Segacs's World I Know

Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Muslim women’s groups are outraged at a Canadian court ruling allowing “Canadianized Sharia” in Ontario:

Then the province of Ontario quietly approved its use. Under the 1991 Arbitration Act, sharia-based marriage, divorce and family tribunals run by the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice are expected to begin later this year. The move has so horrified many Muslim women that they’re vowing to stop the tribunals before they start.

“We’ve had a flood of e-mails from people, asking `How can we help?’” says Alia Hogben, president of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, whose 900 members come from a variety of Islamic sects.

They were outraged that Muslim women could be coerced into taking part in sharia tribunals or face family and community ostracism — or worse.

Why, they asked, should these women be treated differently from other Canadian women?

“When you come to Canada, you are a human being with full rights,” says Jonathan Schrieder, a Toronto civil litigation lawyer. Allowing sharia here — even a “Canadianized” version, as its proponents claim — “will subject Muslim women to a huge injustice.”

Indeed.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with religious arbitration being used voluntarily by members of a community, when it doesn’t contravene secular law. For example, Montreal – like many cities – has a Jewish beit din to decide matters of Jewish law, and members of the community can agree to subject themselves to its jurisdiction.

But what we’re talking about here isn’t voluntary arbitration: it’s an attempt to relegate Muslim women to second-class citizen status against their will. Even though the Ontario court ruling specifies that all parties must “voluntarily” submit themselves to the process, this is certain not to work because the very nature of Shari’a law makes the whole process open to unbelievable amount of abuse. No Canadian should stand for this.

Via LGF and Burnside, who are all over this one.

Lynn has some good news from Israel on the subject of religious marriages:

Former chief Sephardi rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron yesterday advocated dismantling the Orthodox rabbinate’s monopoly over marriages – the first time any leading rabbi associated with the rabbinical establishment has publicly urged such a step.

[ . . . ]

In his speech, Bakshi-Doron gave several reasons why he thought the rabbinate’s monopoly on marriages must end. First, he said, the law has become irrelevant, as growing numbers of Israelis are choosing to marry in civil ceremonies either abroad or in Israel (the state recognizes civil marriages conducted overseas, but not those conducted locally). Second, he said, the law encourages hatred of the rabbinate, since it is seen as the primary expression of religious coercion in Israel.

Israel has been trying to work out the meaning of “Jewish democracy” for decades. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, and other religious and secular leaders will speak out and work to change this law.

Ok, maybe not funniest ever. But pretty damn funny. I challenge you to read this without laughing.

Oh, scroll down on the page past the movie review first. (Via Tainted Glass.)

• What on earth is that William Hung kid doing performing on Jay Leno? Sheesh, he’s so bad it’s embarrassing! I’d feel bad for the poor kid… but he’s more successful than most real musicians in North America. For the next 15 minutes at least. I don’t watch American Idol or anything, but I’d venture to say he’s enjoying more fame and publicity than any of the finalists! From Beatles to Hung in less than fifty years. What is music coming to?

• Letters like this one are encouraging and nice to see. But they’re also easy. Too easy. It’s simple to act upset and shocked when assholes firebomb an elementary school. It’s harder to face down other forms of antisemitism that aren’t so obvious but are just as harmful. I’d like to see a flooding of support for the Jewish community when there’s a suicide attack in Israel. Instead, we get finger-pointing and Israel-bashing.

• Speaking of the UTT fire, Geoff has photos (via Celestial Blue). Disturbing to see the building that way. I can’t bring myself to drive by. Though the attack happened in the elementary school’s library, the high school is attached and so I spent 5 years of my life inside that building on a near-daily basis. I’m too used to remembering it as the place I dreaded seeing as we drove up every morning… and was happy to be let loose from every afternoon … only because it meant long days trapped inside boring classes. It meant a school that was falling apart, with leaky toilets and an ever-present smell of rotten fish. It meant all the things that are a normal part of high school. It never meant fear of being harmed or attacked. What will the building mean to the current students?

• Lynn has the latest about the Mel Gibson movie, and its convenient messages in the Arab world. Here’s a hint: It’s not a hit in Muslim countries because of Monica Belluci’s breasts.

