Some persons on this list have been discussing
the effect of societal changes. Here is a new
major change. Ontario, a Canadian province that
allows same-sex marriages, now also allows
sharia law. Sharia is said to be voluntary, but,
as the article shows, there are practical
problems with such a claim when the lives of
enclosed women are considered.
It is very difficult just now for governments in
Canada to decide what they stand for. They only
know what they do not stand for - Christianity!
It is difficult for them to say no to any other
scheme, and they will not likely be able to
mediate conflicts between, say, sharia and
same-sex marriage.
Denyse
(article linked and a couple of key paragraphs
appended)
May 22, 2004. 01:00 AM
LYNDA HURST
FEATURE WRITER
Had she stayed in Iran, Homa Arjomand would now
be dead.
All — all — of the women's activists she worked
with in Tehran have been executed, victims of a
reactionary regime that ruled, and continues to
rule, by strict adherence to Islam's sharia law.
In 1989, she and her husband paid $15,000 to
smugglers to help them and their two young
children flee the country.
For three days, they rode on horseback through
the mountains, sleeping in barns before finally
reaching Turkey.
Two years later, the onetime professor of
medical physics arrived in Canada as a refugee.
And how grateful she was to be in a secular
country, where female equality was the law.
That was then.
Last fall, Arjomand, now a transitional
counsellor in Toronto for immigrant women, heard
the province had quietly approved the use of
Islamic law in Ontario's Muslim community.
-- Read brief excerpts from my book, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing Controversy On the Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004) at http://www.designorchance.com/press.html To order, go to http://www.augsburgbooks.com/store/itemcontributor.asp?contributorcode=4630 Denyse O'Leary 14 Latimer Avenue Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5N 2L8 Tel: 416 485-2392 Fax: (phone or e-mail first) oleary@sympatico.ca www.designorchance.comReceived on Sun May 23 08:33:09 2004
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