Archive for December, 2007

31
Dec

Immigration - The Lib/Con Switch

By Emilia Liz 1 Comment
Categories: Politics

Immigration Minister Diane Finley has just announced a new law that will make it easier for adoptive parents to obtain Canadian citizenship for their foreign-born children.  Children adopted abroad can now become Canadian citizens as soon as the adoption is finalized rather than having to be sponsored and given permanent residence as was the case until recently. They will basically go through the same legal procedures as children born overseas to Canadian parents. In Finley’s own words, “Canadian families welcome foreign-born children into their homes and we want to welcome them into the country.”

My opinion: a good move on Immigration Canada’s part. Adopted children are entitled to the same rights as their biological counterparts, so anything that eases their transition not only into their new family but into their new country as well is a step in the right direction. Something to keep in mind if I ever decide to give my daughter an adopted brother or sister…

In other immigration news, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a speech that he believes most immigrants, including Muslim ones, are integrating successfully into Canadian society. This despite the recent murder of a young Muslim woman by her father for allegedly refusing to wear the hijab (veil) and pronouncements by communities like Herouxville, Quebec that newcomers are welcome but have to leave some of their customs from back home at the doorstep.

An apparent contradiction, the “scarily” right-wing Harper downplaying fears about immigration and the supposedly “socialist” province of Quebec playing them up? Maybe, but I view this less as a left-right issue than a French versus Anglo-Saxon debate. In the past both France and Britain had huge overseas empires. They took different approaches to the peoples over whom they ruled, however. While the French sought to assimilate their subjects, whether to the former’s religion, language, or culture (ex. Black Frenchmen of Africa), the English generally didn’t try to change the habits of the natives they conquered. Hence Harper’s contentment with the status quo compared to the Quebecois leaders’ more urgent desire to ensure that immigrants fit into the host society.

I tend to concur more with Stephen Harper than with the councillors of Herouxville on this one. Most immigrants are integrating well into their new home. On the other hand, I understand how sometimes it might be necessary to remind some newcomers to keep their old ways in check. For example, if Aqsa Parvez’s father really did kill her because she wouldn’t wear a hijab, perhaps a warning that in Canada women aren’t obliged to cover their head in public or even that hair doesn’t constitute a sexual provocation (I can barely imagine mine being an enticement to any man when I’ve just stepped out of the local $10 a cut salon) might be appropriate. Still, I see most newcomers, Muslims among them, adapting fairly satisfactorily to Canadian life.

27
Dec

Benazir Bhutto - Martyr for Democracy?

By Cynapse 4 Comments
Categories: Noteworthy Events, Politics and Religion

Regarding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto… Only a fool would call himself an expert on Pakistan, but a couple of things seemed clear from this attack:

  1. Pakistan was not ready for Benazir Bhutto because Pakistan was not ready to protect Benazir Bhutto
  2. At least one small part of her seemed to have been inviting her demise.  Her final interviews were unrealistically dismissive of the dangers she faced, while she ignored repeated warnings about emerging from her armoured vehicle to greet supporters and speaking without the aid of bulletproof glass

In fact, there is a good chance Bhutto knew she was going to be killed, if not now then surely once she (likely) won the election.  Pakistan is too unstable not to believe otherwise.  For that reason, Benazir Bhutto should be considered a martyr for democracy - someone who in death accomplished more than she could have as a short-term leader of the troubled Islamic state.   Bringing world awareness to the severity of Eastern fundamentalism is probably the best act that any leader or commentator could have done, and Bhutto just exposed -in no uncertain terms- the extent to which insurgents (or possibly even Musharraf) will go to maintain instability.  The Bhutto family, in spite of their suspected corruption, will be remembered alongside the Gandhi and Kennedy families as tortured dynasties whose misfortunes will be to the long-term benefit of equality and democracy.

24
Dec

Merry Christmas!

By Cynapse 0 Comments
Categories: Life and Times

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I’ll be incommunicado for a few days (like many), so keep it civil and adhere to the holiday cheer!

