Canada is known to be welcoming to newcomers and integrating them into its society.
Integration has been seen as a key aspect – it seeks to ensure that newcomers accept the country’s stated values and institutions while receiving the benefits of the rights and fundamental freedoms of Canadian citizenship.
However Immigration can work only when it’s based on integration and not when integration is sacrificed to the doctrine of official multiculturalism, according to Candice Malcolm.
But as per multiculturalists, newcomers can bring their own culture and values, and that there is no core or dominant culture. But what happens when the newcomers look to supplant their own laws and institutions like when Muslim immigrants want to impose Sharia Law, asks Malcom.
Sharia Fundamentally At Odds With Western Culture
Sharia is an all-encompassing religious and political system while the Sharia Law is the set of religious rules that covers both public and private life. Although it can be interpreted in different ways, its fundamental principles are at odds with the Western legal system.
While many Muslims in Canada oppose Sharia Law, with some specifically choosing to flee it, others have been trying to bring Sharia to Canada.
Attempts To Enforce Sharia Made In Ontario
The first instance of Sharia encroaching into Canada’s legal system occurred when the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice announced in 2003 that it intended to establish panels that would use Sharia Law in Ontario.
A group of Muslim activists successfully fought against this attempt to introduce Sharia in Canada.
However the fierceness of the debate resulted in Ontario’s government asking the province’s former attorney general to study the proposal for setting up Sharia arbitration panels. The study found that the Sharia panels were legal, as long as new safeguards were added.
However Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty banned Sharia panels. In 2006, Ontario’s legislature passed a bill that required all arbitration to be “conducted exclusively in accordance with the law of Ontario or another Canadian jurisdiction.”
But even today, efforts to bring in Islamic law into the country legal system has continued in form of cultural relativism and the doctrine of multiculturalism as per Malcom.
Multiculturalism Being Used To Bring In Sharia
An example is the recent case of an Ottawa man who was found not guilty of sexual assault as the judge held that the man’s Muslim faith had led him to believe that he could have sex with his wife anytime he wanted.
The judgement was given despite the court hearing stories of the man abusing his wife, and forcing her to have sex even when she asked him to stop. However the judge found that “both he and she believed that he had the right to do so.”
While the man may have such a ‘right’ under Sharia Law, he does not under Canadian law, which grants equal rights to men and women.
In yet another recent Ontario case, a court gave a Muslim man a reduced sentence despite being found guilty of hitting his wife and forcefully having sex with her as well as of abusing his children.
The judge gave the lighter sentence stating that there was “a significant culture gap” between accepted behavior in Canada and in his native Iran.
