Knowlton Nash was the anchor of the CBC's National for all my childhood and well into my adolescence. He was an old school journalist, with no flash or sensationalism. He took his duty to inform the world seriously. My parents always trusted him.
"The Art of Peace is not a religion. It perfects and completes all religions. The world has 8 million gods and I cooperate with them all." Morihei Ueshiba, O Sensei.
A young girl spends 11 years under her Sensei and is close to getting her Shodan. She is offended by a belief system of one of the students in the dojo, and her Sensei does not throw this student out. She holds a press conference and sets out to destroy her Sensei in an international forum. Her instructor is vilified and targeted internationally, and the former classmate is now a target for hate groups as well. The national media is getting comments from every coast. People who were never there at this dojo and never studied Aikido are saying, "Go Home! We hate Muslims and we don't want you here!" There is an active cyber bullying campaign going on against this school and this teacher, and some prominent Aikido teachers who spoke out against gender segregation would not support the level of hate found online. This is a harsh way to end an eleven year relationship, and one hopes there is more to it than a teenager's intolerance for a long time instructor's recent choice to tolerate a beginner's request.
I would probably not accommodate the request to not touch women, though I have many times allowed women to not train with men. The Muslim students I have trained with have trained with my wife as well, so I have not been in this situation. I doubt my now deceased Sensei would have accommodated this Islamic student at all - he wanted us to experience Japanese culture and he did insist on bowing. We don't use English terminology, we don't wear sweat pants and we don't wear shoes. We wear dogi and hakama, and we train barefoot on tatami mats (though most dojo now have foam mats and not rice straw). We bow to the Founder, Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei. We do this out of respect for his creation and his beliefs, though the Founder was Shinto and this ritual is tied to Shinto practice.
O Sensei did have to change his own belief systems. His original six rules for practice said, "Don't teach anyone that isn't Japanese." Everyone involved in this scenario in Nova Scotia has benefited from his change in practice and accommodation of other cultures. He was a military trainer on the side of Japan - North America was very accommodating as well and the growth of this new martial art has been exponential because of various cultures choosing to move forward. Today the rules for practice say something like, "Only teach people of good character who will use this information to a good end."
I have only met a handful of Yoshinkan students, and only one teacher. Kimeda Sensei in Toronto was amazing, and I was grateful for his hospitality. I enjoyed the day I spent in his dojo, and I left with profound respect for what I saw. Shioda Sensei had died a few months before, and I share the belief that his passing was a great loss. This one system of Aikido is more concerned with combat effectiveness and much less with O Sensei's spiritual teachings than the Aikikai system I am a part of, and I respect that too.
Online comments from people claiming some knowledge of the situation:
(From salttheskies on Reddit, and reposted to Aikiweb by Christopher Li): I am a student and assistant instructor at East Coast Aikido, and this story has not been accurately or fairly reported. The class was never segregated along gender lines, and the muslim student's request was accommodated by taking care not to partner him and him alone with any of the handful of female students in the class for training. Female students do not train separately from the rest of the class, and continue to train with each other and with male students as they always have with the exception of the one muslim student. If during the regular rotation of training partners, the muslim student was paired with a female student, the instructor managing the training would simply have him switch places with another student so that he would be with a male training partner. This request was accommodated with minimal impact on the flow of training, and it's disheartening to see the situation has been so unfairly misrepresented in the media.
Furthermore, this would not at all have impacted on Sonja's black belt training as she would not have been training with the newer muslim student on the advanced material anyway. I never saw any literature on Islam distributed in the class, and I imagine that if this did happen, if she had brought the booklet to Steve with her concerns, he would have asked the muslim student not to do it again.
Steve handled this situation in about the best way I can imagine any instructor handling it. He saw a way to easily and fairly accommodate the student's request so that he would be able to train with us. If the request had been refused, the news story would be one of Islamophobia instead of sexism. I hope Sonja eventually comes to realise this and comes back to train. (Posted on Aikiweb)
Todd Fleck: Once again the press is only reporting one side of the story. I am a student of Sensei Nickerson as well as my Dojo-cho (chief instructor) of my own dojo. I know all parties involved in this and this situation. The press are saying that the women in the class were forced to train on one side of the dojo while the Muslim student was there. THAT WAS NOT TRUE! And never happened. The women were told that due to his religion, and for his respect of women, he was not permitted to touch them and to respect his beliefs. There were lots of other men in the class to train with so why is this an issue. The Muslim, (and I am protecting his name) is the gentlest, kindest, humblest man I have ever met and I am proud to consider him one of my friends. I challenge the media to actually report the real story!!! P.S. Look into how many time this mother has brought false claims against other institutions and you will then understand the real situation. (Posted on Canoe.ca)
I have never met Todd Fleck, nor am I a student of Yoshinkan Aikido. A quick Google on his name shows him to be teaching Yoshinkan Aikido on a Canadian Forces base. So, possibly he and/or at least one of his students have likely fought in Afganistan, and likely known soldiers killed there by predominantly Islamic enemies. He and his students play a role in the maintenance of our rights and freedoms (Even in Canada, Freedom isn't Free). In spite of this, he is speaking up in support of this Muslim student and Nickerson Sensei. And taking flack for it.
