Professor Henry Srebrnik

Professor Henry Srebrnik

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

The Controversy over Education in Britain's Muslim Community

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The 2011 British census provides a snapshot of the country’s Muslim population, which now stands at almost 2.8 million – 4.4 per cent of the country’s overall total. Most live in cities such as Birmingham, Bradford, and of course London, whose Muslim population, at a bit over one million, is 12.4 per cent of the city’s people.

Philip Lewis, a scholar of Islam at the University of Bradford, has emphasised the variety of the Muslim population across the country.

Though the largest number, at 1.26 million, are of Pakistani descent, Britain’s Muslims are a very diverse group of people, originating in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia – places where Britain once ruled an empire.

So while wealthy Arabs buy up chunks of prime real estate in central London and the West End, impoverished immigrants from Bangladesh crowd into tenements in the city’s poor East End, with its high unemployment, chronic over-crowding and the worst child poverty in the land.

Muslims account for almost a tenth of babies being born in England today. So many schools have a majority of Muslim students -- and some have become controversial.

In the 2011 Census 21.8 per cent of the Birmingham population identified themselves as Muslim, mostly people from South Asia. This past January, the head teacher (principal) of the city’s Saltley School and Specialist Science College, a facility that serves a socially deprived inner-city community in Birmingham, resigned, saying he could no longer face relentless criticism from its Muslim-dominated school board.

It had pressed him to replace some courses with Islamic and Arabic studies, segregate girls and boys, and drop a citizenship class on tolerance and democracy in Britain.

As there had been previous complaints about other schools, Britain’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) carried out an inspection of 21 schools in Birmingham.

Its report concluded that pressure from fundamentalist Islamic school board governors had created a culture of “fear and intimidation” in a number of the city’s schools, including Saltley.

“Some head teachers reported that there has been an organized campaign to target certain schools in Birmingham in order to alter their character and ethos,” according to the report. It also said that some senior teachers claimed they had been “marginalized or forced out of their jobs.”

The report stated that in one school “boys and girls are also taught separately in religious education and personal development lessons.” Another stopped Christmas and Diwali celebrations, and subsidized trips to Saudi Arabia for Muslim students.

As a result, five schools, including Saltley, were placed in “special measures,” while a sixth was labelled inadequate for its poor educational standards.

Britain’s newly-appointed education secretary, Nicky Morgan, called the information “disturbing.”

Asked about the incendiary language surrounding the debate, she added that politicians should be “very conscious of the language we use and make sure it is appropriate, proportionate and absolutely not seen to be criticizing one particular community.”

Meanwhile, the governors of the Saltley School resigned in protest at the way their school had been treated by Ofsted. Dr. Mohammed Khan, who was chair of the governors at the school, said there had been “no conspiracy” to force out the head teacher, who is a Sikh.

The report’s findings were also criticized by the Muslim Council of Britain, which declared that it was wrong to conflate conservative Muslim practices with an alleged agenda to Islamicize school systems.

The Council argued that “extremism will not be confronted if Muslims, and their religious practices are considered as, at best, contrary to the values of this country and at worst, seen as ‘the swamp’ that feeds extremism.”

In late August, though, British Prime Minister David Cameron criticized the policy of multiculturalism, and declared adherence to “British values” a “duty.”

Cameron remarked that “Britain is an open, tolerant, and free nation. We are a country that backs people in every community, who want to work hard, make a contribution, and build a life for themselves and their families.” 

But, he concluded, “We cannot stand by and allow our openness to be confused with a tolerance of extremism, or one that encourages different cultures to live separate lives and allows people to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values.”

Are multiculturalism and social inclusion mutually exclusive? In Britain as elsewhere, the debates over integration and tolerance are being played out across the educational system.

Monday, December 29, 2014

How Will Renewed American-Cuban Relations Affect Jews and Israel?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

President Barack Obama created a political bombshell when he announced that the United States would be re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, after an absence of almost 54 years.

The news was accompanied by Cuba’s release of American Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years, and the swap of a Cuban who had spied for the U.S. for three Cubans jailed in Florida.

