Archive for the 'Religion' Category

07
Feb

The Duggars, Once More

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Religion and Society

They’re the big family we love to hate – or hate to love. They’re the Duggars: Jim-Bob; his wife Michelle; their 19 children, all with names beginning with ‘j;’ and now two grandchildren (with names beginning with ‘m;’ Michelle may yet have the final word).  The family recently made the news when Michelle’s latest pregnancy, at age 45, ended in a second-trimester miscarriage of a daughter they called Jubilee Shalom. But ever since the Duggars appeared on the Learning Channel in 2004, they’ve had no shortage of attention from the media or public at large. They’ve appeared in magazines and newspapers, including a scientific journal (Scientific American); on talk shows; and even on the reality TV circuit in the form of a program titled ’19 Kids and Counting.’

The Duggars tend to elicit a range of reactions, from loathing to near-worship. Some see the Duggars, who are fundamentalist Christians (Baptist), as the embodiment of all that is holy. At the other end of the spectrum lie those who view the Duggars as retrograde polluters who sport bad hairdos, strain the Earth’s resources, keep their children (especially the daughters) in indentured servitude, and conspire to dominate the world by out-breeding the not-so-godly.

I myself fall somewhere in between these two extremes. As a woman who’s deliberately chosen to have only one biological child, I find the idea of having 19 kids basically a year apart in age scary. Then again, I was puzzled by my nephew and his wife’s decision to TTC (that’s for Try To Conceive, not Toronto Transit Commission) right after their existing daughter turned a year old. At the end of the day, however, it’s the Duggars’ choice as to how many children they want to have – especially as they’re paying their own way rather than sponging off the taxpayers.* But wherever we land on the ‘love ‘em or hate ‘em’ spectrum, we can’t help but be fascinated by the Duggars. Why else would they garner so many viewers and so much commentary both positive and negative?

Much of our fascination with the Duggars stems from the fact that by having so many children, they’re outside the norm. Humans have always been intrigued by the unusual and atypical. In other words, the Duggars attract attention for the same reason that the Hensel twins or Aceves family do. (Of course I watched programs about the Aceves family because I had a raging crush on Jesus Manuel Fajardo Aceves, so I can’t exclude the possibility that some female – and perhaps a few male – viewers might feel the same way about Jim-Bob, even if he’s not my type personally.) The Duggars’ outsider status is confirmed by indications that everywhere around the globe, birth rates are falling. My own experience attests to this. During my childhood in the 1970s, the only ‘only’ children I knew were my cousin Brian, whose mom – Aunt Helen – was a single mother by choice before it became the trendy thing to do, and an adopted girl born at the tail end of the healthy white baby glut. Families of four or five children were not considered particularly gargantuan. Fast-forward three decades, though, and Canada’s birth rate, like that of most industrialized nations, is well below replacement level. As The Nation‘s Katha Pollitt writes, women today want small, planned families. People who criticize the Discovery or Learning Channels for ‘promoting overpopulation’ by featuring large families never stop to think that the Duggars wouldn’t receive a fraction of the publicity they currently do if their family size was anything close to the norm. In the grand scheme of things, Jim-Bob, Michelle and their brood are no real threat in a demographic sense.

I also suspect we’re drawn to the Duggars because they’re, well, such a wholesome family, at least on camera. Even a poster on a militantly childfree site was forced to admit that the Duggar children were better-behaved than the average kid (‘no feces smearing’). For members of the so-called Quiverfull crowd and their sympathizers – largely fundamentalist Christians and some Catholics – the Duggars are a model to emulate, aspire to, or at the very least admire from afar. But even individuals who wouldn’t necessarily throw their birth control to the wind might be attracted, in the words of Australian philosophy professor Karen Green, the image of a purer society, positively oriented towards motherhood and paternal responsibility, which the Duggars seem to project. At a time when traditional social structures (marriage, the family, etcetera) seem to be collapsing all around us, such an image might be appealing to some.

Personally, I share almost nothing with the Duggars in terms of my reproductive choices, religious beliefs, or childrearing ideals. For instance, Jim-Bob and Michelle don’t expose their children to ‘secular rock music,’ whereas I just listened to Pink’s song ‘Just Like a Pill’ with its line about a nurse ‘being a little bitch’ in the presence of my four-year-old daughter. Nonetheless, I can’t claim that the Duggars have nothing to say to me. I’m moved by their strong affection for one another. The recent funeral service for Jubilee Shalom was particularly touching – although given the reality that a high proportion of pregnancies in women over 40 end in miscarriage, it didn’t strike me as tragic as, say, a miscarriage in a woman who’d been trying to get pregnant for years. I’m also impressed by the family’s overall happiness – an elusive emotion, it seems, these days. Even some of the things on which I don’t see eye to eye with the Duggars (the Creation Museum, Michelle’s discomfort with dancing on the grounds that even King David’s dancing in the Bible ‘had consequences’) I find more amusing than anything else. And while I’m more than content in my decision to have only one child, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be ‘on the other side,’ with a whole brood rather than just one child to love. But in the end, my feelings towards the Duggars are ones of curiosity, fondness, and even a certain admiration but not hero-worship or emulation.

*I am not against welfare per se in the case of, for example, a mother of preschoolers who leaves an abusive husband or boyfriend and cannot pay for day care, but I do consider it irresponsible to deliberately have children while on social assistance.

14
Jan

Is Canada Islamophobic?

