Things

Well. Test in my Historiography course (comparing the ethnographic and gender approaches to history) in an hour's time; an English students' get-together at the Wave at 4 o'clock; two projects (one a one-page report on how to become a lawyer, one a comparative report for historiography). Nothing much.

I went to the gym today, after a break of a week; naturally, the TVs were turned on to news of the war in Iraq, which--it seems--hasn't been immediately greeted as a liberation by Iraqis. The Globe and Mail has stories about different problems facing the United States:

• the failure of the United States' alliances with Latin America, the sole country to be claimed as an ally being El Salvador which depends on remittances from the million-odd Salvadoran immigrants in the United States


• the potential for chaos if anything happens to/in the Shi'ite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf (just remember what happened to the Israelis in Lebanon in 1983)


• a bitter denunciation by Paul William Roberts of the war that includes the hope that it won't end too catastrophically for all concerned


• a reminder that Britain has its own long and bloody imperial history in Iraq

I know that I said there wouldn't be any war postings, but it's only going to get worse, isn't it?

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] A Meandering on Transnational Religions

Yesterday, I took a book out from the Robertson Library on the similarities between Roman Catholic Christianity and Shi'ite Islam, of which there are a few. To me, however, the most interesting similarity lies in the institutional structures of the two faiths: just as Roman Catholicism is distinct from sectarian Protestantism in that it's a single transnational hierarchical organization unified by faith, so has Shi'ite Islam in Iran (both under the Shah and under the Islamic Republic) in the 20th century come to possess an institutional hierarchy of its own. There are differences, of course; the Shi'ite hierarchy in Iran does not extend to other Shi'ite communities outside of Iran, not even in neighbouring states like Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and it is much more recent. Still, it is a recent development.

Large hierarchical religious organizations have their good points; they are enduring structures, capable of enforcing uniformity and unity across broad areas for long periods of time. They are flawed, however, in that their broad-based nature give them power--economic power if they are rentholders, political power if they want the secular state to be organized even loosely on their religious principles, social power if they want the masses to adopt churchly morality. When major crises hit the secular regime--when there is a war, when there is radical political reform, and so on--the religious institutional structures can often come under direct attack. This can happen relatively benignly: in Québec, Newfoundland, and Ireland, for instance, following their belated secularizations and (in the case of the latter two societies) revelations of scandals and improprieties, secularization of public life occurred quietly. Québec is now one of the most secular societies in the world; certainly compared to the United States it's radically distinct. I can point to other once purely Catholic societies--Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Mexico--which have gone through similar shifts.

When things go badly, well, there is the example of France. Once the "elder daughter of the Church," the over-close association of the Church between repressive powers of the state (whether the ancien régime in 1789 or the Second Empire in 1870) brought the Church under full-fledged attacks by people who didn't like the Church's claim to a monopoly on the public sphere. After the French Revolution, the Church's positioned was weakened; after the Paris Commune and the execution of the Archbishop of Paris by the Communards, and the establishment of the Third Republic, the Church was in a defensive position; after the Dreyfus affair and Vichy, the Church was reduced to a non-entity.

I wonder what will happen to the Islamic Republic and the Shi'ite religion in Iran in coming years. Certainly the Islamic Republic is a rather more thoroughgoing attempt at enforcing a religiously-inspired monopoly over public life than anything that the Church could attempt in 19th century France, and its assorted geopolitical and military ambitions could bring the Islamic Republic to a very severe regime crisis indeed. And secular global pop culture is so attractive ...

In the end, transnational religious organizations, judging by the Roman Catholic and Anglican examples, tend to be hollowed out--the former cores end up revolting and becoming secular, while the recently-acquired fringes tend to assume a new prominence. It might well be that the future of Roman Catholicism will lie in Latin America and in Africa; it might will be that the future of Anglicanism will lie in Africa and points elsewhere in Britain's former empire in the tropics and subtropics; it might well be that the future of Shi'ite Islam will lie not in a laicized Iran but in Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, and Pakistan. The question arises, then, of what happens to these transnational religious hierarchies in their former peripheries: Do the peripheries become the new cores? do they fragment along regional and cultural lines? do the peripheries also become thoroughly secular once they too tire?

Concern

You know, when I get an E-mail from a sober-minded Canadian acquaintance of mine who warns that the United States might be planned to do to us what the United States is doing to Iraq, I'm concerned. Not because I believe that America is an evil expansionistic nation, not in the least, but rather because of what this reflects on Canadian/American relations. Never mind that American Ambassador Paul Cellucci appears to believe that he has been appointed proconsul in Ottawa:

The U.S. ambassador to Canada took the unusual step on Tuesday of openly criticizing Ottawa for not backing the war on Iraq and urged Prime Minister Jean Chretien to muzzle anti-U.S. sentiment in his government.

The comments by an angry Paul Cellucci dramatically reflected how much relations between the two close allies and trading partners have deteriorated over the last few months, mainly as a result of the Iraq crisis.

They also put more pressure on a Canadian government that refused to send troops to Iraq to fight an "unjustified" war but which now seems to be wishing the Americans well and backing their bid to remove Iraq leader Saddam Hussein -- a concept that Ottawa had previously condemned.

Cellucci told an audience of business executives in Toronto that had Canada found itself under threat, Washington would have come to its aid immediately.

"There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would not be ready, willing and able to help with. There would be no debate, there would be no hesitation. We would be there for Canada -- part of our family," he thundered.

"And that is why so many in the United States are so disappointed and upset that Canada is not fully supporting us now," he said. In the speech, and in comments to reporters afterward, he mentioned U.S. disappointment 12 times.

What will have been most disconcerting for the audience was Cellucci's statement that the United States gave a higher priority to security than to the booming trade relationship between the two countries.

Canada sends 87 percent of its exports to the United States and any delays in trade across the two countries' long joint border could have a devastating impact on the Canadian economy. Exports account for 40 percent of Canadian gross domestic product.

"Security will trump trade, there is no doubt about that," Cellucci told reporters, saying there could be unspecified "short term" strains in the relationship given U.S. unhappiness with Canada.

A proposal: Perhaps Chrétien should ask the United States government to recall Cellucci? Let him practice his imperialist tendencies on a country that is willing to be dictated to. If not this, perhaps all Canadians should contact the United States embassy in Ottawa to let them know just what they think of his impolite threats to a country that may have tolerated his presence for too long.

Dates

At the Honours English students' gathering at The Wave at 4 o'clock, I heard from Dr. MacLaine that my Honours presentation is scheduled for 10 a.m. on the 8th of April. Which, curiously, is the same day I'm scheduled to meet with my parents in the office of the family counsellor (at 5:45 pm).

And yes, it went quite well. Joel and Carla, especially, but including every other student and professor there, are excellent people to get drunk with. Certainly it justified me staying out until 11 pm and neglecting my schoolwork altogether tonight. I need to do this more often, don't I?