Gross was detained in December 2009, during his fifth trip to Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for trying to deliver satellite telephone equipment while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Gross was also involved with Cuba’s small Jewish community, setting up Internet access that would bypass local censorship and help connect Cuban Jews to the outside world.

A large number of Jews immigrated to Cuba from 1910 until 1920. Many of these Jews came from Eastern Europe and used Cuba as a stopover en route to the United States, which had a strict quota system at that time.

However, some decided to stay. Many of the new immigrants from Europe prospered in Cuban’s garment industry. By 1924, there were 24,000 Jews living in Cuba, and more immigrated to the country in the 1930s.

But during and after the 1959 Communist revolution, 94 per cent of the Jews left for the United States and other countries, and only about 2,000 remain.

However, Jews remained able to practice their religion. They were permitted to buy and distribute kosher food and could receive donations from Canada and other countries for Passover food products.

In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba changed its constitution allowing for more religious freedom. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has been instrumental in helping Cuba’s Jewish population.

Since 1992, the JDC has sent rabbis and community organizers to the community. The community maintains that anti-Semitism is rare. Still, Cuban Jews have to make a strong effort just to keep their tradition alive.

On the other hand, Cuba has long been critical of Israel, and the two countries have no diplomatic relations. After the 1967 Six Day War, Cuba condemned Israel at the United Nations. Its ambassador, Ricardo Alarcon, called the war an “armed aggression against the Arab peoples.”

At the 1973 Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers, Castro announced that Arab arguments had convinced him to sever relations with Israel. A year later, the government invited PLO leader Yasser Arafat to the island.

In 1975, Cuba was one of only three non-Arab governments to sponsor the resolution declaring “Zionism is Racism” that was adopted by the UN General Assembly.

This hostility continues unabated. During last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, Cuba accused Israel of using its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment causing the death of innocent civilians and huge material damage.

Fidel Castro, in an article titled “Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza,” published in the Communist newspaper Granma Aug. 5, referred to “the genocide of Palestinians,” and described Israel’s offensive in Gaza as a “new, repugnant form of fascism.”

Clearly, relations between Havana and Jerusalem are not on the horizon.


Monday, December 22, 2014

The Politics of Two Small Island African Countries

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Portugal’s overseas empire lasted almost six centuries, and was spread throughout a vast number of territories across the globe.

How did this happen? Little Portugal was first off the mark in imperial expansion. Even before Columbus set off across the Atlantic in 1492, Portuguese sailors had rounded the coasts of Africa.

So there are a number of important former Portuguese colonies in Africa: Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

As well, there are two Portuguese-speaking island republics off the west coast of Africa, the archipelagos of Cape Verde, and Sao Tomé e Príncipe. They were originally “stepping stones” for Portuguese exploration of the continent and for trans-Atlantic trade.

The model of the plantation economy dependent on slave labour, later developed on a large scale in the Americas, was first created there.

Cape Verde (officially the Republic of Cabo Verde) consists of 10 major islands in the Atlantic Ocean, 460 kilometres off the coast of Senegal. Its 4,033 square kilometres are home to 512,096 people.

Acquired by the Portuguese between 1455 and 1461, the uninhabited islands, while resource poor, were strategically positioned.

Proximity to the African coast made slave-trading the largest commercial activity, peaking in the first half of the 17th century, when Africans were transported to Portugal’s western hemisphere colony Brazil.

The islands were settled by a mixture of former prisoners, Iberian Jews fleeing the Inquisition, Black African traders who adapted to Portuguese culture, and freed slaves. The result was a unique Afro-Portuguese Crioulo (creole) culture.

In addition to building transportation facilities, prior to independence Portugal established the islands as an educational center for its African colonies, with a seminary and secondary school. Because of this, Cape Verdeans had a fairly high educational level and prominent roles in the Portuguese colonial administration.

Further south, the Democratic Republic of Sao Tomé and Príncipe consists of two main islands. Sao Tomé lies 289 kilometres from Gabon, while Príncipe is located about 257 kilometres from Equatorial Guinea. The country’s population of 187,356 occupies just 1,001 square kilometres.

The islands were uninhabited before the arrival of the Portuguese around 1470. Sao Tomé’s topography lent itself to the development of large plantations, so slave labour was brought in from the African mainland.