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics, Politics and Religion

Last week’s headlines were marked by news of an attack on a mosque in the city of Gatineau, Quebec. The mosque was spray-painted and its windows broken, while two cars in the parking lot were almost torched. After a short period of deliberation, the Gatineau police declared the attack a hate crime. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney paid a visit to the mosque, stating that the type of bigotry displayed by the vandals had no place in Canada.

The vandalism, and Kenney’s appearance at the mosque, came at a time when relations between the federal government and Canada’s Muslim community were uneasy at best and hostile at worst. A month earlier, the Minister had decreed that Muslim women had to remove any face veils like burkas or niqabs when taking the oath of citizenship. Some Muslims felt that Kenney was making these women choose between their faith and their citizenship. Higher up on the political hierarchy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper angered many Muslim Canadians in September when he described ‘Islamicism’ as the greatest threat to Canada’s security. Critics accused politicians like Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney of appealing to the mainstream Canadian population’s Islamophobia in order to obtain votes. But are Canada, and its government, really as Islamophobic as some allege?

To a certain extent, allegations of pervasive anti-Islamic hostility in Canada have some basis in fact. A recent survey by the Association for Canadian Studies found that only 43% of Canadians had a ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ perception of Muslims. In contrast, 70% of respondents had a positive perception of Catholics and Jews and 60% of atheists. According to a similar poll in 2009 conducted by Angus Reid, a mere 28% of respondents held a favourable attitude toward Islam, compared to 57% and 53% toward Buddhism and Judaism, respectively, and 72% toward Christianity. These results suggest that a considerable portion of Canadian society views Muslims and their religion in a fairly negative light, at least in comparison to other belief systems.

It’s also true that much anti-Islamic feeling in Canada is based on ignorance or plain bigotry. For example, honour killing, a crime in which a woman is murdered by her family members for ‘disgracing’ them by having premarital sex, marrying men not of the family’s liking, or even talking to boys, is often described as a ‘Muslim tradition.’ Even in Canada, however, such crimes have occurred not only among Muslims but among Sikhs and, in at least one instance, Hindus (a Sri Lankan father who tried to run over his daughter because she was seeing a man of another caste). Some so-called Islamophobes seem to be against any non-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigration whatsoever. An example is a commentator calling him- (or her-?)self PaxCanadiana who runs a website called the Canadian Immigration Reform Blog. True, he or she rails against Muslim immigrants, but he (she) also deplores the entry of Filipinos, Chinese, and even the White – if not Anglo-Saxon Protestant – Portuguese into Canada.

One might therefore ask whether this apparent Islamophobia extends to the Canadian government, more specifically the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Much was made of Stephen Harper’s remark about ‘Islamicism’ being the greatest threat to Canada. I am not so sure; it seems that problems like home-grown crime (the bulk of which is NOT committed by Muslims), environmental degradation and child poverty are at least as threatening as Islamicism is in the lives of most Canadians. On the other hand, while ‘Islamicists’ by no means constitute all Muslims, the somewhat uncomfortable truth is that there exists a fanatical element in Islam that has no modern-day counterpart in Christianity or other belief systems. Even ‘arch-atheist’ Richard Dawkins admitted that he knows of no ‘Christian suicide bombers’ or ‘major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.’ Christianity, he said, might serve as a ‘bulwark against something worse’ (he didn’t spell out what that ‘something’ was). And both Dawkins and Harper are old enough to remember the ‘fatwa’ against writer Salman Rushdie by Muslim leaders for his supposedly blasphemous work The Satanic Verses.

It does not appear that Stephen Harper or his Cabinet have anything against Islam or Muslims per se. They participated in an Eid (major Muslim holiday) celebration on Parliament Hill, for example. Furthermore, both Harper and Jason Kenney spoke out strongly against the vandalism of the mosque in Gatineau, Quebec – whereas neither they nor any other federal official, as far as I’m aware, said anything about the spray-painting of a public nativity scene in St. Catharines. Finally, in 2010 Harper bestowed honorary Canadian citizenship on the Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili Muslim spiritual community.

So back to my original question – ‘Is Canada Islamophobic?’ – with regard to the Canadian government itself and its main leaders, I would have to say no, at least not based on anything they have expressed or actually done. When it comes to the population at large, my response is more mixed. It’s apparent from polls like the above-mentioned Angus Reid survey that many Canadians are hostile to both Muslims and their religion.

Finally, how can this gap be bridged? Perhaps Muslim Canadians can let it be known that practices like honour killing and female genital mutilation are not Islamic traditions and that not all Muslims embrace capital punishment for apostates, for instance. Non-Muslims for their part should avoid lumping all Muslims together as fanatics or automatically labelling abusive husbands/fathers/brothers from the Middle East or South Asian as ‘Islamofascists’ (a term used to describe, ironically, a Lebanese Christian man named Joseph Hawach who kidnapped his two daughters from his ex-wife and brought them to Lebanon). Good fences may make good neighbours, but talking over these fences might make even better ones. Above all, I’d like to see Muslims and Canadians of other (or no) religions see themselves as fellow citizens of our one country.

02
Aug

Something Rotten in Norway: The Breivik Tragedy

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Politics, Religion and World Politics

The events in Norway two weekends ago came, literally, like a blast. When the news of the bombings in Oslo first broke, a large number of people immediately concluded that it was the work of Islamic terrorists (I, pardon the pun, remained agnostic on the issue). Several hours afterwards, it was revealed that the author of the explosions and of a subsequent shooting spree on an island outside the city was a very Aryan-looking young Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik who was in fact vehemently opposed to Muslim immigration to his country. He had previously written a 1,500-page manifesto detailing his political philosophy. He is now in custody awaiting psychiatric evaluation.

