Controversies, Complexities
Much social agonizing is underway in the passing of a young girl's life. Death by strangulation. Death by the misadventure of struggling against one's culture-determined place in the social strata of a tradition and a religion contrasting with that of the majority, challenging and upsetting expectations.Death at the hands of a furiously despairing, violently abusing father. As God fashioned Eve from one of Adam's ribs as an afterthought, so does Allah caution men to keep women in their subservient place.
Many voices have been heard; the heartsick laments of those who mourn the early death of any child. Voices of those opposing the mind-numbing repression of individuality through the rigid strictures of religious fundamentalism. Righteous voices of those representing that very same cultural-religious tradition which insists that modest head coverings symbolize the authentic Muslim subjection to the will of Islam.
Islamic leaders are loathe to surrender to the impression of those outside the faith that headgear identifying young girls and women as "different" from those of other prevailing cultures and religions are a social detriment to Muslims. They will continue to preach in their mosques that religious adherence to Muslim precepts, including the accepted cultural value of female coverings take precedence over a wish to blend into the larger society.
The sanctity of human life is universally held as a given. In all religions, and without religious intervention. Humankind reveres life, hesitates to imperil it when humans behave at their best, listening to their hearts, agreeing with their better emotional urgings. It is when religious convictions that are fundamental in nature and not amenable to social relaxation in a new cultural atmosphere of differing mores clash with the desires of impressionable conscious youth that personal disasters erupt.
Orthodoxy demands that children listen to their parents, behave as their parents demand, in accordance with the prevailing cultural-religious traditions. Place those children in an alien environment that challenges tradition, that appeals to a child's independence and we have a formula for critical dissent. Despite the anguish experienced both by parents and children, it is the children who must submit or bear the end consequences.
In the case of Aqsa Parvez, the hijab represented a vital religious value, one she was not permitted to reject. Bitter recriminations from her male family members resulted in her alienation and attempts to take herself away from that environment. "They were believing that part of their culture was hijab, and it is their duty to convince their kids that this is part of the culture", explained Mohammad Al-Nadvi, of the Canadian Council of Imams.
"This girl, she refused to stay at home. There were feelings that she is going in some wrong direction ... going with some other boy or some other thing." These fears and revelations are common to immigrant parents from all kinds of background ethnicities and traditions. They also represent the natural order of things when people migrate to geographies unlike their original ones. The turmoil of re-settlement compounded by the social confusion of the young.
Parents have a desire to control their children, most particularly their daughters, who appear to threaten family honour when they become intransigently independent, eschewing tradition, demanding or pleading for space for themselves. It would seem that the Muslim community deplores the violent death of Aqsa Parvez, characterising it as a crime of familial brutality with no religious overtones.
Still, the event has created a talking point among Toronto-area religious leaders who appear more concerned with the betrayal of Islamic clothing values than a transiently-unfortunate side event. One of the conclusions reached during a discussion of religious leaders appears to be that girls must be taught to wear the hijab at an early age through deeper exposure to their religion as one course of action. the other, according to Sheikh Alaa Elsayed, is "a proper spouse".
The import of the death of a 15-year-old through the father's desperation transformed to hatred of a defiant child appears to have eluded these worthies. They insist that parents must teach their children the benefits of religious clothing. Which benefits remove them from the mainstream of the society they have deliberately joined as immigrants. What works for some will not work for all. While some children gladly accept their parents' injunctions, others will not.
It is the young who chafe at these restrictions on their growing independence, their need to see themselves as part of the society around them, who pay the piper. This particular piper is too tragically intransigent, demanding death as the penalty for individuality. This is not a matter of family violence, it is a larger cultural-religious divide crying out for revision to enable entry into a wider world of opportunity.
Yet the imams say "we cannot let culture supersede religion". What culture? The culture of Islam restricts its fervent believers from becoming fully integrated members of the larger society through religious demands detrimental to the search for self. What the imams mean is that they cannot permit the prevailing, larger culture, with its questionable mores to interfere with their religion.
"If we stay away from the teachings of Islam, we will pay for it", they claim. Yet others have demonstrated more than amply that moderate observance of Islam is entirely compatible with joining the social mainstream, while still retaining those elements of tradition and culture that have great value.
In the final analysis, it is the imams, preaching their interpretations of Koranic demands to their flocks who are responsible for the inability of Canadian Muslims to fully integrate in a meaningful way with the rest of society, while yet retaining needed elements of tradition.
Labels: Canada, Religion, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ Friday, December 14, 2007
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