#Canada's religion

[junotter]

Part 2 of my modern avatar au, The Gaang (part 1)

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My partner killed the prime minister of Canada because they lost in an arm wrestle against God.

[mapsontheweb]

Largest religion in Canada by census division.

by mexidominicarican8

[motelpearl]

smallest church in canada, the norlund chapel, built 1973

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Quebec's education minister has formalized a promise to ban prayer rooms and other religious practices in the province's public schools.

Bernard Drainville issued a directive late Wednesday saying schools must ensure that none of their spaces are used "in fact and in appearance, for the purposes of religious practices such as open prayers or other similar practices."

"Schools are places or learning and not places of worship," Drainville wrote on his Twitter account, where he published a copy of his order.

No requests for accommodation will be heard, the government added.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

To be clear, this isn't just to stop staff from imposing religion on students. This also prevents students and staff from praying and practicing religion as individuals- even privately- on school grounds.

[atheostic]

[doueverwonder]

Uhh idk why I’m thinking about this but; face family church habits perhaps.

France - more than once every other month but less than every week. I actually think he kinda stopped believing in God after ww2 but almost has to go out of habit or he Feels Wrong.

America - goes the most no doubt in my mind about it, maybe not every Sunday but at least at a Bible study or something of the sort every week. I can never decide denomination for him. Definitely Protestant probably Baptist or Methodist, but I could also see him being Episcopalian, Lutheran, or even Dutch Reformed idk.

Canada - what my mom would call Catholic Lite, he goes for Easter and Christmas, occasionally for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Every decade or so he feels real guilty about something and goes every day of Holy Week; hasn’t been to confession in at least 30 years. Goes to mass with Molly sometimes bc no one else in the family is Catholic

England - one of those people who calls himself religious and will tell you he’s Anglican but actually hasn’t stepped foot in a church in decades. The opposite of Francis, believes in God doesn’t see the point in going to see him smh.

[learn-religion]

God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

[divinum-pacis]

A man holds prayer beads as Muslim Canadians pray on the first night of Ramadan at the Anatolia Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, on March 10, 2024 [Mert Alper Dervış/Anadolu Agency]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

In Quebec, the number of young trans people is increasing, and the lists waiting times for specialized clinics are getting longer. Eight months in Meraki, a year in Sainte-Justine.

"Do you have an appointment with that today?" "With Doctor [Retracted]..." "We'll open your file, if you don't mind. I have a little information, but I'm missing a little."

There is another option: private.

"You see here, there is a sexologist's office, and for $115, we offer a consultation. And at the end of the consultation, we can have a letter of recommendation for hormone therapy. It says it may take a session or two to get the letter. It's private.

We received a message from a mother, who told us that [her] daughter told her about that doctor."

This general practitioner sees the patient and prescribes, without referral from another healthcare professional. The clinic is private. It is the patient who pays.

This is where we took Sasha back, interpreted by a 14 year old actress.

"Sasha would prefer to go alone, is that correct?" "Yes, yes."

She will tell the doctor that she identifies as trans.

"So, I'll give you this. There is a pencil here. You can go through the document, initial it, or you must sign where you need and everything."

She must read and sign as seven-page form which describes the side effects, sometimes permanent, of testosterone before entering the doctor's office.

This is the first time this doctor has seen the patient. She quickly gets to the heart of the matter.

"You can tell me, a little deep down, since when you know you're not in the right body? Is it in childhood, is it more in puberty?"

Sasha reports that she doesn't like her body and that she was getting vomited at age 12.

"At one point, my mother grabbed me. She took me to see a psychologist. That's when they said I had an eating disorder. I told myself that it couldn't be eating disorders, it didn't make sense in my head. But at 13, I came across a video, of a trans person in fact, who talked about having eating disorders, but in fact it was because she was in the wrong body. At that moment, I really recognized myself in this person."

The doctor then asks if she has the support of [her] parents.

"Your family... did they understand a little of what's going on?" "Yes, they understood a little." "Do they know you're here today?" "Yeah."

Five minutes into the consultation, she addresses the question of surgeries.

