Stories about Islam and the West:
Woman claims religion led to her firing
She says in human rights complaints that she was fired for refusing to shake hands with men after her conversion to Islam
Vancouver Sun, December 21
Muslim says she lost job for shunning handshakes
Chantal Hamel says her troubles at work began because, as a Muslim woman, she could not shake hands with any man who was not a member of her family.
Globe and Mail, December 21
A Muslim meld of punk and piety
The hijab-clad girls started rocking out a little, but by then the organizers had already called the cops. It was early September and the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] was about to wrap up in Chicago. About 400 young Muslims had gathered at a Hyatt hotel ballroom for open-mike night, hyped as a wholesome alternative to the vice-land that every big American city inevitably becomes once the sun sets. The first few acts -- Koran recitation, stern spoken-word stylings -- matched the hype. But around 3 a.m., with fewer than a quarter of the original audience still around, an all-girl Vancouver punk band took to the stage. A 25-year-old singer with short black hair and a voice like a bar fight asked the crowd: "ISNA, are you ready to rock?"
Globe and Mail, December 28
Family strife on Islamic agenda
15,000 expected to join scholars at conference that will examine world, Muslim issues
Toronto Star, December 29
Imams deliver few words on Bhutto
During prayer services, leaders condemn events, but say mosques are for religion, not politics
Toronto Star, December 29
Special prayers held for 'great leader'
Bhutto fondly remembered for her passion for democracy
Vancouver Sun, December 29
Choosing hijab doesn't make me more pious
A Toronto Star reporter reflects on her headscarf and an Islamic forum tackling once-taboo topics
Noor Javed, Toronto Star, December 30
Imams leave her name unsaid
If attempts by Islamic writers to disparage Benazir Bhutto were distasteful, the conspicuous silence of Canada's Islamic organizations was equally disturbing. Seventy-two hours after the news of her assassination, neither the Canadian Islamic Congress nor its cousin CAIR-Can had uttered a word on the subject. Not even the "This-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam" mantra to which we have become so accustomed. Were they looking for clues from Arab capitals or Iran? There, too, was an eerie silence. Men in turbans who rule Saudi Arabia and Iran seemed to be relieved that a jihadi terrorist had stopped a woman from becoming a leader of Muslim nation. Phew!
Tarek Fatah And Salma Siddiqui, National Post, December 31
Earlier: Stories about Islam and the West
Other stories from the past two weeks:
Posting from writer with name similar to murder suspect's says he loves Satan
A writer using a name similar to the suspect in the killing of a 74-year-old man who was out delivering Christmas cards describes himself in an online posting as an eccentric artist with a "taste for the darkness" and professes a love of Satan, drugs and sado-masochistic sex. . . . Trevor Lapierre is also charged in another attack in Kitchener on Monday on a man shovelling his driveway. The man wasn't hurt, but the assailant is said to have made negative remarks about God.
Canadian Press, December 20
Former church official faces charges
The former vice-president of a Toronto church caught up in a multi-million-dollar charity fundraising scheme has been criminally charged by police. George Babiolakis, 52, of Unionville, was a senior official at the All Saints Greek Orthodox Church in north Toronto. The church, which typically issued $7,000 in charitable receipts each year, hooked up with a tax-shelter company and over a recent five-year period issued $273 million in tax receipts.
Toronto Star, December 21
Sally Ann out $20,000 as deal sours
Locals feared charity would run soup kitchen
Toronto Star, December 21
Churches come tumbling down
As the young women go, so go the country's Christian communities. There are various factors, but future mothers have proved to be the key to the churches' future as organized, living bodies
Globe and Mail, December 22
Descartes for breakfast
So far as our own, modern, progress is concerned, we have maintained a tenuous equilibrium -- our religion separated from our science, our minds separated from our bodies, as it were -- but using common sense to keep a balance between the "rational" and "spiritual" sides of our one nature. We have never quite discarded our belief that there is more to our own existence, than the chance product of the machinery of nature. "Post-modernism" can be defined as the discarding of this tenuous balance; and it can be argued that post-modernism is implicit in modernism itself.
David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, December 23
Mystery worshippers report views from the pews
Undercover 'spies' assess church services in bid to find out what the faithful want
Toronto Star, December 23
Faithfully fighting malaria together
It is difficult to pick up a newspaper these days without reading about brutality and violence, often predicated on religious differences. Christians and Muslims have killed one another in Chechnya, Srebrenica, and Kosovo; Hindus and Muslims are slaughtered in Kashmir; Buddhists and Hindus die in Sri Lanka; Sunni and Shia Muslims battle in Iraq and Pakistan; Jews and Muslims lose their lives in Israel and the Palestinian territories -- the list goes on. Yet the prevalence of religious conflict need not preclude the potential for powerful inter-religious collaboration.
