You may be aware by now that Obi Canuel wears a spaghetti strainer on his head. This has been news lately because ICBC was prepared to allow the unconventional headgear in Canuel’s B.C.-issued ID card, but balked at allowing the colander-hat for his driver’s license photo.
Turban, kippah, keffiyah, hijab, chador — all are OK in most jurisdictions, including B.C., as long as the facial features are visible enough to identify the ID-holder.
But Canuel, an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, claims he is religiously obligated to wear a colander on his head. The church, whose adherents are called Pastafarians, emerged about a decade ago, contending that the universe was created by a deity with many noodly appendages and two meatballs. (Ordination in the church costs $20 to $30 in Canada — and offers inductees a credential with an embossed gold foil seal.)
Some of Canuel’s co-religionists have succeeded in getting their colander-accoutered photos approved by government agencies in Austria and several U.S. states. A man in Australia who attempted to have his firearms licence photo taken with a metal strainer on his head was referred to psychiatrists, who confirmed his sanity. So now they’re armed.
Are they making fun of religion? The answer may surprise you.
The late lamented Rhinoceros party used to bring irreverence to Canadian politics, yet it participated in and had something occasionally enlightening to contribute to the dialogue.
Pastafarians play a similar role. Of course, religion is a different fish than politics. As we can see almost anywhere we look in the world, a lot of people take their religion much more seriously than Canadians take our politics.
Still, Pastafarians are making some extremely serious points that get to the root of religious freedom and society’s commitment to equality for all — and they seem to be having a lot of fun doing it.
ICBC is not amused, though.
An ICBC spokesperson told Postmedia News: “We will always try to accommodate customers with head coverings where their faith prohibits them from removing it. Mr. Canuel was not able to provide us with any evidence that he cannot remove his head covering for his photo.”
The trouble here is that it shouldn’t be ICBC’s role to play arbiter of religious legitimacy.
There is legitimate debate, for example, around whether relevant religious texts insist that Jewish men must wear kippahs or that Muslim women must cover their heads, yet government agencies in Canada are — let’s say — agnostic on this, as long as the facial recognition factor is satisfied. Yet ICBC nixes the spaghetti strainer which, given that it’s empty before being placed on the head, does nothing to obscure the face.
“Government overreach” is a term usually associated with the conservative side of the political scale. But the spaghetti strainer issue should engage people across the political and religious spectrums. Government overreach is a term that rightly applies to this case, as it did — incongruously, but not entirely dissimilarly — to the Little Sister’s case.
Jim Deva, co-owner of Little Sister’s bookstore, was sent off with a hero’s funeral a few weeks ago for (among other reasons) demanding that Canada’s Supreme Court reject the idea that bureaucrats should determine what Canadians can or cannot read. That was no small issue and — God knows — no small fight.
The spaghetti strainer incident is hardly less significant. Are we a country where government agencies make determinations about whose religion is legit and whose is not?
It should not be left to the government — and certainly not to some bureaucrat in the department of motor vehicles — to determine that one belief system is legitimate and others are bunkum. That’s the kind of society people come to Canada to escape.
The Pastafarians seem to be a fun-loving group. Certainly the media has had a good laugh over the incident, punning on the conflict coming to a boil and such. The story has gone global, in fact, generally showing up in the “kooky news” category. There are some funny aspects to this story. But there is a serious issue here too. Yuk it up if you like.
Yuk it up if you like the idea of government officials — bureaucrats in the motor vehicle ministry, no less — deciding whether or not the government recognizes your religion.
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