By the mid-16th century Portuguese settlers had turned the islands into Africa’s foremost exporter of sugar, but in the early 19th century, two new cash crops, coffee and cocoa, were introduced. Cocoa remains the main agricultural crop today.

Both of these microstates suffered prolonged periods of non-democratic misrule after independence in 1975. Cape Verde moved to multiparty democracy in the 1990s following a lengthy period of one-party rule under the leftist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), later known as the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). The process was orderly and without violence.

In 2001 and 2006, there were hotly-contested presidential and legislative elections in which the PAICV prevailed over the opposition Movement for Democracy. The PAICV presidential candidate, Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires, won the office both years and served a decade as head of state.

In 2011 Pires was awarded the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. It is given only to a democratically elected president who has stayed “within the limits set by the country’s constitution.”

However, while the PAICV also won the 2011 National Assembly election, Jorge Fonseca of the Movement for Democracy beat Manuel Sousa of the PAICV for the presidency.

In Sao Tomé e Príncipe, Manuel Pinto da Costa of the Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP) took power and instituted a quasi-Marxist regime. He ruled the islands from 1975 to 1991.

After the mid-1980s, though, the political climate began to shift, as protests rose over unemployment and high inflation. The legalization of opposition political parties led to multi-party elections and an effective opposition emerged in the country’s parliament. The 2010 National Assembly election saw the Independent Democratic Action (ADI) win the most seats.

Fradique de Menezes, supported by various parties, including the Force for Change Democratic Movement-Liberal Party (MDFM-PL), the Force for Change Democratic Movement-Democratic Convergence Party (MDFM-PCD), and the ADI, was the president of Sao Tomé e Príncipe from 2003 to 2011; he survived two attempted coups. In 2011, Manuel Pinto da Costa, running as an independent, returned to power, defeating the ADI candidate, Evaristo Carvalho.

The country had become increasingly dependent on the export of cocoa since its independence, but the discovery of potentially rich offshore oilfields in the Gulf of Guinea is likely to have a significant impact on the economy.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Havana, Washington Enter New Era

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian 

By re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba after an almost 54-year break, U.S. President Barack Obama will be putting an end to a policy that long ago became pointless.

Cuba may be no democracy, but I can offhand name at least 20 countries with which Washington enjoys diplomatic relations, whose regimes are more repressive than that of the Castro brothers. Yet Cuba remained one of just a few nations, along with Iran and North Korea, that had no diplomatic relations with Washington.

The economic and political embargo against Cuba had become hostage to the domestic politics within South Florida’s Cuban community. Also, there was Washington’s petulance with an island just 145 kilometres south off Key West that had tweaked America’s nose during the Cold War.

But, really, all that is history. With Communism a spent force, Cuba long ago ceased to be a danger in the western hemisphere. In the 21st century, the United States has far more important enemies to worry about. This announcement is long past due.

“These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked,” Obama said in remarks from the White House. “It’s time for a new approach.” The deal will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”

Obama has instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to begin the process of removing Cuba from the list of states that sponsor terrorism and announced that he would attend a regional Summit of the Americas in Panama next spring at which Cuban President Raul Castro is also scheduled to appear.

For his part, Castro stated that while the two countries still have profound differences in areas such as human rights and foreign policy, they must learn to live together “in a civilized manner.”  He did add that “the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.”

Since replacing his brother Fidel, Raul Castro has allowed greater access to cell phones and the Internet, and lifted some restrictions on travel. The political system is also more open -- though no competing political parties are permitted, non-Communists now sit in the country’s parliament.

Tourism is now big business in Cuba, and the country is packed with Europeans and Canadians. Cubans can now open their own restaurants and hire non-family members to work in them. They are now permitted to lease land from the government in order to grow food and raise animals for the tourist hotels and restaurants. Those leasing the land can hire help to assist in their work.

The re-establishment of diplomatic ties was accompanied by Cuba’s release of American Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years, and the swap of a Cuban who had spied for the U.S. for three Cubans jailed in Florida.

Gross was detained in December 2009, during his fifth trip to Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for trying to deliver satellite telephone equipment while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was charged with attempting to bring down Cuba’s revolutionary system.

