The Religion Issue

Oh, religion! Along with politics, it’s one of the things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite company. Well, we at the Ethnic Aisle thought: nuts to that! As if we’ve ever been polite. And thus the Religion Issue was born.

Why are we doing a religion issue at all? “ For a lot of people, faith is far less about certain clothing, symbols or rituals and much more about how they see the world.“

“Being both Muslim and queer always seemed like mutually exclusive identities to me.” Rahim Thawer explores how he came to see queerness and Islam as compatible, at least in himself.

Temples, synagogues and street corners: Denise Balkissoon takes you on a tour of a few religious buildings in Toronto that she’s visited.

How do you square being modern and being religious? That’s one of the questions Navneet Alang posed to local Sikh banker and philanthropist Suresh Bhalla.

Heather Li wondered why her family was Catholic. The answer was surprising. Was her family tricked into Catholicism?

Ontario has two statutory holidays with a religious origin, and they’re both Christian. Should we have days off for Chinese New Year or Diwali, too? Renee Sylvestre-Williams tackles this complicated question.

Kelli Korducki is a “Cultural Catholic:” she misses the rituals, pomp and circumstance, even if she doesn’t entirely believe in the faith.

Does circumcision make you Jewish? Lea Zeltserman is a diversity-loving Torontonian married to a non-Jew who found herself planning a bris for her unborn child.

and last but definitely not least,

Simon Yau wonders whether the Christian-flavoured Burger’s Priest is kinda weird. Would Hamburgers Halal or Buddha Burgers be as popular?

Would Hamburgers Halal Be As Popular As Burger’s Priest?

By Simon Yau

My stomach might be racist. I’m not certain yet, but I arrived at this concern when I asked myself an honest question—is The Burger’s Priest weird?

I mean, they serve burgers. That in itself is not weird. But it’s also a Christian-themed restaurant, with Christian-themed menu items, a Christian name, Christian scripture written on the wall and a strict Sunday policy that closes the joint down so the owners can ostensibly go to church.

Whenever I’m standing in one of the Priest’s notoriously long queues, staring at the church collection pan that serves as a tip container, reading bible verses on the wall, then eventually ordering a Noah’s Ark, it all seems like a mild novelty that I can tune out. But this place isn’t being ironic. It’s actually owned by evangelical Christians.

Which is fine!

Alls I wonder is how much my willingness to turn a blind-eye to overt meal/religion line-blurring has to do with tasty burgers, and how much has to do with my varying levels of cultural acceptance and comfort regarding race and religion.

The most obvious thought exercise would be to imagine a burger place with another religion as a theme. So let’s close our eyes and think real hard about other potential religious fast food joints and whether they’d be quite as lauded at the Priest.

***

Buddha Burger

I know, Buddha Dog exists already, and is relatively successful. In general, I think our culture finds Buddhism and anything zen or exotically east Asian quite acceptable. Buddhists are harmless. Like they’re literally non-violent, aren’t they? Even if the place was overtly trying to market Buddhism to you, it’d be acceptable because they’d be totally chill about it. Also, the decor of this place would be amazingly Pier One chic.

Verdict: Guaranteed smash amongst the vegan crowd. Less mainstream foodie appeal. The hot dog dudes need to get on this already.

Gabbai’s Grill

No bacon. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a Jewish themed burger. This might be kind of an issue with hamburger snobs. On the other hand, I personally find Kosher beef to be tastier than its unclean comparable. Maybe it’s all in my head but whatever.

Here the religious aspects start to get dicey though. Sure, we go to Jewish delis but they aren’t trying to impose religion on us—these are just places owned by members of the Jewish community. How amenable I might be of an establishment that had all the information about how to ritually convert to Judaism painted on the wall really depends —mostly on if that information is presented in an entertaining manner. Comic book form? No problem!

The decor may also be an issue. Reclaimed church pews and collection plates are kind of trendy for some reason, while antique menorahs may never be Globe Life cool. Strange, how that is.

