Hindu bride and Jewish groom? Someone will bring them together

2014/08/11 Leave a comment

Good piece on how a number of congregations and faith leaders are responding to increased intermarriage and diversity. Some good vignettes that reflect the reality below:

Between 1991 and 2001, interfaith marriages and common-law partnerships across Canada increased from 15 to 19 per cent. Statistics Canada projects that by 2031, nearly 31 per cent of Torontonians will be non-Christian, up from approximately 21 per cent in 2006. As Toronto becomes less religiously homogenous as a city, more and more romantic partnerships will reflect that increased diversity.

In turn, religious organizations will be forced to consider the impact of these interfaith couples on their communities, and decide for themselves whether accommodating members with different beliefs poses an existential threat or, alternately, the very means to that community’s survival.

Hindu bride and Jewish groom? Someone will bring them together – The Globe and Mail.

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The misplaced moral panic at York University | Toronto Star

2014/01/24 Leave a comment

Amazing. Much of what is said is valid. Of course the male student had the right to request accommodation, of course we have to take accept his beliefs as sincere, but we do not have to accept this request. The authors of this piece skirt that key issue: do they favour the granting or not of the request?

The implication is they do but lack the courage to state so clearly, and just muddle things up with general comments about lack of gender equality and participation in Canada.

Importantly, the Canadian version of secularism does not require people to abandon their deeply held beliefs. Religious people are welcome to bring their ideas to the public table. As Muslim women, we may disagree with the accommodation-seeking student that Islam requires absolute social segregation between men and women (assuming the student is Muslim; his religious affiliation has not been confirmed) – but we defend the right of individuals, including this much-maligned student, to hold their personal religious opinions and to ask the state to accommodate them.

Moreover, as Canadian women, we appreciate how far academic institutions, and Canadian society in general, still are from the ideal of gender equality. Women in Canada – like women in other recovering patriarchies – experience high rates of gendered violence; are persistently underrepresented in the senior ranks of politics, law, business, and academia; and face a significant gender wage gap (Canada’s is among the highest of the OECD countries). Islam is not the threat to gender equality in Canada: patriarchy, in all its various manifestations, is.

The misplaced moral panic at York University | Toronto Star.

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