Abstract
Why, in the midst of public debates related to religion, are unrepresentative orthodox perspectives often positioned as illustrative of a religious tradition? How can more representative voices be encouraged? Political theorist Anne Phillips (2007) suggests that facilitating multi-voiced individual engagements effectively dismantles the monopolies of the most conservative that tend to privilege maleness. In this paper, with reference to the 2003–2005 faith-based arbitration debate in Ontario, Canada, I show how, in practice, Phillips’ approach is unwieldy and does not work well in a sound-bite-necessitating culture. Instead, I argue that the “Sharia Debate” served as a catalyst for mainstream conservative Muslim groups in Ontario to develop public relations apparatuses that better facilitate the perspectives of everyday religious conservatives in the public sphere.
Highlights
The 2003–2005 “Sharia Debate” in the province of Ontario, Canada offers a lens with which to consider why, in the absence of a clear interlocutor, an orthodox religious group was able to position itself as representative of mainstream Muslims who supported faith-based arbitration (FBA)
Rather than assuming that Western governments should grant more voice to individuals to counter the power of orthodoxy as Phillips suggests, religious groups themselves must proactively develop public relations through websites and press releases to better translate their interests
Riad Saloojee, a CAIR-CAN spokesperson, pointed out in a communiqué submitted to the Boyd Report that pragmatism should motivate policy makers to maintain the status quo related to FBA: “The reality is that on the ground, faith-based arbitration is already going on in an informal way,” noted, so that “the best way is to regulate it and ensure it is transparent” [63]
Summary
The 2003–2005 “Sharia Debate” in the province of Ontario, Canada offers a lens with which to consider why, in the absence of a clear interlocutor, an orthodox religious group was able to position itself as representative of mainstream Muslims who supported faith-based arbitration (FBA). This. Rather than assuming that Western governments should grant more voice to individuals to counter the power of orthodoxy as Phillips suggests, religious groups themselves must proactively develop public relations through websites and press releases to better translate their interests. This multi-voiced media-savvy engagement could reshape the so-called secular sphere to carve out space so that more religiously-motivated concerns could have a place in public debate, better reflecting a post-secular [9]. Studies in Australia and the UK map similar kinds of everyday engagements with Islamic law (see [19,20,21])
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