As soon as the culprit’s identity was disclosed, reaction was quick to follow. Many Muslims understandably took offence at being blamed for a crime of which they had no part and which was committed, to add insult to injury, by an individual with profoundly anti-Islamic sentiments. Other commentators, Muslim and non-Muslim, cited the event and the immediate response to it as an example of the widespread Islamophobia in Western societies like Norway. Finally, following reports describing Breivik as a ‘conservative Christian,’ some left-wing observers used the tragedy to expound on the alleged evils of the right wing, Christianity, and religion in general. But as with other calamities of this nature, the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes presented on all sides.

As mentioned above, it is not hard to sympathize with Muslims who felt that they were once again unfairly smeared for an atrocity in which they apparently played no role. I say ‘once again’ because Muslims were originally (and wrongly) suspected in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building – which turned out to be masterminded by homegrown American ‘patriot’ Timothy McVeigh. Some commentators have even attempted to link Muslims, or the Islamic faith, to mass murderers/serial killers whose connection to Islam was tenuous at best and non-existent at worst. For example, some anti-Islamic websites have made much of the fact that Marc Lepine, a lone gunman who in 1989 killed 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique because he ‘hated feminists,’ was the son of an Algerian-born Muslim father. However, Lepine (whose name at birth was Gamil Gharbi) was actually baptized a Roman Catholic by his French-Canadian mother and eventually became an atheist. Even more absurdly, it was suggested that Rolando del Rosario Mendoza, a Filipino former police officer who took passengers of a tour bus in Manila hostage in August 2010 and killed eight of them, was a Muslim. (While the Philippines do have a Muslim population in the south of the country, it seems somewhat far-fetched that a person with a middle name that literally means ‘of the rosary’ would be one of them.)

On the other hand, should all those who initially thought that the bombings in Oslo were the actions of Muslim extremists be tarred as Islamophobic? The fact that Muslim groups were behind 9/11 in New York City and the later bombings in Madrid and London might have led some reasonable and not necessarily ‘Islamophobic’ people to this conclusion. In addition, an Islamic group linked to Al-Qaeda called ‘Helpers of the Global Jihad’ originally claimed responsibility for the explosions in Oslo, although they later retracted the statement. The notion that Muslims might have been involved in the attacks was, at least in the beginning, a plausible hypothesis.

Also somewhat dubious was the attempt to portray Anders Behring Breivik as a ‘Christian terrorist.’ Although like most Norwegians, he was most likely baptized into the Lutheran Church as a baby, in his manifesto he denied having a ‘personal relationship with God or Jesus Christ.’ He appeared to see Christianity as a cultural rather than religious phenomenon. In his own words, ‘I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a multicultural Christian Europe.’ In this respect he resembles the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, a self-confessed atheist who nonetheless viewed Christianity as a bulwark against the encroachment of Islam in Europe.

Still, some people have tried to depict Breivik as an example of right-wing Christianity gone wild. OMNI TV commentator Zuhair Kashmeri, for instance, calls Breivik a ‘right-wing Christian nutbar.’ While Kashmeri’s statement might be forgivable given that initial reports described the culprit as a conservative Christian, Kashmeri weakens his case by later referring to Timothy McVeigh as a ‘fundamentalist crackpot.’ A crackpot McVeigh may have been; however, he was by no means a Christian fundamentalist but a Catholic-turned-agnostic – a similar trajectory to that of Marc Lepine. I strongly suspect that Kashmeri, author of a book titled The Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism & The Gulf War about the experience of Arabs/Muslims in Canada, is desperately seeking proof that yes, Christians can be terrorists too. Kashmeri further sinks his own ship by seemingly acting as an apologist for Muslim terrorists. In one commentary, he says that Canada can expect to see more terrorist plots like that of the Toronto 18 if the country continues to wreak destruction on Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq – even though Canada did not join the war in the latter nation.

To be fair, Kashmeri has in the past criticized Islamic fundamentalism in places like Pakistan. His seeming acquiescence to Muslim extremism, though, doesn’t help his cause of defending the Muslim population – especially that in Canada and other Western nations – in general. On the other hand, fervent anti-Islamists like those who claim that everybody from Marc Lepine to Rolando del Rosario Mendoza to even Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui were Muslims might diminish the credibility of people who raise legitimate concerns about the way Islam is currently practised. These include concerns, for instance, that there is a fanatical element within Islam today which is more prominent than that in other major belief systems, including Christianity. (This of course does not mean that all or even most Muslims are fanatics but that probably a higher percentage of Muslims than members of other religions are.) If any good comes out of the Breivik tragedy, perhaps reaching a balance between these extremes and discussing the event logically may be among them.

21
Mar

Hebrew

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Language and Religion

It used to be that the essential components of a gentleman’s education included Latin, Greek and Hebrew. (Not so much attention was paid to a lady’s education.) While today Latin and Greek are still offered at many high schools and universities and are mandatory for secondary students in some European countries, it is difficult to take a Hebrew course outside of a synagogue or Jewish day school. But even if we never study Hebrew, it befits us to know more about a language that has helped shape the culture of the West.