Verdict: Decent chance of success. It might depend on how tongue-in-cheek the theme is executed, but I’m assuming we’re playing things relatively straight here. It also seems slightly more exotic to people who know what a priest is, but what the hell is a gabbai? Finally, would unfamiliarity with religious iconography make the decor less palatable to customers despite equally tasty food?

Hamburgers Halal

Ok, lets just be honest. If a dude from my local mosque opened a burger shop that was Islamic themed, featuring religious iconography in the interior design and had scriptures from the Qur’an on the wall, I would probably find it weird. I don’t know a whole lot about Islam. It isn’t something I think most people know about unless you make a point to know about it, unlike Christianity which is entrenched as part of North America’s cultural fabric.

Also, I’d be like—why did you open a burger joint? That might be an ignorant question, but also one I don’t think would require a lot of defending.

Inevitably, this place would get labelled a “Middle Eastern Burger Place” even if they served normal burgers. Like “Lebanese Pizza”. Which I learned is often, in Toronto at least, just cheap regular pizza.

Verdict: Outlook uncertain. Good food is good food, so hipsters would love this place. It would quite literally be the anti-Burger’s Priest. Midtown families may not be as enthusiastic. I don’t know what that says about midtown families or my completely arbitrary opinions of them, but that’s what I think. I’m also not convinced people would drive across the city to eat here, but it could become a pretty popular local joint.

***

So basically, no. No other religion could pull off what the Burger’s Priest does except MAYBE Buddhism. But those burgers would probably be terrible. Did I miss anything? I ran out of alliterative world religion restaurant names after three.

As for my original question: is the Burger’s Priest weird? Only inasmuch as most people don’t seem to find it weird at all. And if we’re being honest, isn’t that a little weird?

It doesn’t matter though, I probably won’t be back to the Priest for a while. Not because I find it offensive—I just really hate long lines.

Compelled to “Do Jewish”

By Lea Zeltserman

Here’s a scenario my 16-year-old self could never have imagined: the day when, eight months pregnant, I found myself on the phone with a mohelet* discussing how to make the non-Jewish family members of the father-to-be feel involved in a brit milah. What to do about the God word. Trying to imagine a bris with more non-Jews in attendance than Jews. How did this happen?

*A mohel, or sometimes female mohelet, is the person who perform the brit milah, or bris—the Jewish circumcision ceremony.

A bit about that 16-year-old self. I grew up in Edmonton, where Jewish was a word with solid definitions. It meant you lived in the west end, and on holidays your family drove downtown to either the Conservative Beth Shalom syngagogue, or the only-marginally-more-strict Orthodox Beth Israel around the corner. It meant Hebrew school, Hebrew camp, Jewish youth group. A Bat Mitzvah, a Holocaust education trip to Poland, and, in my case, kibbutz in Israel after high school. Also, Shabbat dinners and a lot of turkey bacon.

Judaism was the default setting, and I’d always assumed that it would stay that way. In other words, I’d just keep doing the same things without thinking about it or putting too much effort into it.

But in university I gravitated towards feminism, activism and other -isms. I grew dreadlocks, wore chunky black combat boots, shouted slogans at protests. I studied in Africa and taught English in Asia. I moved closer and then further from my Jewishness.

Eventually I ended up in Toronto, interning at the magazine where I met C. Early on I told him it was important to me that my children would be Jewish. Baptism was not an option. He was raised Catholic, in a predominantly white suburb. He said okay. I didn’t think much more about it. Which, I suppose, is how I found myself trying to arrange a bris.

Not Quite a Heathen

By Kelli Korducki

Even at my high school Bad Kid worst—when I was failing half of my classes (because, well, I didn’t attend them), sneaking out of the house on the regular, and smoking whatever I could get my ill-behaved fingers on—I never skipped church. While I don’t feel I came from a super religious household, Catholicism was so engrained in my family’s identity that the prospect of opting out of Mass seemed, at the very least, like more hassle that it’d be worth (and, at worst, a guarantee my mom would act on her occasional threat to ship me to a Salvadoran boarding school where “those nuns will fix you.”)