• Michele has done a lot to restore my faith in the education system. It seems that there are actually teachers out there who encourage kids to think for themselves and debate!

• In the meantime, I’ve concluded that Passover must be sponsored by the gyms and fitness centres. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt in such need of exercise.

Finally, let’s just pause for a moment and appreciate the wonderful thing that is a LONG WEEKEND!!!

Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks that the reaction of major Jewish organizations to The Passion of Christ has only served to give the film more publicity than it deserves:

Just as we are busy denying that the Jews control the world, it turns out that we do. Look what a wonderful job we have done publicizing Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. Only we could take a film of unrelenting torture – by all accounts not a pleasant experience – entirely in Aramaic and Latin, and turn it into one of the best-selling movies of all time.

Haven’t seen it. Have no plans to see it. And somehow I think the publicity was generated more by the Christian religious groups than the Jewish ones. But why add fuel to the fire?

Purim has a Scrooge, and his name is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef:

The crazy Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef has made some new ridiculous extremist pronouncements for Purim.

He says it’s forbidden to dress in a costume of the opposite sex for Purim, it’s forbidden to wear a Kaffiyeh (i.e. no Arafat costumes) and …. as a crowning touch, now it’s forbidden to give a Purim basket to a member of the opposite sex (the baskets, known as “mishloach manot” are a Purim holiday tradition, a basket filled with cookies and candy that you give out to friends and neighbors)

Yep, who knows what that kinky basket-exchanging can lead to…..

Hmmm, I wonder how he would’ve reacted to my sixth-grade Hebrew teacher dressing up as a nun?

I didn’t want to write anything about the Mel Gibson “Passion” controversy. Really I didn’t. I felt – and still feel – that all the whining is just giving the film tons of publicity that it wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise, and I didn’t want to feed the media frenzy in any way.

But whatever one thinks of Mel Gibson, Meryl has the scoop on Mel’s dad, giving credence to the theory that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Even if there’s no direct evidence that Mel shares his father’s extremist views, in light of the film and surrounding controversy, can you really blame a person for wondering?

Yep, good ol’ France, as expected, overwhelmingly backed the ban of religious symbols from the classroom, thus endorsing what is arguably one of the best candidates for prominence on dumblaws.com:

France’s National Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to banish religious emblems from state schools, a measure meant to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of public classrooms.

Deputies voted 494 to 36 to ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses and to expel pupils who insisted on wearing them. It will not apply to private schools.

[ . . . ]

“What is at issue here is the clear affirmation that public school is a place for learning and not for militant activity or proselytism,” Assembly Speaker Jean-Louis Debre said.

Er, no, what is at issue here is whether the public school system will actually deal with racism and militant activity, or whether it will just sweep it under the carpet. All this law will do is force Muslim girls out of the public system and into private Madrassas, where they will lose the opportunity to have a secular education. All this will do is force the militant wing of Islam underground in France, and insult all the mainstream Muslims by telling them that their symbol of faith is really a symbol of “militant activity”.

France is attempting to solve a serious problem by pretending it doesn’t exist, and we all know how well that works.

It seems I was right and that the issue is much more about childish personality squabbles than I’d realized:

Unfortunately, personality conflicts – chiefly involving Dollard borough Mayor Ed Janiszewski and Al-Jamieh leader Ahmad Chaar – haven’t helped matters. Janiszewski cynically says Dollard’s opposition to the mosque is open to change, but the most likely scenario for that happening, he says, would involve his own death. In other words, over his dead body will al-Jamieh stay open.

Chaar, meanwhile, didn’t help matters when he rejected executive committee Robert Libman’s offer to act as mediator, saying Libman, as a Jew, is naturally biased against Al-Jamieh. This was an unwise and unhelpful comment, especially since one of the most vocal proponents of al-Jamieh’s right to exist is former Adat Reim congregation co-president Peter Nobel.

Hmmm… trading kindergarten-level insults and being obstinate about stupidities? Are these Dollard politics or Concordia politics?

France is maybe the most prominent example in the media these days on total idiocy about the concept of freedom of religion… but there are other, smaller-scale examples closer to home.

Today’s Gazette had two stories. One was about a zoning dispute for a mosque in DDO:

Many prayers have been said at 241 Anselme-Lavigne Blvd. in the 15 years the building has had a religious function, but for the current Muslim occupants, the D.D.O. address is proving to be more of a curse than a blessing.