One characteristic that distinguishes Hebrew from Latin and Greek is the language family to which it belongs. Latin and Greek are Indo-European languages, a group of languages that encompasses most of the tongues spoken in Europe – including English – as well as several in Western Asia and Northern India. Hebrew on the other hand is part of the Afroasiatic family of languages that as their name implies are native to Africa and Asia, to Northern Africa and Southwestern Asia more specifically. Hebrew can be narrowed down even further to a particular branch of the Afroasiatic family, the Semitic. The Semitic branch includes a number of living languages, like Arabic, Maltese, Aramaic and Ethiopia’s Amharic, as well as several extinct ones, such as Phoenician, Edomite and Moabite, the speakers of some of which are mentioned in the Old Testament (Ruth, for example, was a Moabite woman).

The first writing in Hebrew dates back to the eleventh century before Christ. Though the Hebrew script might strike most Westerners as undecipherable, it is actually based on the same alphabet, the Phoenician, that gave rise to the Latin alphabet. One difference between Hebrew and Latin script is that the former is read from right to left rather than from left to right.

Hebrew was at first spoken on a daily basis by the ancient Jews. After their exile in Babylonia in 600 BC, though, the Jews adopted Aramaic as their everyday means of communication. Hebrew was nevertheless still employed for religious and literary purposes, just as during the Middle Ages Latin was used in the Catholic Mass and in scientific treatises. For instance, while Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic (no, Jesus didn’t speak English), he most likely knew Hebrew as a ritual language.

As the Jews moved throughout Europe and other places during the Diaspora, they tended to take on the languages of the people – Russian, English, Spanish, etcetera – among whom they lived, all while retaining Hebrew for religious services and literature. At times the Jews modified these languages to create their own forms of speech. The best-known example of this is Yiddish. Yiddish is basically a variety of German but contains a substantial amount of Hebrew vocabulary and is even written with the Hebrew alphabet. This fusion can be illustrated in the Yiddish words for “dog.” Two such terms are used: “hunt” from the German “hund” (as in “Dachshund”) and “kelef” from the noun of the same meaning in Hebrew.

What, one might wonder, brought Hebrew back from the brink, so to speak, of being an almost purely ritualistic medium to become the mother tongue of over five million people? Though even in the nineteenth century there were attempts to revive it as a spoken language, the real boost occurred with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The promulgation of Hebrew acquired a nationalistic slant for many Jews: it was a language they could call their own. Undoubtedly Hebrew’s resurrection was aided by the fact that it had remained in use for religious ceremonies; for a considerable proportion of Jews it had never truly disappeared, which may explain why the revival of Hebrew succeeded while that of Gaelic in Ireland after that country’s independence from Britain did not. Hebrew is now the official language of Israel together with Arabic.

Finally, one might ask what has Hebrew contributed to English and other modern Western languages. At first glance, most English words of Hebrew origin tend to refer to Jewish objects or concepts, such as “menorah” or “mitzvah.” One Hebrew noun with an interesting history is “chutzpah.” While in Hebrew it originally meant “impudence,” in English “chutzpah” has taken on the positive connotation of “grit.” Some Hebrew words have ironically managed to make their way into Christian religious vocabulary. “Pesach” – Passover – becomes the Italian “Pasqua,” Spanish “Pascua,” French “Paques,” Swedish “Pask” and our own “paschal,” all signifying Easter, not a fortuitous transformation, as Jesus’ Last Supper was essentially a Passover meal. In a curious twist, “Pesach” has
ended up (through “Pascua”) in the Tagalog language of the Philippines as “Pasko,” meaning however not Easter but Christmas.

Hebrew’s principal contribution to the languages of the West lies in personal names that appear in the Bible. Though some of these names, such as Hannah or Moses, are primarily – though not exclusively – confined to the Jewish community, others, like John, James and David, have entered the mainstream with no Jewish ethnic connotation at all. Another mainstream name ultimately of Hebrew origin is my middle name and my mother’s first name, Elizabeth (“God is my oath”). The “El” signifies “God” and turns up as well in words like “Bethel” (“house of God”).

While a large percentage of names in most Christian majority nations are of Hebrew origin, they have nonetheless had their periods of boom and bust. Old Testament names, almost all of which are Hebrew, saw a surge in popularity after the Reformation and into the 19th century, when many Protestant families turned away from the Roman Catholic practice of calling children after saints with no connection to the Bible. Hence we have Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Protestants are not the only ones however to look to Hebrew nomenclature: Spanish-speaking countries have their fair share of boys with names like Efrain, Neftali and Abel.

Whatever its history and contribution to the West, Hebrew shows no sign of dying either in the synagogue or in the street.

13
Mar

Languages of the Bible

By Emilia Liz 3 Comments
Categories: History, Language and Religion

A few years ago a broadcaster from Alberta, Canada was asking members of the public their opinion on the nation’s bilingual policy. According to one woman, Canada did not need any such policy. If English was good enough for Jesus, she said, surely it was good enough for Canadians.

Of course I had a huge laugh over this. In Jesus’ time the languages spoken in what we now call England were Celtic; the ancestor of modern-day English was introduced several centuries later when the Germanic Angle and Saxon tribes invaded the island, giving rise to the term “Anglo-Saxon.” But the Alberta woman’s statement raises the question: what language did Christ actually speak?

