By Richard Landau

Last year we witnessed surprising riots and fire in the streets of Stockholm, largely perpetrated by young men whose families originated in the Maghreb region of Africa. This is in Sweden, where official multiculturalism has lived. It looked like something we had seen previously in the suburbs of Paris. Young…

By Richard Landau

Recently, I was listening to a very funny routine that comedienne Wanda Sykes recorded for HBO about her decision to come out. At its core, her presentation is about what I call “self-disclosure.” She talks about how it is more difficult to be identified as gay than it is to be identified…

By Richard Landau

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and some of that city’s Somali community are at odds.  Acting on what it thought were the concerns of the Somali population, the TDSB is considering a modified curriculum and services for the children of Canadians of Somali extraction to deal with a dropout…

By Richard Landau

Can we force a minority community to either integrate outsiders into its activities or disperse? These are the questions at the heart of a recent debate in Thornhill, Vaughan – an upper-middle class community north of Toronto. A local Shia Muslim congregation had proposed to erect a 17-storey, 205-unit residence with retail…

By Richard Landau

Responding to public opinion, the City of Edmonton has pulled a controversial bus placard ad campaign that some believe conveyed anti-Muslim sentiment.  The campaign placed on the tail of many Edmonton Transit buses and ostensibly pitched at young Muslim women, included the headline: “Is Your Family Threatening You?  Is There…

By Richard Landau

I grew up in Québec.  We saw nuns in full habit everywhere: in schools, driving cars, the shopping centre.  That Québec … steeped in religion, where penitents mounted the stairs to Montréal’s Oratoire St. Joseph on their knees, has rapidly faded. Under the proposed new charter, a nun in habit,…

By Richard Landau

David Carment (Religious Freedom? This office is about ethnic votes, Feb. 21) has theorized in the Globe and Mail that the federal government’s interest in the establishment of the Office of Religious Freedom is being driven by an agenda of political gain here at home.  I’m not so sure.  It seems many in…

By Richard Landau

Interfaith dialogue, as we have known it, that peaceful, sanguine and polite discourse, is dead.  Yes, dead.  The day of treating everyone like equals with equal truths in the marketplace of ideas is… over.  The day of fascination with the “exotica” of others’ faiths…is done. This is a new era that calls for…