c. 2004 Religion News Service

Muslims Divided Over Sharia Tribunals

TORONTO (RNS) A prominent Muslim organization is opposing the establishment of private judicial tribunals in Ontario that would allow Muslims to settle disputes according to Islamic sharia law.

Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress said the use of sharia to settle legal matters is “repugnant” because anyone who disagrees with a decision, however unfair, risks being labeled a traitor and ostracized from the community.

Along with several legal and women’s groups, the congress has argued that sharia is flawed because it does not view women as equal and therefore cannot provide equal justice to all parties in a dispute, especially on issues of divorce, child custody and division of property.

The congress made its remarks in a submission to former Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd, who was appointed by Premier Dalton McGuinty in June to examine the province’s 1991 Arbitration Act, which allows religious groups to operate private tribunals to settle mainly business and civil disputes within their faiths.

Boyd’s review began after a public outcry against the plan, introduced by the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice (IICJ), which wants to use existing arbitration legislation to apply a form of sharia to settle disputes among Muslims who come before the panels voluntarily.

Proponents of the panels have assured that rulings will comply with Canadian laws and human rights codes.

Syed Mumtaz Ali, who made his presentation to Boyd on behalf of the IICJ, argued that freedom of religion as guaranteed under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms means not only freedom to practice religion but also to be governed by one’s religious laws in all aspects of one’s life _ spiritual as well as temporal.

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, called objections to the tribunals “nonsense,” and said the panels deserve a chance to succeed.

Boyd has also elicited input from Toronto’s Jewish court of law, known as a beit din. Boyd’s report is due later this month.

Priest Who Ministered to Gibson Disciplined

TORONTO (RNS) A Toronto-area Roman Catholic priest who served as spiritual adviser to Mel Gibson during filming of “The Passion of the Christ” has been suspended by Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, archbishop of Toronto, for celebrating the Latin Mass for a conservative Catholic splinter group.

Father Stephen Somerville celebrated daily Mass in Latin, with Gibson acting as his altar server, when the movie was filmed in Italy last year, reports the Toronto Star. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the film, also attended the 7:30 a.m. services most days before filming.

Somerville, who was a priest in the Toronto archdiocese for 48 years and who has strongly defended the movie against charges it and Gibson are anti-Semitic, was suspended by Ambrozic for celebrating Mass in Toronto for the Society of St. Pius X, a group that Ambrozic and the Vatican’s ecclesiastical commission consider “not in full communion with Rome.”

The Society of St. Pius X is one of several traditionalist Catholic groups that refuse to recognize changes ushered in by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965.

“Your ongoing association with and celebration of the Tridentine Mass for members of the Society of St. Pius X give external recognition to their illegitimate claims and their lack of submission to our Holy Father Pope John Paul II, to bishops appointed by him, and to the teachings of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Your actions are also a potential source of scandal to clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Toronto,” Ambrozic said in a letter to Somerville.

Somerville has appealed the suspension to Rome. Meantime, he may not celebrate Mass anywhere in the world.

Man Sues Jehovah’s Witnesses Over Daughter’s Death

CALGARY, Alberta (RNS) A Calgary man is suing the Jehovah’s Witnesses, claiming they contributed to his daughter’s death by encouraging her to avoid life-saving blood transfusions, reports Canadian Press.

“The Jehovah’s Witness church stole away my family, friends and 20 years of my life,” Lawrence Hughes said outside Calgary’s Court of Queen’s Bench, where he filed the lawsuit. “I paid a high price to give my daughter a chance to live.”

Bethany Hughes died at age 17 on Sept. 5, 2002, after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer seven months earlier.

In his statement of claim, Hughes says his former wife, Arliss Hughes, and the Witnesses’ Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society “overtly influenced Bethany to believe that blood transfusions were wrong and would not help cure her cancer.

“These defendants unduly influenced Bethany to prevent her from questioning her belief system _ that it was against God’s law to take a blood transfusion and that if she did, she would be eternally damned by God and not survive Armageddon,” reads the statement of claim.

When Bethany was diagnosed with leukemia at age 16, Lawrence Hughes left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and his wife over his daughter’s treatment. He said the transfusions should be undertaken if that was the only way to save her.