"Are you considering surgeries in the future?" "Surgeries?" "Yeah." "Gender?" "Mastect. Mastectomy, removing the chest." "Yeah." "There are other surgeries that exist. We have a uterus, at the bottom with ovaries. So basically, it's possible to remove, it's something that can sometimes cause dysphoria."

Testosterone can make a woman infertile. The subject of fertility is the subject of a question.

"Is fertility, I understand that it is perhaps far away for you at 14, but is fertility something you want to maintain before you start?" "No. I always knew I didn't want children."

And finally, less than nine minutes into the consultation:

"Basically, the logic right now, I still prescribe hormones today in theory. Because the logic is that, basically there is nothing in your balance sheet that would stop me from giving you hormones basically. I'll start at one dose, it's not a mini-dose, like an intermediate dose between adults and..." "... non-binary, let's say." "No problem. The best is yet to come."

The consultation lasted less than 17 minutes. The side effects of testosterone do not have been addressed, which may seem surprising.

Confronted with this fact, the doctor told us that: "... a medical consultation cannot be evaluated in terms of duration, but rather in terms of quality of the exchange of information..."

[aelloposchrysopterus]

HEY DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION OF A PROMINENT SIKH LEADER IN CANADA AND WHY THIS MATTERS?

I generally don't like to write current events-y stuff here, but since I'm not seeing any people talking about this in my corner of this hellsite, I figured I might as well.

DISCLAIMER: For the record, I'm part Punjabi, raised culturally Sikh in the United States, I don't actively practice Sikhism, and I'm writing this assuming a non-Sikh, non-Desi audience that knows little to nothing about Indian politics. I am trying to be as factually accurate as possible but if certain information is incorrect, I will correct this post because a) this is an ongoing issue so the information I have right now may not turn out to be correct and b) my memory is fallible and while I did try to fact-check the background information I remembered, many of these historical events have accounts that differ drastically from each other, so it is difficult to establish a definite truth. This post was written and last updated 25 September 2023.

So, the basic facts of what happened:

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed on 18 June 2023. He was a proponent of the Khalistan movement. In the past week or so, Canadian government officials have accused India of orchestrating his assassination.

Khalistan? What's That and Why Does It Matter?

Like quite a few things in Desi politics, the idea of Khalistan can be traced back to the Partition. At the heart of the Partition, the idea was that Pakistan is for the Muslims and India is for the Hindus.

However, India is not exclusively populated by Hindus, no matter how hard Modi and the BJP* try to make it a Hindu-only nation through their Hindu nationalist policies. Among other religious minority groups, many Sikhs had to made the new India their home, because of the religious persecution they would face in Pakistan. The Radcliffe Line (the line of partition) runs right through Punjab, the ancestral homeland of, among others, most Sikhs. In Punjab, during the Partition, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims carried out sectarian violence against each other.

What this means is that a lot of Sikhs were displace from their homeland and subjected to discrimination and violence based on their religion in both Pakistan and India. As a result, some members of the Sikh community started calling for a new nation to be carved out of the Punjab regions in Pakistan and India. This new nation was to be a Sikh nation, much like Pakistan for the Muslims and India for the Hindus, and it was to be called Khalistan.

(Little bit of anecdotal trivia: apparently identifying as Punjabi first and Indian second when describing ethnic background is more common among Punjabi Sikhs, due to Sikh efforts to show their connection to Punjabi in an attempt to make Khalistan a Sikh nation in the Punjabi region.)

Needless to say, the Indian government did not and does not like the idea of a Sikh nation and sees the idea of it as a terrorist threat.

*Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party currently ruling over most of India.

Operation Blue Star and Indira Gandhi

As part of this rising call for a Sikh nation, Sikh militant groups sprung up. Indira Gandhi's government wanted to arrest one of the most prominent leaders of a Sikh militant movement. However, he and his supporters were holed up in the holiest site in Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

On one of the holiest days in Sikhism, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev, the Indian military began their attack on the Golden Temple, known as Operation Blue Star. Long story short, Sikh pilgrims were killed during both the fighting and in extrajudicial killings by the military afterwards.

In anger at how Gandhi's government had carried out Operation Blue Star, two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. Anti-Sikh pogroms then occurred, with independent estimates of the number of Sikhs killed ranging from 8,000 to 17,000.