21
Dec

Names

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: American Politics, Politics and Society

About two decades or so ago the Black community in the United States became embroiled in a debate over what to call themselves. Some suggested that the term “African American” replace “Black,” which itself had succeeded “Negro” (now considered somewhat offensive by some Blacks, even though talk show host Oprah Winfrey once used it in the 1980s). Others objected on the grounds that their connection to Africa was rather tenuous since most American Black families had lived in the United States for generations. In a letter to the magazine Ebony, one reader pointed out as well that many American Blacks traced their ancestry to other places in addition to Africa. A Black in the US could be of mixed African, Irish, and Italian heritage (real-life example: singer Alicia Keys). The matter remains as yet unresolved; the media tends to use “Black” and “African American” interchangeably.

The business of naming – whether of a baby, a place or an institution – is more often than not fraught with difficulty, conflict and self-doubt. Perhaps no decision is more controversial, though, than what to name a community of people; i.e. an ethnic group. The “Black/African American” dilemma is just one example. While the White community has not experienced as intense a debate, terms like “European-American” (or “Euro-American”) and “Anglo” have of late become virtually synonymous with White in many circles. I have reservations about both, albeit for different reasons. With regard to the first, as with American Blacks and Africa, most US Whites’ links to Europe are fairly remote. For instance, I would have a hard time describing my mother, whose family has been in North America for up to four generations and who only visited Europe for the first time in her thirties, as “European.” Anglo on the other hand seems to exclude the many US Whites (like my mom) with no Anglo-Saxon ancestry whatsoever. And if one argues that these Whites are nonetheless culturally Anglo-Saxon by dint of living in the US, would not the same be true of nearly all American Blacks?

A less heated exchange has taken place in the Latino/Hispanic community. Some members believe that the former designation should be employed instead of the latter because many Latin Americans, being of Native American and/or African descent, lack any ancestral ties to Spain (the Latin word for which, Hispania, gave rise to “Hispanic”). In contrast, the name “Latino” ties them to “Latin” America – though ultimately the word “Latin” derives from another place in Europe, the Italian region of Latium (present-day Lazio) where the Latin language first emerged. Meanwhile some Hispanic/Latino groups have adopted names to describe their particular community. Mexican Americans, for instance, use the word “Chicano,” a contraction of “Mexicano.” Perhaps less familiar is Puerto Ricans’ description of themselves as “Boricuas” from “Boriquen” (“land of the great and valiant lord”), the name the island’s original inhabitants the Taino Indians gave it.

In other cases groups have sought to replace a name imposed on them by outsiders with one of their own choosing. For example, the reindeer-herding people of Northern Scandinavia reject the term “Lapp” in favour of “Sami.” Most inhabitants of the Canadian and American Far North similarly prefer to be called “Inuit” (“the people”) to “Eskimo,” a Cree word meaning “eaters of raw meat” on account of their habit of not fully cooking some of their food in order to preserve the nutrients. But not all: the Yupiks of Alaska still insist on the name “Eskimo.”

Some groups have gone a step further and deliberately taken on a formerly derogatory name as a sign of empowerment, just as some gays and lesbians have reclaimed the terms “queer” and “dyke.” For instance, the people of East Timor adopted the word “Maubere” which their Portuguese colonizers used to express scorn for them, as a term of pride.

Of course not all name changes are politically driven. A “Filipino,” for example, once referred to a descendent of Spaniards who was born in the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, in contrast to the natives of the islands, who were known as “indios” (Indians), like those of the New World. Eventually however “Filipino” came to designate a native inhabitant of the Philippines. In the naming of ethnic groups, we see how race, politics and history intertwine.

19
Dec

Infant Baptism

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Religion

On August 26 2007 my three-month-old daughter Gabriella Michelle was baptized into the Lutheran Church. It was quite an event: my brother, who served as one of the godparents, noted that Gabriella screamed extra loudly when the priest asked whether she would renounce Satan – to which I responded that she was such a little devil herself that she couldn’t possibly renounce one of her own. More seriously, though, the ceremony started me thinking about the subject of infant baptism.