Lawyers for the Witnesses fought in court for the girl’s right to decide her own treatment. The courts ruled, however, that she was pressured by her religion and didn’t have a free, informed will.

The Alberta government stepped in and won temporary custody of Bethany and, against her wishes, she was given 38 transfusions until they were deemed ineffective. She died less than two months later.

Rural Crucifix Stirs Controversy

SAINTE-ADELE, Quebec (RNS) A controversy has ignited over the future of a seven-story-high crucifix on a quiet Laurentian mountaintop, proving, according to the Globe and Mail, that even in the now-secular province of Quebec, some things remain sacred.

For 77 years, the historic Cross of Sainte-Adele has inspired awe from its perch high atop a hillside north of Montreal _ a towering symbol of the province’s once-dominant Roman Catholic faith. The steel landmark is covered from top to bottom in light bulbs, ensuring visibility throughout the town at night.

Now the construction of a mansion threatens to encroach on the cross, and a holy row has been raised in the picturesque resort town of 9,600 best known for ski hills and placid lakes.

The land around Sainte-Adele’s cross is privately owned. It belongs to Montreal-area businessman Marc Lupien, who has chosen it as the site of his planned Tudor-inspired mansion.

But Louis Vadeboncoeur, a local resident whose citizens group is leading the fight to safeguard the cross, says the mansion will mar the public’s view of the cross and encroach on a communal monument.

“People are less Catholic than they once were, but the cross is still part of their heritage,” he said. “This is raising passions on all sides. People believe the cross belongs to them. It’s part of their history.”

A spokesman for the city of Sainte-Adele, 60 miles north of Montreal, said civic leaders’ hands are tied because Lupien owns the land around the cross.

“No one else can claim the Cross of Sainte-Adele,” Lupien said, “as their personal address.”

Crosses in public view are part of Quebec’s landscape. The best-known one sits on Mount Royal overlooking Montreal.

Muslims Call for Discreet Hospital Gowns

TORONTO (RNS) Canadian hospitals could lead the way in patient care by adopting a new generation of examination gowns developed in the United States, says the Canadian Islamic Congress.

“Privacy, comfort and personal dignity are paramount for all patients,” said CIC national President Mohamed Elmasry in a statement released last week. “The new American gowns would spare everyone the embarrassment of feeling undressed and nearly exposed while waiting for appointments in cold hospital hallways.”

In contrast to skimpy gowns that could leave a patient exposed, a new model recently introduced in New England shields both men and women from embarrassment. The Maine Medical Center in Portland unveiled the new gowns last month and is making them available to all patients who ask for them, the CIC says.

The group cites an American study that showed about 30 percent of female Muslim patients were canceling their outpatient appointments specifically because of “badly designed” gowns.

“Although no similar study has yet been conducted in Canada, I am sure patients from all communities would feel great relief if the redesigned gowns were promptly introduced in Canadian hospitals,” said CIC national Vice President Wahida Valiante. “Here is a golden opportunity to gain from the sound research and patient-friendly initiatives undertaken by American hospitals.”

Election of Sikh MPs Celebrated

OTTAWA (RNS) After years of enduring dispiriting attacks in the wake of Sept. 11, challenges involving the ceremonial dagger known as the kirpan, and fallout from the ongoing Air India bombing trial involving Sikh defendants, Canada’s Sikh community has something to celebrate.

Canada’s newly elected Parliament has a record five Sikh MPs, including Health Minister Ujjal Dosanj. The new crop includes the first married couple in the House of Commons _ Gurmant Singh Grewal and Nina Grewal _ and Parliament’s youngest members, Navdeep Singh Bains, 26, and Ruby Dhalla, 30.

“All of this comes as good news” for Canada’s 280,000 Sikhs, noted a recent National Post column. In recent years, Canadian Sikhs have been in the news for more controversial reasons. There was the case of the young Montreal student barred from carrying the kirpan to school; the Alberta Sikhs who questioned a bylaw requiring the wearing of bicycle helmets, even over turbans; and attacks on Sikhs in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Election of the Sikh MPs has elicited reaction from as far away as India.

“Punjabis storm Canadian Parliament,” announced a front-page headline in The Times of India, while the English daily Hindustani Times proclaimed that Punjabi is now “the fourth most popular language” in Canada’s Parliament.

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