This only made tensions between the Sikh community and the Indian government worse; I see this as a defining moment in how the government of India responds to the Khalistan movement and both Sikh extremist violence and peaceful support.

Oh and did I mention yet that the Indian government has outlawed the Khalistan movement?

The law that does this dates back to 1967, by the way.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar

And so now we come to the story of the recently-assassinated Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Due to Khalistani activism being outlawed in India, many Khalistani activists have settled abroad. This includes Nijjar, who became a Canadian citizen in 2007 and had first come to Canada to apply for asylum after having been arrested by the Indian police in connection with his pro-Khalistan stance. He continued his Sikh and Khalistani activism in Canada until he was killed in the parking lot of the gurdwara he belonged to by two masked gunmen.

The Canadian government recently alleged that the Indian government war involved in the killing of Nijjar, but has not yet provided firm evidence.

Why Does This Matter?

Obviously, as a culturally Sikh person, it matters to me because this assassination is part of a legacy of violence targeting my community due to perceived associations with terrorism. (Yes, there are some Sikh extremists and terrorists, but the overwhelming majority of Sikhs are neither extremists nor terrorists.)

But this has ramifications that everyone should care about.

Canada and India have recently done tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions due to the Canadian government's allegations

The US may also get dragged into this because Canada alleged that American intelligence gave them some information necessary to prove the involvement of the India government

The UK may also get dragged into this because they, too, have a sizeable Punjabi Sikh community that includes multiple MPs and the government has historically had strong relationships with both Canada and India

Despite the BJP's involvement in anti-Muslim violence, Modi and his government still enjoy a cozy relationship with many Western nations; this may start to change, although change is unlikely as Western governments see being allied with India as key to countering Chinese influence

If India is proven to be behind the assassination, this could be bad for other Khalistani activists in the Sikh diaspora because it means the Indian government could potentially target and kill them, too

This is important. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and this isn't an isolated incident. I know I probably didn't do a great job explaining this, but it's hard to summarize about 550 years of oppression and violence and politics and culture and how that has manifested over the past 80 years, leading to the murder of a prominent leader in the Sikh diaspora.

For further reading on this, I'd suggest this BBC article, which includes information on some other Khalistani activists recently killed.

Anyhow, I'll keep trying to follow the news on this and update this post as needed, likely through reblogs.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Despite the challenges he had faced in the United States, Marshall Gauvin managed to attract sizable audiences in Winnipeg for fourteen years. How did he draw them in? His most popular stock in trade was condemnation of religious superstition. And he actively sought out conflict by challenging clergymen to debates. He was a showman as well, with considerable theatrical flair. “In addition to his oratorical style,” wrote Gray, “Gauvin was a natural born-mimic” who delighted in mocking travelling revivalists. “His imitations of their eye-rolling, arm-throwing styles rocked the theatres with laughter.”

During Gauvin’s first five years in Winnipeg, advertisements for his lectures were carried in the city newspapers’ crowded “church pages” on Saturdays, alongside announcements of the next day’s sermons and services. Thus, the advertisement of a preacher’s upcoming topic might be accompanied by an ad from the rationalist, explaining that he was going to demolish that preacher’s sermon from the previous week. He attended numerous church services to take notes and had agents who knew shorthand do the same so that he could rebut sermons point by point.

Gauvin also acted as the local debunker, attacking pseudoscientific ideas such as phrenology. An entrepreneurial guru whom Gauvin tackled was Orlando Miller, who promoted a combination of popular psychology, faith healing, and “visualization,” that is, causing reality to change by thinking positively. Gauvin also took aim at “new religious movements” led by charismatic figures. One such opponent was the mystic teacher Eugene Fersen, who claimed to be an exiled Russian baron and the nephew of Leo Tolstoy. Fersen styled himself “Svetozar, the Lightbearer.” In 1930 Gauvin debated him before an audience of 1,600 people and, according to all three judges and two-thirds of the audience, emerged the victor.

