From my article today in Butterflies & Wheels, responding to the op-ed by Aruna Papp, author of the recently released “Culturally-driven violence against women: A growing problem in Canada’s immigrant communities” and to the 2007 honour killing of Aqsa Parvez in Mississauga, Ontario.

Yet in Canada, we are gripped in fear of offending other cultures and so we carefully tiptoe around confronting the cultural or tribal roots of injustices, like the brutal murder of the teenage Aqsa.

 

It is to the great detriment of true justice in our society, and it fails the victims of these crimes, which find religious and cultural sanction.

 

It is this characteristic – religious or cultural sanction – that makes us plead silence, and Papp rightly makes the association with the fear of being perceived as colonialist should we dare to criticize the harmful practices of minorities.

 

This fear is something that has deep roots in Canadian culture, perpetuated through academic institutions, the media, even the peace movement.

 

It has long been fashionable in the halls of western arts faculties to view all the world through the lens of post-colonialism.

 

In classrooms across the country students of political science, anthropology, literature and other disciplines learn to see the developing world as unflinchingly hostile to foreign interference, as the wounds of conquest by imperial powers continue to heal.

 

Through this lens, universal values do not exist.

 

Young Canadians are taught to challenge their own western perceptions and to be culturally sensitive.

 

Buzzwords like “ethnocentrism” abound, and all kinds of activities take on the metaphor of colonialism, whether international development projects or scientific research.

 

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/if-speaking-the-truth-is-offensive-let-us-offend