The Canadian Islamic Centre Al-Jamieh bought the property in December 2001 and has been fighting the borough for the right to stay ever since.

The dispute became public in fall 2002 when the borough changed the site’s zoning from residential to institutional, with the aim of moving out the mosque and putting in a day care.

Meanwhile, a group of Orthodox Jews is battling their condo association for the right to build succahs on their balconies:

Several religious organizations will side with five families as they argue that a condo rule barring them from putting huts on their balconies for about a week each year to celebrate a fall religious festival contravenes the Charter of Rights.

The case is considered one of the most significant in the court’s winter session because the outcome could determine whether private contracts can override the charter and human-rights legislation.

These two cases are quite different, of course. The first is yet another example of cities using every iota of red tape and zoning regulation at their disposal to prevent religious centres or houses of worship. I haven’t heard too many large-scale protests against churches, but a synagogue in Outremont is in an ongoing battle to expand, and the mosque in question in DDO used to be a conservative synagogue, which also went through its share of problems with the city. It seems people can only tolerate freedom of religion as long as religions other than their own are being practiced privately in a home, not publicly.

In the second case, I suppose a condo association should be allowed to have by-laws for certain things. But personal politics and petty squabbles usually play more of a role in those condo meeting votes than common sense. On the one hand, a communal succah for the building seems reasonable. But on the other hand, I’m willing to bet that the opposition to the balcony succahs has more to do with childish power jockeying than with any real concerns. Again back to Outremont, the worst case of this that I can recollect recently was a group of citizens lobbying to prevent the large Orthodox Jewish community in the area from putting up an eruv – a small, basically invisible wire that would encircle the area, allowing the religious inside it to “carry” things like baby strollers on the Sabbath. It wouldn’t have harmed anyone. In fact, there’s an eruv in Dollard but I only know about it by having been told. Nobody would notice. And yet, petty squabbles.

The concept of freedom of religion is an interesting one. It guarantees people the right to practice their religious beliefs without harassment. And it also guarantees freedom from religion to those who don’t wish to participate. That means no school prayers in public schools, no forced public worship of any kind, and basically that the government butts out. But it also means that if people want to wear symbols of faith or observe rituals, they should be free to do so, as long as they don’t compel anyone else to. If a Jewish child wants to bring Passover lunches to school for eight days every year, nobody should force him to eat bread. If a Muslim girl wants to wear a hijab to school, nobody should force her not to… assuming that nobody forced her to wear it in the first place, of course.

But how far does the public responsibility extend to ensure that people can practice their religion? Is a city obliged to rezone land to allow houses of worship to be built? Is a condo association obliged to allow succahs? What if I claimed that my own religion required me to play loud music at 2am every night and dance around in tap shoes. Would a landlord be denied the right to evict me for disturbing the neighbours?

The tricky thing about religion is that there’s no clear-cut line between legitimate, recognized religions and fringe ones. Who’s to say that a small group with 20 followers is any less entitled to the protection of the Charter of Rights than a religion with millions of adherents? What about different ideas on how a religion ought to be observed? If a Reform rabbi testified that a succah wasn’t really needed, but an Orthodox rabbi disagreed, who does the judge have to listen to? And how far is the public required to go to be accommodating? Rezoning land to build a mosque is one thing, but is a public place required to actually build and provide the prayer facilities, as student groups in some universities are claiming?

Obviously, there are no clear answers. But in these cases, we should ask ourselves about the intent of the people seking to block something. Are they doing it out of xenophobia or out of a legitimate concern? When a Sikh boy was denied the right to bring a kirpan to school, perhaps the parents who lobbied so hard against him were denying this boy’s freedom of religion and perhaps they were overreacting, but the bottom line was that their concern stemmed from the legitimate desire to protect their children against a perceived threat of a large knife being present in a classroom in the hands of a fellow student. But I suspect that the motives of the few DDO residents complaining about the mosque are not as honest. At the end of the day, I think it’s about making an honest effort to accommodate one another, to a reasonable degree. Unfortunately, the people involved in such squabbles are rarely reasonable or accommodating… and then you end up with news items like these.