But I’m a heathen now. My brothers are both heathens too. We’ve flown our parents’ multi-crucifix nest and cast aside their religion with it. We don’t bring it up, but I suspect our parents have figured out that we only join them at Mass during visits home out of filial duty.

Truth is, when religion is so deeply intertwined with a family’s cultural makeup, rejecting it outright can feel awkward. And, I suspect this isn’t a terribly uncommon conundrum among many North American children of immigrants, or people who immigrated young enough to this comparably secular society that their spiritual beliefs diverged from those with which they were raised. At random, I polled two of my friends who fit this criteria to see where they stood.

Do We Need More Holidays?

By Renee Sylvestre-Williams

Canada has nine federal public holidays: New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day, Christmas and Boxing Day. Ontario has two additional holidays: Family Day on the first Monday of February and the Civic holiday on the first Monday of August.

Most of them are secular holidays but the two religious holidays, Good Friday and Christmas, are Judeo-Christian. That makes sense when you look at the history of Canada, a country colonized by the French (Christian) and the English (also Christian despite the tendency to fight among themselves about religion).

With the changing demographic of Canadian citizens, does it make sense to have new, non-Judeo Christian holidays? Should they be official, day-off type holidays?

I say yes. I come from Trinidad, a country where Eid and Divali are national holidays and quite a few non-Hindu and non-Muslim people celebrated or acknowledged them. I’ve stood in assemblies about Eid and Divali (and African emancipation and Indian Arrival Day, but I digress)  in my Catholic school. Trust me, most of us were just happy to have another public holiday. I think most Canadians wouldn’t mind more public holidays. Public holidays are awesome.

Besides, people are celebrating their holidays and some institutions are happily (and some not so peacefully) accommodating them. Brampton allows fireworks for Divali but in Hamilton, they’re looking at upholding a bylaw that limits fireworks to Victoria Day and Canada Day despite calls from cultural groups.

Institutions who have tried to accommodate other religions in an attempt to be inclusive have found themselves ruled exclusionary. York University used to cancel classes during Jewish holidays. The Human Rights Commission found that this policy was discriminatory considering at the time, 5.8 per cent of York’s students were Jewish while 4.8 per cent were Muslim. York University repealed the holidays, claiming that the commission’s decision wasn’t part of the decision.

Maybe the next step is for the governments at all levels to declare secular public holidays for various religions. In other words, Eid, Divali and other days will be holidays and you can do what you please. Christmas seems to be the best example of your-mileage-may-vary celebrations. Some treat it like a religious holiday, while some people, like me (an anemic Catholic at best), think of it as a week-long holiday culminating with New Year’s celebrations and weight gain.

The question then becomes who gets a public holiday?

Tricked Into Catholicism?

By Heather Li

That I grew up Roman Catholic strikes me as absurd. I am an obvious Chinese woman whose parents were born and raised in a marginalized Chinese community in Calcutta, India (now, Kolkata). Aren’t Catholics supposed to be Italian grandmas with wooden crosses in their kitchens? Or pale Irish schoolchildren lining up nervously outside church? I can’t tell if other people think my Catholic roots are strange too and they’re just being polite. Maybe the fact that seven in 10 Canadians identify as Roman Catholic or Protestant means that an Asian person claiming Christianity in multi-everything Toronto is simply ordinary.

For a long time it felt extremely ordinary to me. I was born in Toronto, attended two Catholic elementary schools in North York, and spent four years at an infamous all-girls Catholic high school in Willowdale: St. Joseph’s Morrow Park, more affectionately known as “St. Ho’s.” (Compared with what I later heard public students did in junior high, the majority of us in our hiked-up kilts were far from sexually obsessed hos.)

The Advantages of a Turban: An Interview with Suresh Bhalla

By Navneet Alang

In just about any image meant to convey Toronto’s diversity, you’ll see a smiling Sikh man with a coloured turban. It’s fitting. The entire premise of the turban and other Sikh symbols is that followers of the faith should stand out easily.