Gross was also involved with Cuba’s small Jewish community, setting up Internet access that would bypass local censorship and help connect Cuban Jews to the outside world.

“He’s back where he belongs, in America with his family, home for Hanukkah,” Obama said, as Gross was flown back to his home outside Washington.

Most Jews left Cuba after the 1959 revolution, and only about 2,000 remain. There are seven synagogues in the country, one Orthodox, and six Conservative. The one Reform temple has closed. The community maintains that anti-Semitism is rare.

Also, though Cuba does not subsidize the Jewish community, by renting space in underused Jewish buildings, the government provides it with some income.

Dina Siegel Vann, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs, said Gross’ release, along with the improvement in American-Cuban relations, will allow Cuban Jews to “have stronger ties to Jewish organizations, they will be much more in the open.” 

On the other hand, Cuba has long been critical of Israel, and the two countries have no diplomatic relations.  Clearly, relations between Havana and Jerusalem are not on the horizon.


Monday, December 15, 2014

Azerbaijan’s Complex Relationships With Armenia, Iran and Israel

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Among the many groups who inhabit the Caucasus are the Azeris, a Turkic people who speak a language related to Turkish, but who are culturally closer to the Persians.

The Republic of Azerbaijan’s 9.49 million people inhabit a land 86,600 square kilometres in size. The country borders the Russian Federation’s republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to its northwest, Armenia to its west, and Iran to its south. It faces the Caspian Sea on its east.

Armenia also cuts off the very western section of the country, known as Nakhchivan, from the rest of the country, though this enclave, 5,500 square kilometres in size and with a population of 415,000, provides Azerbaijan with a 15-kilometre long border with Turkey.

Virtually the entire population of Azerbaijan is Muslim, with approximately 85 per cent Shia and 15 per cent Sunni.

Along with occasional rule by indigenous dynasties, the Azeris were at various times governed by Arab, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian empires, until incorporated into the Russian Empire in the early 19th century.

After the Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan became a full-fledged Soviet Socialist Republic. However, it also incorporated, in its southwest, the 4,400 square kilometre Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast.

Entirely enclosed within Azerbaijan, but not far from Armenia itself, this province was more than three-quarters Armenian by ethnicity.

As the USSR disintegrated, the parliament of Azerbaijan in 1991 abolished the autonomous status of the region, while the majority Armenian population declared its independence.

War ensued between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Christian Armenia, and Muslim Azerbaijan. By 1994, when a cease-fire went into effect, the new de facto republic of Nagorno-Karabakh had proved victorious and had enlarged its territory. Today, it includes some 140,000 residents, 95 per cent of them ethnic Armenians.

Armenians now control all of the territory of the former oblast, plus conquered areas south to Iran and west to Armenia itself -- the so-called Lachin corridor.

Of course Baku has not reconciled itself to this situation, and refuses to accept either the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh or the loss of seven other territories within an Armenian-controlled “security belt.”

Iran was quick to recognize Azerbaijan as an independent nation in 1992. It saw Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority state, as fertile ground for spreading its Islamic Revolution.

But relations between the two countries quickly turned sour, as Baku expressed irredentist sentiments and promoted the idea of a “Greater Azerbaijan,” which would unite the country with the 16 million Azeris in northwest Iran.

In February 2012, a member of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party asked the government to change the country’s name to “North Azerbaijan,” implicitly suggesting that the Azeris who live in northern Iran are in need of liberation.

Fearing Baku’s intentions to fuel secessionism inside its borders, Iran provided backing to Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan – something that has not been forgotten.

Azerbaijan has openly accused Iran of interfering in its domestic affairs. Tehran supported the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (AIP), a pro-Iranian and religious Shiite opposition party banned by Baku.

The leader of the AIP, Movsum Samadov, called for the overthrow of President Ilham Aliyev’s government and was sentenced to 12 years in jail in 2011.

In 2012, 22 Azerbaijanis charged with spying for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were given lengthy prison sentences.

Instead, Azerbaijan has developed bilateral strategic and economic relations with Israel; they share the common goal of containing Iranian influence.

