Filibuster Cartoons
 |
|
 |
For the last little while the big story gripping Canada was the Ontario provincial government’s plan to give official state-sanction to the use of Muslim Sharia law in domestic arbitration courts. This plan, which was supposed to be a gesture of mutli-cultural tolerance to the Muslim community, ended up being super controversial. A lot of activists, both Muslim and non, argued that Sharia law was fundamentally sexist, backwards, and vicious, and thus something that should have no role in modern Canadian society.
Eventually the controversy got so intense that Premier Dalton McGuinty agreed to scrap the plan altogether. However, to make it look like he wasn’t slighting the Muslims, he also stripped all existing Christian and Jewish-based arbitration tribunals of their powers as well. He is now trying to spin the issue into being one of religion vs. secularism, despite the fact that in reality the controversy occurred in response to some of the specifically (and uniquely) unpleasant characteristics of Sharia law, and not simply the fact that Sharia law is based on religious principles.