One can be forgiven for thinking that Jesus’ mother tongue was Hebrew. After all, Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, is considered the language of the Jews, and Christ himself was a Jew. In his daily life, though, he conversed in Aramaic, a closely related language that the Jews adopted during their exile in Babylonia and that more recently was used in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Some words of Aramaic origin in English include the name Thomas (meaning “twin”) and “abbot” from “abba,” a term for father. Jesus might have known Greek as well. At the time of the New Testament, Greek had become a “lingua franca” in the Mediterranean area, and as Jesus had dealings with non-Jews, he may very well have used Greek on these occasions. It is unlikely, however, that he spoke Latin, which was known by few in Palestine other than the Roman administrators.

As stated earlier, Aramaic and Hebrew are very similar. They both belong to a group of tongues known as the Semitic languages, some familiar examples of which are Arabic, Phoenician, and Ethiopia’s Amharic. The Semitic languages are in turn part of a larger group known as the Afroasiatic family, which includes a number of tongues spoken in the Middle East and North and East Africa.

Many Semitic languages in the Bible, however, are today either extinct or used only by small groups of individuals. To a large extent, these languages were pushed to, or over, the brink by their sister tongue Arabic, which expanded following the rise of Islam. Among the now-dead languages are Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite, whose speakers are mentioned in various parts of the Old Testament. Ruth, to whom a book of the Bible is dedicated, was a Moabite woman. Aramaic is now spoken by about half a million people in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is under constant threat from the more dominant Arabic around it, efforts are being undertaken to preserve the language.

Not all the tongues in the Bible fall into the Semitic and Afroasiatic categories. Others belong to the Indo-European family, a group that encompasses most modern-day languages of Europe and several in Western Asia and Northern India. Greek and Latin are well-known examples of Indo-European languages that make their appearance in the New Testament, which in fact was originally written in Greek. The Persians, of whose empire the Biblical heroine Esther became queen, also spoke an Indo-European language.

A lesser-known Indo-European people described in the Bible were the Hittites. At one time rulers of a large empire in the Middle East, their most famous member was Uriah, an officer in the Israelite army whom David had killed after his (David’s) affair with the former’s wife Bathsheba. Unlike Persian, Greek, and Latin, though, which live on today in various forms – as Iranian, modern Greek, and the present-day Romance tongues respectively – the language of the Hittites died without leaving any descendants, so to speak.

The most extraordinary Biblical language concerns the Elamites, a people mentioned in Genesis and Acts of the Apostles. They originated from what is now Iran and later conquered Babylonia. Interestingly, their language belonged to a family known as Dravidian, the most familiar member of which (to Westerners at least) is Tamil. Though Dravidian languages are at present largely confined to Southern India and Sri Lanka, they were believed to have once been spoken over a much broader area, hence the presence of the Elamites in Biblical lands.

So if my friend from Alberta were to meet Jesus, she would be well advised to bring along a Greek or Aramaic interpreter!

10
Dec

Should the West Ban the Minaret?

By Emilia Liz 7 Comments
Categories: Religion and World Politics

Some years ago I was driving around Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, with the editor of a magazine to which I sometimes contribute. On one block stood a Catholic church, a synagogue, and a mosque. My editor exclaimed that in his city, followers of the three great monotheistic religions were able to live in harmony with one another.

I understood his pride. Toronto boasts a similar religious diversity. A small Lutheran church I occasionally attend on College Street, for example, is in walking distance of a Buddhist temple, two synagogues (in Kensington Market, a traditional Jewish enclave) as well as several Christian churches of other denominations. Though Canada and Venezuela are for the most part at least nominally Christian nations, both have received immigrants from other religious traditions who have left their mark on their host societies. Thus a mosque like Toronto’s Masjid-El-Noor, complete with minaret (the tall slender tower attached to the mosque), does not look out-of-place in a major urban centre in a neo-Europe.

But perhaps not in Old Europe. At least that is what 57% OF Swiss citizens thought when in a referendum last month they voted in favour of a constitutional amendment that would ban the further construction of minarets in their country. The minaret, as mentioned above, is the tower attached to the mosque from which, in Islamic countries, the faithful are called to prayer.* Switzerland currently has four minarets. The amendment would not see them destroyed but would prohibit others to be built in future.

The amendment itself was spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, a right-wing group that made news a year ago by proposing that the families of immigrants who commit crimes be deported along with their offending member. The Party’s rationale for banning the minaret is that the structure symbolizes “political Islam and sharia law.” They emphasize the importance of guarding Switzerland against the alleged growing threat of Islamicization in Europe. In addition, they say, Muslims in the country would still be allowed to practise their religion and even to build new mosques (minus the minaret, of course).

The result of the referendum received widespread attention. On the one hand, it was praised by many conservatives, including several who openly stated “God bless the Swiss” (a somewhat ironic remark in that the Swiss aren’t especially religious). Some saw the decision as a kind of “tit for tat,” as the construction of churches is legally forbidden in a number of Islamic nations, such as Saudi Arabia. On the other side, the proposed ban was condemned as discriminatory and even racist. This criticism came not only from Muslims themselves but even from some Christian church leaders who viewed the ban as an infringement on religious freedom. Some Muslims furthermore pointed out what they believed was the injustice of the decision, noting that Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples (called gurdwaras) are now being built on Swiss soil. Another frequent observation is that most of the Muslims in Switzerland do not hail from Islamic theocracies but from relatively secular places like Bosnia and thus hardly appear to be involved in any scheme to “Islamicize” their host country.

