With this post I just want to bring a few things to your attention (some articles and a report that I have not much to say about, just didn’t want to lose the links!)
First, here is piece from the Ottawa Citizen about how church groups are trying to dissuade young Muslims from joining gangs. Frankly, I think the ACLU-types (CAIR too!) would go wild in the US if roving Christians distributed leaflets in Somali communities and set up church activities in Muslim neighborhoods.
Maybe religious leaders can’t reach Ottawa’s hard-core gang members, but they believe their teachings can divert younger kids headed that way. The snag is often a parent who objects.
Crime prevention officials, police and Christian and Muslim community volunteers recently addressed the city’s new faith and gangs group to explore how congregations might keep kids from a gang lifestyle.
[…..]
“We set up in a playground doing stuff kids love to do.” Bethel’s “Sidewalk Sunday School” offers a story with a life lesson, “Bible-related but not preachy, tract stuff.” If the kids want more games, a bus will take them to the church near Fisher Avenue and Prince of Wales Drive “where there’s a little more teaching.”
To counter problems with Somali kids not making it in public schools, I see some have turned to homeschooling.
Wahid pulled some of his own seven children out of public school and home schooled them. His youngest, twin sons, have graduated at age 19 from the University of Ottawa. He said the Somali community has formed homework clubs and support for home schooling parents, as well as a mentoring system for people in trouble with the law, either a youth with a minor offence like shoplifting or a man getting out of jail who needs a job.
Coincidentally the Washington Post has a long story yesterday about how many Muslims are turning to homeschooling in the US.
Also, in my inbox this morning was a 2003 report from Canada about how Canada had opened its doors too wide and didn’t check carefully those refugees and immigrants they admitted willy-nilly to their country. Hat tip: Richard
Sounding an optimistic note in the introduction (remember this is now 7 years ago),the author of the Mackenzie Institute report says:
That peaceful, civil, and cosmopolitan society we want has not vanished, nor is it really endangered – provided that we become intolerant about one particular point. We must become absolutely intolerant of those who come here to perpetuate other people’s wars and prey on our citizens who share their background. Our future depends on it.
Here is one section of the report that I’m posting because again I don’t want to lose these links or some of this information. I’ve heard here in the US that citizens in communities (Lewiston, ME for instance) were baffled that Somalis arrived knowing all their rights and what they were entitled to receive from government programs (and how to play the race card!). The same appears to be true in Canada.
“Perhaps one of the most spectacular Canadian uses of the welfare system to fund other
peoples’ wars came as a result of the Somali civil conflict of the early 1990s. Canada
soon became a destination of choice for Somalis fleeing the country, and Canadian
immigration officers and social workers in the Toronto area were often to find that many
of them had a precise knowledge of all their entitlements before they landed in Canada.
Moreover, at that time, the Province of Ontario (then under an NDP government) was
operating with a very relaxed attitude towards new claims, accepting most of them at face
value.
It soon turned out that many Somalis soon started making multiple claims, usually by
traveling into the United States and then turning around and making a new refugee claim
under an assumed name on re-entering Canada.
However, few of these multiple claims were for personal benefit, as money from social welfare payments was diverted to Africa to buy arms and supplies for clan militias back in Somalia.
To compound matters, the favored wife of the most notorious Somali warlord, Mohammed Farah Aideed (who was already working with al Qaeda in 1993), was living in London, Ontario with four children. When challenged on this, she predictably accused the Canadian reporters who were trying to interview her of being racist.”