Article & Journal Resources

Dec 13, 2007 04:30 AM

Like most Canadian teenagers, Aqsa Parvez just wanted to grow up her own way, hanging out with her friends, dressing like them and pushing her curfew. Her tragic death this week, allegedly at her father's hands in the family home in Mississauga, has shocked our community to the core, and has also highlighted the cross-generational and cross-cultural pressures that many families face.

Yesterday Aqsa's father, Muhammad Parvez was remanded in custody and is expected to be charged with killing his 16-year-old daughter. His son Waqas faces a charge of obstructing police in connection with the investigation into his sister's death. He was remanded in custody for a bail hearing Friday.

The courts will ultimately judge innocence and guilt, and whether this was a cultural dispute rooted in Aqsa's desire to wear tight-fitting clothes and remove her hijab, the Muslim head scarf, or in some other as-yet-unknown factors. The police have said little, and there is now a publication ban on the legal proceedings.

But whatever the facts, Aqsa's friends believe that a culture clash was playing itself out in the Parvez family before her death, which contributed to the other, inevitable strains that any immigrant family faces. The family came from Pakistan, and the parents are religious.

Reacting to that perception, thoughtful community figures such as Atiya Ahsan of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women have been quick to urge Muslim parents to take an understanding approach to their teenage children, to focus on the core values of their faith and not to obsess over a piece of clothing.

"If you know that your girl is good and she practises her faith ... then for heaven's sakes, you know, let the girl have a chance," she says. That would be good advice for any family.

And leading Muslim groups such as the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Social Services Association and the Islamic Society of Toronto are all urging "zero tolerance" for domestic abuse and violence against women.

Moreover, family violence is not a "Muslim issue," in any narrow sense. Or even an "immigrant issue." It is a deeply rooted problem in our society, regardless of race, religion or length of time in Canada.

Families that are relatively new to Canada may well face extra pressures – adapting to different lifestyles, cultural expectations, workplace demands, languages and the like. Sometimes, kids can feel trapped between two worlds. But families everywhere struggle to work through generational issues.

It is easy to find cases of conflict between parents and teens in families that have been here for generations, who do not profess any particular religion, and who share common cultural values. And occasionally, such conflicts spill over into violence, with tragic results.

Our challenge as a society is to ensure that young people such as Aqsa know where to go in order to get help when they need it. The schools play a critical role. So do community centres and clinics. Counselling and other services must be available for their parents, as well. Too often, resources are strained and underfunded.

And society as a whole must at every opportunity reinforce the message that coercion and violence have no place in the family, or anywhere else in our community. Preachers, teachers, physicians and other leaders have a duty to drive home the point that values are best lived, not imposed by force.

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