On a purely aesthetic level I can understand the ban. A minaret does seem somewhat incongruous in a landscape of chalets and church steeples. The Swiss may not be particularly observant judging by measures like church attendance, but they may hold a certain attachment to the religious traditions that form part of their history. And while neo-Europes like Canada and Venezuela have enjoyed their present-day Western culture for 500 years at most (the oldest Western city in the Americas, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, was founded in 1498), Switzerland’s roots go back centuries. So the Swiss may regard the minaret as a sort of intrusion on those traditions.

On the other hand, I can’t help seeing the Swiss People’s Party’s spectre of Islamicization as a cheap ploy for votes. The fact that most Muslims in Switzerland aren’t radicals and aren’t even native to countries where militant Islam holds sway confirms my feeling, as does the Party’s ad for the ban, a picture of missile-like minarets sprouting up from a Swiss flag fronted by a woman in a black veil Also, logically it strikes me a bit puzzling that if the Swiss People’s Party is so concerned about an Islamic takeover why don’t they ban mosques themselves, in which after all the dreaded Muslim teaching supposedly goes on, rather than just the minarets? I fail to understand what is so dangerous about the minaret per se.

Throughout this debate the issue of religious freedom frequently arises. It is true that Muslims will not be forbidden to practise their faith or even build new mosques. Yet the ban on the minaret, without any justification other than it supposedly represents Islamic power, does come across as arbitrary and authoritarian. Similarly, the argument that what Switzerland decided was right because Islamic nations do the same or worse isn’t very convincing. Call me ethnocentric, but I like to think that we in the West are above fighting intolerance with more intolerance. (It’s moreover doubtful whether the Muslims affected by the minaret ban are the same people who would proscribe the construction of Christian houses of worship in their own countries.) The West should in my view show a good example of religious tolerance to the rest of the world.

We should now address the question of Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples being permitted on Swiss territory. To put it simply, these faiths don’t have the same implications in the West that Islam does. While there are few if any “native” Orthodox Christians in Switzerland, Eastern Orthodoxy is not much different from Catholicism or Protestantism (the main religions in Switzerland). More importantly, the Orthodox do not seem to harbour any particular animosity towards the West. Nor do most Sikhs. Despite its doctrinal distance from Christianity, Sikhism as a faith and Sikhs as individuals are not perceived as a threat to the West or Western culture. Islam, and by extension all Muslims, are. Undoubtedly the members of the Swiss People’s Party know this, hence their silence on gurdwaras and Orthodox churches.

I am sure that if a similar referendum had been held in Canada I would have voted to allow the minarets, even though I’m not Muslim myself and even though I’m uncomfortable with some of the ways Islam is practised today. I like to believe that if I lived in Switzerland I would do the same. But I’m not Swiss. I’m not part of a country with ingrained traditions going back at least a millennium, not mere generations.

However, in the end the Swiss are masters of their own nation, and I won’t challenge the decisions they make in democratically held referenda. The best way to reverse the results of this decision is by internal dialogue, not by rulings made from on high. Further discussions on the matter promise to be interesting.

* The “adhan,” or call to prayer, was not an issue here, as it was in Britain, given that in Switzerland the call only takes place within the confines of the mosque itself.

22
Mar

AIDS and the Condom Conundrum

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Religion and Uncategorized

In Italian-Canadian writer Mary Melfi’s novel Infertility Rites, the Catholic protagonist is told by her WASP husband that the Pope “cannot be taken seriously as a religious leader.” The husband goes on to say that the Pope should be tried as a terrorist. Because of the Vatican’s opposition to condoms, millions of people in the Third World will die of AIDS.

Given that Infertility Rites was written in 1991, the Pope to which Melfi’s book is referring is obviously John Paul II. Now the present Pope, Benedict XVI, appears to be following in his predecessor’s footsteps and adding his voice to the chorus of “condomnation.” Benedict stated in his recent visit to Africa that condoms cannot resolve the AIDS crisis on that continent. In fact they could make it worse, in his view.

Benedict’s words sparked a firestorm of controversy. They brought back a piece some years ago in the National Post by Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise, herself a lapsed Catholic. She loudly decried the Catholic Bishops of Botswana’s criticism of a plan by that country’s government to distribute condoms to stem the spread of HIV there. They could have merely remained silent even if they disapproved; instead they chose to open their mouths. She further pointed out that while Thailand had managed to head off a major AIDS crisis through a public health campaign on safe sex, the incidence of HIV infection had increased exponentially in Botswana and other African countries where no such campaign had taken place.

The Catholic Church’s prohibition on condoms sometimes borders on the ludicrous. According to German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann, the Church would not even sanction the use of the device by the post-menopausal wife of an HIV-infected haemophiliac, even though in this instance the condom was not meant to prevent conception (the chance of which would be practically zero in a woman after the so-called “change of life,” Sara in the Bible notwithstanding) or encourage promiscuity (since the woman would only be having sex with her husband).