But if Sikhs stick out in this city, they often do so as the “model minority”. Sure, there’s the odd controversy over a kirpan or two, but the typical Canadian story about a Sikh is usually pretty ordinary, focusing on the low-key, diligent work ethic that Sikh doctrine espouses.

Suresh Bhalla is not that kind of Sikh. Speaking with a confident, almost Californian twang, Bhalla has a personality and life to match the conspicuousness of Sikh attire (he’s often seen in a bright, multi-coloured turban). His story is one a bit more unusual than most immigrant narratives.

House of Lords: Ten Religious Buildings in Toronto

By Denise Balkissoon

Here we have some appropriated photos of 10 religious buildings in Toronto that I have been to. Except this first one, I just think it looks cool.

I’ve never actually been to a Hindu temple in Toronto, although my father was born Hindu. If I had to pick one, it would be the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Etobicoke. Look at it!

Before the Toronto And Region Islamic Congregation mosque went up at Jane St. and the 401 in 1991, the prayers used to be in schools, rec centres, and my uncle’s basement.

This is St. Paul’s Basilica, the oldest Catholic church in Toronto. It’s a stand-in for a Catholic church my father can’t remember the name of, where we went to a really, really, really long wedding. Afterward everyone shook hands and said “Peace Be Unto You.” I didn’t know this was going to happen and also I am clueless so I said “Pleased to Meet You.”

Contents Under Pressure: A Queer Muslim Unsilenced

From the series "Illumination," by Yalda Pashai

By Rahim Thawer

Being both Muslim and queer always seemed like mutually exclusive identities to me. The ideological clash meant I simply could not be both. This wasn’t a satisfying way of looking at the world – I didn’t think I should have to repent for being a certain way. I began asking some big questions in high school and then really started to assert my own identity after moving away to university – somehow the academic space away from my family just allowed for it. It was a scary time of grappling with mixed messages and internalized fear and stigma.

‘Cause You Gotta Have (an opinion on) Faith

If religion has always been a part of “multiculturalism” in this country, over the last decade it’s become one of its defining issues. We all know the reason, of course, and there seems little point in again going over the fallout from that sunny September morning.

But if this city and Canada at large often did a better job than most at accepting people of all faiths, that comfort has frayed a bit over the past few years. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney now feels comfortable using the term “barbaric” to describe certain views. Others call for the end of funding for Catholic schools after the controversy over Gay-Straight Alliances. All the while, instances of religious discrimination continue.

At the same time, religion remains a vibrant, central part of life in this city, sometimes especially so for those looking to hold on to the cultures and values they or their families left behind. Inevitably then, things have gotten a little more tense. How we talk about religion has become fraught and shot through with mistrust and misunderstanding, and things like Minister Kenney’s blunt speech aren’t terribly helpful.

It’s not, of course, that any particular practice or viewpoint should be beyond critique. Rather, if we’re looking to foster understanding between people, how we talk about religion should be more nuanced that simply “your faith is fine, unless we have to confront real difference.” The kind of rhetoric that demonizes one ideology as it celebrates another can often harden and sharpen the divisions between people, rather than achieving an opposite, far more positive end.

More to the point, the conversation about religion needs to stop being one about a vaguely secular middle and all those cuh-razy religious people at the edges.  For a lot of people, faith is far less about certain clothing, symbols or rituals and much more about how they see the world. Religion, culture and the real differences between us are messy and complex, and like it are not, are an intimate part of this city. Simplistic binaries that map atheism onto modernity and belief onto backwardness aren’t helping anything either, and certainly do nothing to further dialogue.

So this week on The Ethnic Aisle, we’ll be on about faith, spirituality and what religion means to different people. True to our mission, we hope you get some perspectives you haven’t heard before, or simply haven’t heard enough. And of course, we’ll give you space to have your say, too. Follow along!