In regard to his comments on the family: http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1180530-online-posts-intended-for-radical-islam. This is evidence in the public record that her family, for all their talk of social justice, has intolerance for Muslims. This evidence is easier to find than the handout that has taken the bulk of the media coverage.
I see comments saying, "Go Home!" (And worse.) But, we don't know if this is a third generation Canadian Islamic teenager who has been bullied at school and is turning to the martial arts out of concern for his safety. We know nothing of the student at all, but he is now a target. The attraction to Aikido is that we do have a choice whether or not to cause serious injury, which appeals to a certain type of person who is opposed to violence and interested in promoting peace. This is a meaningful value. If this student or his teacher are harmed or killed, or the dojo faces harm; should we hold Sonja Power responsible?
I met my wife on the mat, and I have many good friends in Aikido who happen to be women. As an instructor, I of course routinely give physical corrections and feedback to every student on the mat, and I expect the same of any teacher. So, this belief system means the Muslim student should never become an instructor or Shihan in my opinion. There is an advantage in applying technique to a wide variety of body types that he is missing out on - for example women tend to have greater flexibility and they are forced by necessity to learn better mechanics than a larger male who might just bludgeon their way through a technique. I am forced to learn to be more accurate, and that is a good thing.
As a male nurse, I routinely get told I am not welcome to assist in the care of a female. I say "routinely," because I chose to accept this is just a routine request. I also accept that some smaller female students find me intimidating, and that they might be more comfortable training with someone else. In a grappling art, pelvises rub up against each other (or any other body part), chests get grabbed and thighs are frequently in contact. Some female training partners are not comfortable with this. I would probably be careful who I matched up with a 17 year old girl for grappling practice. Discriminate on the basis of gender? In my world the answer is, "Of course. And it's frequently the right thing to do, and the socially acceptable thing to do."
The irony of this for you non-martial artists out there is that most martial arts if not most sports are indeed segregated by gender. If this student had chosen to study Boxing, Judo, Kickboxing, MMA, Wrestling, Tae Kwon Do - all of these sports have gender, skill level, age, and weight classes in competition. Even Kata competitions, which have no physical contact at all, are serrated by gender. Skating, running, hockey, softball, and archery are all segregated Olympic events - even Curling and Half Pipe, though I can't imagine why. I believe the only gender neutral event is the open water long distance swim.
Aikido is a unique art in that women have trained with, and along side the men from the very beginning and this is a fact that should not be discarded lightly. This student picked "The Art of Peace" instead of something far more focused on effective violence or physical dominance - where he would indeed be expected to exclusively train against men. Aikido is not necessarily a superior art or sport to any other, but we offer options to avoid causing injury to a degree that other arts do not. If the student wanted to practice pounding someone into bloody submission MMA style, he would not probably even be given the option to train with a woman! He made a choice to learn an Art that specializes in restraint, control, and minimizing injury. I chose to believe that says something about the student.
To accommodate a religious requirement to not bow is not onerous. I have had Muslim students in class with me, and they are uncomfortable with bowing. A Fundamentalist Christian student of Kanai Sensei has also decided to not bow because of his own faith, and now has created his own system. For that matter, the first time I went to a karate class and bowed to In-Yo, my open minded Dad became upset. There are other ways to show respect, and intention matters.
The handout sounds gross, but this also crossed a line for Nickerson Sensei. I was not able to find a copy for myself to read. (Hopefully I have not been tagged by the NSA for Googling it.) Nothing to judge the Sensei for there. While this pamphlet seems to take up most of the article and has the most egregious content, the actual students involved don't mention it or don't seem to know of it. The dojo seems to be supporting their Sensei.
I doubt I would have gone as far as Nickerson Sensei did in supporting this student. I still want to voice my support for Nickerson actually trying to make this work. There is no greater challenge ahead for the Art of Peace than to continue the work of Morihei Ueshiba - an enemy soldier and military trainer who opened his heart and his art to the world. Morihei Ueshiba talked about his creation being an art of reconciliation. To throw out someone because they are different is not O Sensei's example nor his vision, nor should exclusion of a minority of any description be the policy of a community center. The Art of Peace and Reconciliation should be open to other belief systems and religious practices. The Islamic world has proscriptions against our routine practice format. While North America has gotten used to Catholics who use birth control, Jews who like bacon, public schools no longer praying and Hindii children eating Big Macs, do we really want all religions and peoples to discard all their history and customs?
I firmly believe that we are called by Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei to be better people than to yell, " Go Home!" He told us, "The Art of Peace begins with you." I don't have the answers, but 1.57 Billion people on the planet practicing Islam are not going away and we need a vehicle for reconciliation.
That vehicle is definitely not the National Post.
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I finally figured out how to fix some links, and I expounded on a few points above. I took the time to fix this, as Knowlton Nash's death was just announced. While Memorial Day is usually reserved for soldiers who fight to defend our way of life, I am reflecting on how this man's mission to preserve integrity in Canadian journalism is something we should also remember. He defended truth without passion, bias, or flash. He believed in our right to be informed accurately over ratings, and that defined a generation of Canadians.
For someone who has been a witness to the hardship these accusations have caused... I thank you for your perspective.
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