Kathryn Berndtson and Abdallah S. Daar, Globe and Mail, December 23
The Light fantastic
Loved but neglected painting of Jesus became a touchstone of mass culture
Robert Fulford, National Post, December 24
Backward, Christian soldiers, marching as to peace
But, after many years of being closely in sync, Mr. Bush and the Christian Zionists are showing signs of a falling-out. Following the one-day meeting in Annapolis, Md., late in November, aimed at kick-starting Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, a leading pro-Israeli Christian group, The Jerusalem Connection International, stated that "the evangelical support for Israel is shrinking."
Globe and Mail, December 26
Random acts of kindness
Deborah and Ron Seigel are also proponents of the kindness concept. They set up the Acts of Kindness Network in Burlington, Ont., in 2002 in memory of her mother who had bipolar disorder. Now they have operations in at least 11 countries. Their journey began when Deborah Seigel invited her colleagues in the fashion industry to extend an act of kindness to support Bethany Residence, a group residence for those touched by mental illness. . . . The Seigels receive wish lists of people in need from the 17 different agencies that they support including Bethany Residence, the Salvation Army Lighthouse Shelter and Kidsfest Canada.
Canadian Press, December 26
Quiz shines a light on readers' morals
CanWest test finds respondents less ethically hardline and more middle-of-the-road than most Canadians
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, December 26
Also: The Search
Earlier: Stories about the Vancouver Sun's poll on morality
Nearly 700 Christians move to relief camps to escape attacks in India
Hundreds of Christians are fleeing to relief camps in eastern India after clashes with Hindu nationalists. The government-run camps are providing food, medicine and security. Officials say the clashes left at least four people dead last week, including three killed when police fired on a group of hardline Hindus that had torched a police station. Hindus complain the police aren't protecting them from Christians. The killings and subsequent flight of nearly 700 Christians to four relief camps are the latest in a series of religious and political power struggles in the secular but Hindu-dominated state of Orissa, which has one of the worst histories of anti-Christian violence.
Macleans.ca, December 29
Remembering 'Hugh Montgomery-Massivesnob'
As the old year meets its dying day, one of the great chroniclers of the dead is now deceased. The splendidly named Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd was the obituaries editor of The Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1994. He joined the ranks of his subjects on Christmas Day. He was just 60.
Father Raymond J. De Souza, National Post, December 29
A sanctuary downtown
Food and a safe place to sleep the first step in Hope program
Edmonton Journal, December 30
MMVII
It is not possible to predict what happened in the year of grace, 2007. For that is the sort of thing for which we must always wait. The most important events generally escape the contemporary notice not only of journalists, but of everyone else.
David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, December 30
Mounties to prepare residential school probe
Former students plan to allege criminal deaths took place at Indian residential schools when they appear before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the RCMP has been told to be ready to investigate. Commission chief Bob Watts said he has met three times with police in the past year to advise them on the accusations former students are preparing to make. His comments mark the first time a senior official has acknowledged allegations deadly crimes were committed at the schools and that many children were buried without their parents being notified. . . . As executive director, Mr. Watts is responsible for setting up the commission, which was created as part of a class-action settlement between former students, the churches and Ottawa. Over the past year, he has visited aboriginal communities and is taking part in a closed-door advisory panel with church leaders on the subject of former students who disappeared.
Globe and Mail, January 1
'A nose for injustice'
Born in Calgary in 1953, Rev. Bean moved three years later with his family to Yellowknife, where his father was a radio operator for the Department of Transport. It was there he began hearing his father's stories about the social gospel of Tommy Douglas, who had taught Sunday school to a young Gordon Bean in Weyburn, Sask. "Tommy Douglas was my father's hero," Rev. Bean says. "Even though my father was kind of a fundamentalist Baptist, he had a very progressive 'help the little guy' view." When the family moved to Edmonton in the early 1960s, one of the first things Rev. Bean saw on its new black-and-white television was Martin Luther King's speech at the March on Washington. Although not yet a teenager, Rev. Bean felt a calling.
Sheldon Alberts, CanWest News Service, January 2
Tribalism's latest stalking ground
For more than 40 years since independence, Kenya was the exception. As political violence and massacres, corruption and looting, assassinations and civil wars racked one African country after another, Kenya was spared. To be sure, its longtime leaders, Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1978) and Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) brooked little dissent and helped themselves to the national treasury. But given the mad brutality that descended upon Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi, Kenya was, comparatively, a regional model of peace, order and good government. Horrible as it has been to those afflicted, the post-election violence of the past days is still relatively minor by neighbourhood standards, with just a few hundred reportedly killed. Yet the ugly face of tribal killings has made an appearance, and all who love Kenya must weep.
Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Post, January 3
January 3/2008