Infant baptism is a contentious issue in the Christian community as a whole. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and traditional Protestants (Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and so on) practise it. An acquaintance of mine from a fundamentalist background who was raised in a predominantly Catholic country - France - was teased by her classmates that she would not go to heaven because she had not been baptized (the current Pope seems to have retracted this position). Other denominations, like most fundamentalists – Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etcetera - and Mennonites, only baptize adults and in certain cases children above the “age of reason” (around seven). Some of them hold dedication ceremonies for newborns in which the child is “dedicated” to the Lord. They frequently require converts who were christened as babies to be re-baptized. However, even some members of the former group of churches have questioned the validity of infant baptism. For example, a Lutheran former colleague told me he did not consider it Scriptural.

According to Lutherans, other traditional Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, baptism welcomes a baby into the family of God and into the earthly community of the church. It also creates faiths in the infant’s heart. On the other hand, denominations that restrict baptism to adults or older children state that baptism requires a profession of faith by the individual him- or herself. As a baby is incapable of making such a profession, infant baptism is thus invalid. A “believer’s baptism” is the only valid one. They furthermore claim that christening infants gives them a “false sense of security” because it leads them to believe that baptism alone will open the door to heaven for them.

Meanwhile both sides of the divide cite the Scriptures in support of their respective positions. Opponents of infant christening point out that Jesus himself was baptized as an adult. Infant baptism is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible, they add, so that means there is no Scriptural basis for the practice. They provide examples of people like the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8: 26-39) who were baptized after they understood that Jesus was the Messiah, a concept a baby or young child can obviously not be expected to grasp.

At the other end of the spectrum, infant-christening churches look to Jesus’ exhortation to his Apostles to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). “All” means exactly what it says, according to this logic, and Jesus did not place any restrictions on the age of people to be baptized. In addition, when Christianity was first spreading, very often entire households, like that of the saleswoman and convert Lydia (Acts 16:15), were baptized. Given that contraception at the time was very inefficient and, anyway, large families were prized (Psalm 127, for instance, reads “children are an heritage of the Lord… Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them”), in all probability those households included babies. A quote from St. Peter further alludes to the place of infant baptism in the early church. In Acts 2: 38, 29 he tells his followers, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ… For the promise is unto you, and to your children;” again, no mention of the ages of the children in question.

Admittedly, certain arguments in favour of infant baptism do not strike me as particularly convincing. For instance, some people claim that baptism was instituted as a replacement for circumcision, which was performed on newborn boys. The major problem with this explanation is that it would not apply (thankfully) to girls. Moreover, Jesus himself and presumably all the male members of the early Jewish Christian community had been circumcised as babies, but they did not forego baptism. Others use Jesus’ words “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God” as a justification for infant baptism. This passage, though, does not refer to Jesus baptizing children but laying his hands on them. Scripture aside, I understand the reasoning why churches that do not christen infants and even some parents in denominations that do feel that the children should decide for themselves whether or not they want to be baptized. Nonetheless, my reading of the Bible leads me to the conclusion that infant baptism is at best advocated and at worst merely permitted by Scripture, not forbidden or deemed inappropriate.

It should be fairly obvious from the first sentence of this essay that I personally believe in infant baptism. However, in my opinion it is important to examine the opposing viewpoint as well. I have chosen to raise my daughter in the Lutheran Church to give her a foundation on which to live her life. I hope she continues in the faith as an adult (I have even set aside her christening gown so that she can use it for her own future children), although I know there are no guarantees she will do so. But baptism seems like a good place to start.

18
Dec

The Turban Versus the Hijab

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Religion and Society

Last week the Canadian media was abuzz with the story of Aqsa Parvez. Ms. Parvez was the Mississauga, Ontario teen killed by her father for reportedly refusing to wear a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women as a sign of their religious faith. Commentary was swift to follow. Barbara Kay of the conservative National Post speculated that if Canada had prohibited religious paraphernalia like hijabs in schools as France does, Parvez’s life might have been spared. The Globe and Mail’s Sheema Khan, a hijab-wearing Muslim herself, portrayed Parvez’s demise as one of a series of recent incidents of violence against women, including the victims of serial killer Robert Picton and a Windsor, Ontario nurse murdered by her former husband. I have questions about both Kay’s and Khan’s analyses. In the first case, even if such a law against hijabs in Canadian schools existed, it might not have prevented Mr. Parvez from killing his daughter for not wearing it outside the classroom. Khan on the other hand seemed to lump three very diverse phenomena together: of note, neither Robert Picton nor the nurse’s ex used religion as a motive for their deeds.