But is it fair to lay the burgeoning of the AIDS epidemic entirely at the feet of the Vatican? Not all individual Catholics share the Pope’s views. Even some members of the Church hierarchy feel that while abstinence and fidelity to one partner are the best defences against contracting the disease, people who can’t or won’t abide by these principles should use condoms to protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Thailand is a largely Buddhist country with few Christians of any kind. However, similar success in averting an AIDS explosion occurred in Brazil, where most of the population is Catholic. And Catholics are far from a majority in Botswana and the other southern African nations cited by Laframboise. Though of course one can argue that Brazil’s battle against AIDS succeeded in spite rather than because of its Catholicism, it’s unclear whether the Church’s pronouncements have made much difference in the progression of AIDS in any individual country. The same might be said about the Church’s stance on contraception as a whole. In Europe two of the nations with the highest birth rates – France and Ireland – are for the most part Catholic, but so are some of those with the lowest: Italy, Spain and Portugal. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that the French are producing more babies than average out of a desire to keep themselves in line with Vatican teaching (the situation might be somewhat different in Ireland, where until recently the Catholic Church influenced not only citizens’ lives but government policy as well).

Let me be clear that I don’t agree with Pope Benedict’s stance on condoms or birth control in general. I’m heartened that a large of proportion of Catholics, including some priests and higher-ups, don’t either. And I concur with Donna Laframboise that the Bishops of Botswana should have kept their mouths shut. There may be isolated cases where an individual became infected with HIV by declining to use, or make his or her partner use, a condom as a result of the Church’s opposition to the device. But on a large scale the Catholic Church and the incidence of AIDS probably don’t have much to do with one another.

22
Dec

The Christmas Tree Conundrum

By Emilia Liz 3 Comments
Categories: Religion

Two years ago a judge in Toronto , Ontario , Canada caused a stir by ordering the removal of a Christmas tree from the lobby of a courthouse. She reasoned that as a Christian religious symbol, the tree would alienate non-Christians who happened to pass by the lobby. A controversy immediately ensued. Predictably, conservative Christians spoke darkly of a “war against Christmas” and against Christianity in general. The Canadian Muslim Congress called the judge’s decision “stupid” (agreement on my part here). Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said that the key to making people of all faiths feel welcome in the province was not to suppress one religious holiday but to celebrate all of them. Finally, Dr. Robert Buckman, president of the Humanist Association of Canada, entered the fray by stating that the Christmas tree was not a religious symbol but a “secular symbol of a festival period.”

Of all the above-mentioned statements, I tend to concur with Dr. Buckman’s the most. The Christmas tree to my mind is not a symbol of Christianity or any other faith for that matter. As I researched the matter further, it struck me as ironic that while Russian-born journalist Cathy Young, a self-described Jewish agnostic, has written of always having a Christmas tree during the holidays, I as a practising Christian have never put one up in my own house. Nowhere in the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth is there any mention of an evergreen. More importantly, today publicly displayed Christmas trees are a common sight in a number of non-Christian nations, such as Japan and the United Arab Emirates (shortly after the courthouse controversy broke out, the National Post featured a picture of a Christmas tree at a shopping mall in Dubai ). The whole silly affair led me to a serious study of this innocent-looking plant that nonetheless possesses the potential for sowing discord.

Christmas TreeThe origins of the Christmas tree are shrouded in mystery, and many accounts on the subject are unsubstantiated at best and contradictory at worst. One legend has it that the custom began with Martin Luther. According to this story, Luther was walking through the bush on a winter night and saw stars in the sky above the pines. He then brought a pine home and decorated it to show his children what he had witnessed. Since it was Christmastime, he lit candles on it to mark Christ’s birth. However, even in pre-Christian times people in Northern Europe, including Germany , celebrated the winter solstice by placing candles on trees and mistletoe on their doors to ward off evil spirits. After their conversion to Christianity, Northern Europeans incorporated these pagan traditions into their Christmas festivities. My Norwegian ancestors, for example, would gather around the Christmas tree, light candles on it, and sing carols (thankfully no record of any accidents!).

Following the Reformation, some Protestants, in particular the Puritans, opposed the Christmas tree on the grounds it was “heathen,” which in a sense it was. Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell banned the tree, along with other Christmas paraphernalia, for this reason when he ruled England in the 1640s. (The fact that the Christmas tree was already around in Britain at that time goes against the view that it was only introduced to that country when Queen Victoria married the German Prince Albert in the 1800s.)

When they migrated to the United States , the Puritans brought their mistrust of the Christmas tree with them. Another source of their opposition was the notion that the tree was “Popish,” a derogatory term for Roman Catholic. The Puritans, after all, wanted to “purify” the Protestant church of any Catholic influence, and they felt the Anglicans, who continued to observe Christmas, did not go far enough in this direction. By the late 19th century, though, Christmas celebrations, together with the tree, came into vogue in the US and hence became part of the commercialism we see today surrounding the holiday in that country.

Ironically, the other diehard opponents of the Christmas tree besides the Puritan religious zealots were the equally fanatical militant atheists of Communist Russia.* In their quest to eradicate religion from society, they attempted to ban the Christmas tree in the Soviet Union . The tree was such an ingrained tradition, however, that the Communists ended up making the best out of a bad situation and allowing it to be put up under the name of “New Year’s tree.”

The other great irony is that despite the depiction of the Christmas tree as “Popish,” until recently it was never a traditional part of predominantly Catholic Southern Europe. My father, for instance, who grew up in Italy , said as a child that no one he knew ever put up such a tree. The main Christmas feature in Italian homes at the time was the nativity scene, the “presepio,” with Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the animals. However, the Christmas tree gradually found its way into Italy with the Americanization of that country in the 1950s. I’m sure the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was in fact directed by an Italian American, Frank Capra, didn’t hurt! Now even the Vatican has a huge Christmas tree in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.

