” the Imam’s plans served only to invite more inflammatory rhetoric from all sides – and she was just one of many unscrupulous, unprincipled, and ignorant politicians encouraging intolerance and hostility towards those who are not seen as part of the mainstream, and doing so for shameless political partisan reasons.

It’s time for people of all faiths promoting peaceful coexistence, compassion, and respect for other religions to take a stand. What steps can be taken to counter attempts to divide our societies and our global community?

When politicians use the most vulnerable among us, such as refugees and those from marginalized immigrant communities, to gain advantage through the politics of fear, we should take the public stage and demonstrate the baseness – and dangers – of such leadership.

When there is opposition to the establishment of a house of prayer and peace, leaders of similar places of worship should open their doors to those facing bigotry, ignorance, and racism.

And should there ever be another threatened burning of any faith’s sacred texts, I suggest that individuals and families, regardless of what faith they follow, obtain a copy of that sacred text and display it prominently in their homes and places of work to show their opposition to extremists and their support of the moderate majority. My family and I already did this in reaction to the threatened burning of the holy Qur’an.

All of these acts of co-existence and compassion should be publicized more than the acts of those who wish to divide and conquer.

Standing up against evil sounds daunting, but simple, symbolic actions can be highly effective. There has never been a more appropriate time to realize the wisdom of Edmund Burke, who reportedly said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”