Nonetheless, the death of Aqsa Parvez eventually turned into a discussion about Islam and the hijab. Is Islam inherently oppressive to women? Is the hijab a sign of women’s subordination in that religion? Can Muslim immigrants integrate successfully into Canadian and other Western societies? Interestingly, this is not the first debate about religious headgear in Canada. The early 1990s saw the controversy over the right of Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans on the job. While Sikhs claimed that wearing a turban at all times was an essential part of their religious faith, opponents insisted that all Mounties be obliged to wear the traditional Stetson hat.

I personally didn’t have strong feelings on the issue either way. If someone were going to protect me from crime, I thought, at the end of the day it didn’t really matter what he or she wore on his or her head. On the other hand I wasn’t so emotionally or philosophically invested in the concept of religious rights that I would have automatically demanded that the RCMP permit turbans on duty. Eventually the Canadian federal government ruled in the Sikhs’ favour, and the controversy more or less died down.

However, the turban as a whole does not generate the strong emotion that the hijab does in Western society, for several reasons. First is the fact that the turban doesn’t involve gender issues. While some Sikh women wear the turban, it is not mandated for them as it is for Sikh men. Those Sikh women who don turbans do so for the same reason as their male coreligionists: to show their commitment to their faith. According to the article “Why Sikhs Wear a Turban” Sikhs originally adopted the headgear as a rejection of India’s Hindu caste system, wherein only the “higher-ups” (kings, nobles, etcetera) wore it. By requiring all its members to put on a turban, Sikhism demonstrated in a visual way that all of them were equal.

The hijab in contrast was instituted for Muslim women to ensure their modesty, “modesty” not in the sense of being humble and not flashing fancy hairdos but rather in the sense of not being sexually suggestive. Of course this requirement may be interpreted in two manners. Some women who actually wear the hijab like it because they say it protects them from being regarded as “sex objects” by men. On the other hand, one Western feminist states that the concept of the hijab is inherently sexist because it posits women, or their hair, as “enticing” and places the burden on them to avoid “tempting” men.

In addition, most Westerners do not associate Sikhism with terrorism as they do Islam, despite the fact that Sikh extremists exist. In 1985 Canadians’ attention was riveted on the bombing of an Air India jet returning to Canada by Sikh militants. White Westerners nevertheless do not think of Sikh terrorism as a threat to them personally – indeed, the Canadian government was criticized for not promptly investigating the Air India disaster because the victims were not White. Sikh radicals’ target remains India, not the West, though the language they use to describe that country resembles that of the Islamic militants in some respects. For instance, just as the latter call the United States the “Great Satan,” a Sikh-Canadian paper once showed a scene in which a Sikh protestor against the Indian government carried a sign with the words “India – Democracy or Demon-cracy?” The majority of White Canadians did not view the Air India bombing in the same way as 9/11 or the subway attacks in London and Madrid.

Outside the terrorist realm, Sikhism as a religion fails to evoke the visceral reactions in most Whites that Islam does. There is no equivalent of “Islamophobia” to describe the fear or hatred of Sikhs, for example. This might stem from the fact that in contrast to Muslims, Europeans’ contact with Sikhs has been much less extensive. Sikhism originated and was practised in a small corner of Pakistan and Northern India far from Europe, whereas Islamic territory lay immediately to the south and east of what was once known as Christendom. Even the British Raj did not lead to anything like the Crusades between the Sikhs and their European overlords.

Nor did Sikhism acquire the same political connotations in the West that Islam did. While a few Westerners have converted to Sikhism, either on their own initiative or through marriage to a Sikh, there has been no mass movement towards the religion as happened when throngs of American Blacks embraced Islam in the 1960s and ‘70s as a means of rejecting the West. Conservatives wary of if not downright hostile to Islam tend to look at Sikhism with a more neutral eye. For example, the above-mentioned Barbara Kay warns readers not to place the hijab in the same category as the Christian cross or Sikh kirpan (a ceremonial dagger carried for religious purposes).