So the next time you see a Christmas tree – remember that in spite of all it has gone through it has still managed to be here with us here today! Merry Christmas.

* Note: not all atheists are militant, and not all religious individuals are zealots. Fanaticism can unfortunately be found within every belief system.

16
Dec

The Christmas Story

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Religion

“Now Christmas is here,” go the lyrics of a popular song, “the most wonderful day of the year.” But how much do people really know about this wonderful day? Looking at the history of Christmas, we may discover things about the holiday which might surprise us.

Nativity SceneFirst of all, most scholars do not believe Jesus was actually born on December 25. According to Luke, the night Jesus was born “there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock” (Luke 2:8). December in Palestine and other Mediterranean regions falls in the rainy season, so shepherds do not let their animals outside at night during this time. Therefore Christ’s birth probably did not occur in December.

Christmas was not celebrated for the first four centuries after Jesus’ death. Not until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD was Christmas established as a holiday. December 25 was chosen as the date of Christ’s birth for the Western church. This day coincided with the Roman feast of Saturnalia, so converts did not have to feel that becoming a Christian meant an end to fun and games. Many Eastern Orthodox churches, though, go by the Julian rather than Gregorian calendar and observe Christmas at the beginning of January.

Christmas Stocking StuffersFollowing the Reformation, the various Protestant denominations took different approaches to Christmas. The Lutheran and Anglican churches continued to celebrate it. On the other hand, the Calvinistic faiths – Presbyterians, Puritans and so on – condemned the holiday as “Popish” (a derogatory term for Roman Catholic). Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell, for example, banned Christmas celebrations upon coming to power in England in the 1640s, though they were resumed when the British monarchy, whose members were Anglican, was restored. Interestingly, while most of us regard Christmas in the United States as an orgy of commercialism, due to the country’s Puritan roots the holiday was not officially recognized there until the late 1800s. Likewise, Christmas was not observed by Presbyterians in Scotland until after the Second World War.

Today Christmas is a legal holiday in virtually all Christian nations as well as many Islamic ones (while Muslims do not consider Jesus the Son of God, they honour him as a prophet). In addition, in recent years people in East Asian nations, like Japan, have begun to adopt some non-religious aspects of Christmas, such as exchanging gifts and Christmas cards.

The traditionally Christian countries have through the centuries developed their own customs to mark the holiday. My Norwegian relatives, for instance, would gather around the Christmas tree, light candles on it, and sing carols (that the house never went up in flames in the process seems like a minor miracle, though in those days perhaps people were more careful with candles). They also served lutefisk (dried cod), romegrot (a type of pudding), and cookies with cream inside them at dinner.

So have a Merry Christmas… but remember how the holiday got here!

01
Nov

All Saints Day

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Religion

Many workplaces give their employees a calendar with a list of public holidays. One date however that would virtually never appear in such a calendar in the United States or Canada but might in other countries is November 1, All Saints Day. All Saints Day traces its beginnings to the latter part of the third century AD. It was originally known as All Martyrs Day to honour those who had died for their Christian faith, but it was later extended to include all the faithful departed. At first All Saints Day was celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Though the Eastern Orthodox Church continues to observe it on this date, the Western (Catholic and Protestant) denominations moved it to the first of November. Churches that choose to observe All Saints Day do so on the Sunday following November 1.

The term “saint” should be explained in more detail. Strictly speaking, the “saints” refer to all baptized members of the Church, both living and dead. In more popular usage a saint is a person who has distinguished him- or herself by having lived an exemplary life on earth. Examples of saints include Biblical characters such as Saint Luke or Saint Paul as well as later figures like Saint Olav, the king who brought Christianity to Norway, or Saint Ansgar, the “Apostle to the North” (Northern Europe). All Saints Day honours all these individuals. The holiday can also be a time to cherish the memory of deceased relatives or friends who have in their own way contributed to the Church. For instance, on All Saints Day I like to remember a late aunt of mine who taught Sunday school to children in her parish.

While, as mentioned before, in Canada and the United States All Saints Day is not a public holiday, in a number of other nations – particularly those in Southern Europe and Latin America – it is. Many of these countries have elaborate traditions surrounding this day, usually in commemoration of the dead. For example, in Mexico people bring food to the graves of family members, whereas Italian children supposedly receive gifts from dead relatives. The purpose of such celebrations is to recognize in a symbolic fashion that although those who have passed away are no longer with us on earth, their memory lives on and deserves to be treasured.

In North America All Saints Day coincides with Halloween (literally a contraction of “All Hallows Evening,” the evening before All Saints, “hallow” being an Old English word meaning “holy”). Halloween is somewhat controversial from a Christian perspective. Some Christians consider it merely a secular holiday to be enjoyed by children and adults who want to dress up for the occasion. In countries with a history of commemorating All Saints Day on November 1, ecclesiastical authorities understandably fear the introduction of Halloween may eclipse existing traditions. Other Christians have condemned the holiday for its pagan elements and celebration of the occult, with demons, witches, ghosts and goblins. The Lutheran Church lacks an official position on Halloween. However, some Lutherans have attempted to take the focus away from the largely secular Halloween and emphasize Reformation Day. October 31 after all was the date on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Personally I like the fact that All Saints Day hasn’t been contaminated by the commercialism that has affected Christmas and Easter (holidays that I nonetheless love for their religious significance and emphasis on family). All Saints Day connects all the saints, of today and yesterday. Therefore it deserves to be celebrated.

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