In a 2007 speech, the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan, Arthur Lenk, spoke of increasing trade between energy-rich Azerbaijan and Israel. Israel is the second largest customer for Azeri oil, shipped through the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey.

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a memo to Washington which quoted President Aliyev as describing his country’s relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg, as “nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”

In February 2012, Azerbaijan signed a $1.6 billion defense deal with Israel’s Aeronautics Defence Systems that included air defense systems, intelligence hardware, and drones.

A month later, the magazine Foreign Policy reported that Israel had been granted access to air bases in Azerbaijan on Iran's northern border to serve Israel in a possible strike on Iran.

Access to such airfields would mean that Israeli fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight but could continue north and land in Azerbaijan. Such a possibility might be keeping Iran’s rulers awake at night.


Monday, December 01, 2014

Scotland and Prince Edward Island Have Something in Common

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

There’s been a lot of hoopla this year about both Scotland and Prince Edward Island, in the one case because of the referendum on independence, in the other, the commemoration of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference leading to the creation of Canada.

It’s instructive to note, though, that they both joined larger political entities not for positive reasons, but rather under duress.

An independent kingdom of Scotland was established in the ninth century, and despite periodic wars with England, retained its sovereignty throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century the Stuart dynasty began its three centuries of rule over the country.

The Stuart king James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England in 1603, as James I, and the Stuart kings and queens ruled both independent kingdoms until the Acts of Union in 1707, which merged the two kingdoms into a new state, Great Britain.

The closing years of the 17th century saw a decline in Scotland’s economy. There was a slump in trade with the Baltic countries and France from 1689–1691, caused by French protectionism and changes in the Scottish cattle trade, followed by four years of failed harvests (1695, 1696 and 1698-1699), an era known as the “seven ill years.”

To try to turn things around, the Scottish Parliament in 1695 granted a charter to the “Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies.”

The new company, hoping to create a lucrative colony for Scotland, invested in the so-called Darien scheme, a plan to found “Caledonia,” a colony on the Isthmus of Panama, as a means of establishing trade with the Far East. Vast sums of money were raised to finance the project.

It turned out to be a disaster. Three small fleets with a total of 3,000 men set out for Panama in 1698. Poorly equipped, at the mercy of tropical storms and disease, under attack by the Spanish in nearby Colombia, and refused aid from English settlements in the Caribbean, the colonists abandoned their project in 1700. Only 1,000 survived and only one ship managed to return to Scotland.

Its failure left nobles, landowners, town councils and many ordinary Scots completely ruined. Voices began to be raised suggesting that union with England would enable Scotland to recover from the financial disaster through English assistance.

This indeed proved to be the case. A sum negotiated at 398,000 pounds was paid to Scotland by the English government under the terms of the 1707 merger, and 58.6 per cent of the money was allocated to the shareholders and creditors who had lost money in the Darien debacle.

Even more direct bribery was also said to be a factor, with many supporters of union receiving funds from English sources.

For many Scots, it was a sad occasion. Wrote Robert Burns: “We’re bought and sold for English Gold, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation.”

As every Islander knows, P.E.I. only became a Canadian province in 1873, six years following the establishment of Canada. Many Islanders had been opposed to Confederation, feeling the Island was doing quite well on its own.

Islanders were also disappointed that neither the Charlottetown nor Quebec Conferences of 1864 had dealt with the island’s “land question” – the fact that absentee landlords owned much of the colony’s farmland. It had led to Tenant League riots a year later.

In 1866, the island government passed a resolution declaring that no new terms would induce it to join Confederation.

In 1871, however, the colony began construction of a railway and soon found itself financially overextended. The ambitious railway-building plan had put the government into debt and created a banking crisis.

Two years later, the Canadian government negotiated for the island to join Canada. It agreed to take over the island’s extensive debt, consented to provide $800,000 towards a buy-out of the last of the colony’s absentee landlords, and promised to establish and maintain a year-round steamer service between the island and the mainland.

During the election of April 1873, island voters had the option of accepting Confederation or facing increased taxes. They decided to join Canada as a way out of their financial problems. Yet now the province cashes in on being the “Cradle of Confederation!”