This is why I believe that the turban has not become the burning issue the hijab has.

13
Dec

St. Lucy’s Day

By Emilia Liz 1 Comment
Categories: Religion

It seems that as soon as we swallow the last mouthful of turkey for Thanksgiving at the end of November, we rush to prepare for Christmas or, if we are Jewish, Hanukkah. Between these two events, though, is a holiday about which most North Americans know little but which is widely celebrated in other countries: St. Lucy’s Day.

St. Lucy’s Day falls on December 13. This is the alleged date of death of the original St. Lucy, a Christian martyr who lived in Syracuse , Sicily in Roman times. According to legend, as a young woman she took a vow of virginity to Christ, which did not please her pagan suitor. After trying unsuccessfully to make her marry him, he stabbed her to death in frustration. Another legend has it that once upon receiving a comment from a man about her beautiful eyes, she gouged them out in order to discourage other potential beaus. Her eyes were miraculously restored to her, however. Lucy therefore became the patron saint of the blind. She is often pictured holding a plate with her eyes in it. Her association with vision, or lack of it, may stem from her name, which comes from the Latin word “lux” or “luc-” for light (as in the terms “translucent” and “lucid”).

St. Lucy gave her name to a song (the Neapolitan “Santa Lucia”), a school for the visually impaired in Philadelphia , and even a nation, Saint Lucia , a Caribbean island allegedly first sighted by Europeans on December 13, 1502. But her best-known legacy is the holiday observed on the date of her death. In Sicily - Lucy’s birthplace - this day is celebrated by the preparation of a cooked wheat dish called cuccia, sometimes eaten with fried cheese or eggs. There and in other parts of Italy , torchlight processions – again we see her name associated with light – take place on December 13. Switzerland also holds St. Lucy celebrations whereby a girl dressed as the saint goes around the neighbourhood handing out gifts. On the other hand, in Hungary the holiday has a somewhat Halloweenish quality, with children going door to door asking for treats or playing pranks. In next-door Slovakia , people dress in white and paint their faces in flour, going from house to house offering to sweep their neighbours’ floors.

While St. Lucy’s Day is observed throughout Europe, it reaches its zenith in Scandinavia, especially Sweden . Known as Luciadagen (Lucy’s Day) there, it is celebrated as a festival of lights, at a time of year when light is particularly scarce at such northern latitudes. According to Swedish tradition, one girl in the family, generally the eldest daughter, dresses up as a “Lucy” in a white gown, red sash and metal crown with lighted candles. She rises early on the morning of December 13 to bring her family special treats called “Lussekatter” (literally, Lucy’s cats), saffron buns in the shape of cats. Some scholars believe that Luciadagen absorbed earlier celebrations in honour of the Norse goddess Freya, who is frequently portrayed sitting in a cart drawn by cats – hence the Lussekatter on this day.

St. Lucy’s Day in Sweden goes beyond the home, however. In some towns a girl dressed as the saint is chosen to bring Lussekatter not only to her family but to everyone in that particular village. In larger cities young Lucies do the same for hospital patients, nursing home residents and other people not fortunate enough to enjoy the event outside. Stockholm even hosts a beauty pageant of sorts in which a “Lucy” is elected by a jury (my father, who is Sicilian, once remarked that the blondes who participate in this contest probably look very unlike the original St. Lucy).

The holiday is also celebrated in many parts of Latin America , thanks to the Spanish Catholic influence. In Puerto Rico it is observed as the Day for the Blind. Most North Americans, on the other hand, do not know much if anything about St. Lucy’s Day. Nonetheless, some Swedish-American communities do take note of it. A recent article in fact told of an Ikea branch in Los Gatos , California that held a festival of lights on December 13 for local Swedish residents and their families. The holiday receives notice as well in New York ’s Little Italy as the feast of Santa Lucia.

Being of partial Scandinavian descent myself, this year I have decided to pay tribute to St. Lucy’s Day by making some Lussekatter. But whether you are Scandinavian or not, you might look at this recipe for Lussekatter at www.kensmen.com/catholic/ and prepare some for yourself and your family. So enjoy the Lussekatter and St. Lucy’s Day – but remember the woman who started it all!

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