Where did he get his ideas? Gauvin loved books. They had been his university, and they, along with magazines, were his means of keeping abreast of useful developments in rationalism, science, politics, and biblical studies. In one lecture he explained:

The men who have done mighty things in the world have not done them because they were educated in colleges. The great have been great because they were great naturally and because they fed their greatness from the wellsprings of the world’s thought as it is found in books.

Visitors to Gauvin’s home commented that it was overflowing with volumes on every topic imaginable. His lectures were frequently extended reviews or summaries of books he had read; they profoundly shaped his discourse and his understanding of the world. It should also be remembered that, as a professional speaker, Gauvin was dependent on financial contributions from his listeners. Some variations in emphasis – or outright contradictions – that one finds between certain of his lectures reflect his need to cater to the current interests and tastes of his audiences. Religious controversy seems never to have gone out of style. As Gray commented in 1935, although Gauvin

puts on such a superlative performance in his jousts with priestcraft, his audience refuses to support him if he lapses into secular subjects. Even before the breadlines, socialism, communism and C.C.F.-ites carried off too many of his followers[,] he had difficulty in making ends meet when he turned from Yahweh to science.

...

Despite Gauvin’s interest in demonstrating what secular people could or should believe in, he had trouble attracting audiences for such themes and, as it turned out, created serious controversy by addressing topics on which he was not an expert. As Gray implied, Gauvin had been forced to cut short lecture series on “Economics” and “Psychology” partly because of a lack of interest, and partly because his somewhat liberal view of economics did not always align with the views of the many socialist members of his audience. Attacks on Christianity and the Bible therefore remained his bread and butter. In order to dethrone Christianity, the dominant Canadian faith, Gauvin would on occasion speak on other world religions like Islam or Buddhism. While he believed that all religions were ultimately misguided, he would at times say positive things about such non-Christian faiths, to combat the notion that Christianity was somehow superior.

In many ways Gauvin acted as a minister would with a congregation. On occasion his talks were even preceded by an organ recital. More generally, Gauvin spoke every Sunday (except in summer), passed a collection plate, delivered funeral addresses (albeit secular ones), wrote letters of recommendation, and served as a patron for rationalists who needed help. In early 1929, for instance, Gauvin intervened with the authorities on behalf of a woman who regularly attended his lectures. Her husband, W.A. Craig, was a bank employee who found himself in straitened circumstances. He had stolen a large sum of money but then, according to Gauvin, returned it of his own accord. Some 1,200 Winnipeggers (both members of Gauvin’s Rationalist Society and sympathizers) passed a resolution urging clemency for Craig, and Gauvin corresponded with various government officials on the man’s behalf. Not forgetting his raison d’être, he took the opportunity to accuse the churches of remaining silent on the case."

- Elliot Hanowski, Towards A Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024. p. 43-46

[heir-less]

I think what a lot of people don't understand is that the cultural and societal aspects of religion can still exist in a society that is 100% secular. Most atheists aren't anti-theists, in fact, most of them still take part in many religious customs and celebrations in a secular form. Anti-theism doesn't even mean the eradication of religion, it's typically used to describe the intellectual opposition to belief in a deity,

So, I'm honestly perplexed whenever I see people arguing that the "end goal" of atheism is to eradicate religion, this is something both religious people and ill-informed atheists believe, for some reason. I guess this is what happens when Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are your go-to atheists and you're measuring atheism against the most extreme religious zealots because that's what most people are reactive towards.

What should be completely removed are almost all forms of institutionalized religion and religious power structures. These are the exactual oppressive structures that have used religion as a tool to justify every form of bigotry and crime against humanity. They are also not essential to the practice of the religion or the survival of the religious culture. Your right to practice your religion ends if you're using said religion to advocate for the oppression of Muslims (assuming you're not practicing Islam), atheists, LGBT+ people, and other minorities. You can be a church-going Catholic without advocating for state-sanctioned religion or the rights of others being removed. This evangelical breed of religious extremism has no place in society and is what actually leads to real genocides happening today.

[molkolsdal]

Wutai Shan Buddhist Garden

[memenewsdotcom]

#India #Canada tensions rise

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Someone needs to explain to Canadian Catholics that a truly oppressed and marginalized religious group would not have their own publicly funded school system that is such a normalized part of society that few people ever really truly question its existence.