Category Archives: Canada

Quebec mother considers teachers in hijabs a threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reminding them of the Christian name of where they were – on Île Jésus – a young mother yesterday urged the chairmen of Quebec’s “reasonable accommodations” commission not to forget their Roman Catholic heritage. Geneviève April also had a warning for Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor: Don’t promote the rise of Islam in Quebec, because it will erode the identity of young French Canadians like her two children, who are exposed to it at school and daycare.

“As a mother, I’m very worried,” said April, 30, whose young son attends a multi-ethnic school that is 70-per-cent allophone and where the pupils are of 45 nationalities. “Children are sponges, and if my children are taught by someone (who is Muslim), they’ll start asking themselves who they are,” said April, the first of two dozen people who addressed the commission yesterday in Laval.

Teachers and daycare workers in hijabs, for example, are a threat, because “children trust the people looking after them, and (wearing the hijab) is practically a kind of subversion, and I think that’s deplorable and shouldn’t be accepted.”

Bouchard, a veteran historian and sociologist who grew up Catholic in Chicoutimi, asked April whether it’s OK for parents to transmit their religion to their children. Absolutely, she replied, but “I don’t want Muslim parents transmitting their religion to my children.”

“Culture and religion are interrelated,” and whereas Islam has no roots here, “Quebec culture is completely filled with allusions to the Catholic religion,” she said, noting that the Highway 15 hotel where the Laval hearings are being held sits on Île Jésus.

At his multi-ethnic school, her son is “in a bath of cultures, and his identity will be put to the test,” April said. If his teacher wears a hijab and many of his classmates are Muslims, her son may one day decide to become Muslim himself, “just to be like his friends, and I wouldn’t like that,” April said.

“That’s why you’d like hijabs to be banned in schools?” Bouchard asked.

“Yes,” April replied.

Montreal Gazette, 15 November 2007

PM is ‘playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made one of his first priorities in the fall sitting of Parliament a bill to force voters to show their faces at the polls.

“But there is not one shred of evidence that such a problem existed in the first place. Even Harper’s Conservative government has admited ‘there was no apparent case of fraud’ in three federal by-elections that were held in September in Quebec, when unjustified hysteria over veiled Muslim women first boiled over. Yet that has not stopped Harper from trying to fix this imaginary problem by proposing changes to the country’s election law that would require voters to show their faces before they cast their ballots….

“Harper has tried to dress up the bill as a means to ‘enhance public confidence in the democratic process’. But it has nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with pandering to narrow-minded fears about minorities…. Harper and other federal politicians are shamefully playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims.”

Toronto Star, 4 November 2007

Quebec – political courage needed on accommodation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Quebecers strongly oppose almost any cultural or religious accommodation of immigrants and other minority Quebecers, according to survey findings published yesterday in La Presse. The findings are a sobering measure of the size of the problem Quebec faces and a clear indication that some political courage is going to be needed.

“The poll results are dramatic: A hijab on the soccer pitch? 70 per cent of respondents are against. Turbans for Sikh Mounties? Nearly 80 per cent against. The kirpan? Female-only swimming? Male-only driving testers for Hasidic Jews? No, no, and no, by large margins. People of common sense and goodwill can certainly disagree on many of these issues. But in Quebec’s current happy social context these strikingly one-sided results – if not the entire debate – seem to us somewhat irrational….

“So why all this opposition? One figure offers a hint: 58 per cent object to providing prayer spaces in public buildings. That’s far fewer naysayers than on most such issues.

“This leads us to suspect that the less visible a practice, the more acceptable it’s deemed. Praying to Allah or anyone else is bothersome to fewer old-stock Quebecers if done in private; but Heaven (so to speak) help the 13-year-old girl who wears a scarf to play soccer. Even the Quebec Council on the Status of Women, an organization dedicated to social equality, is campaigning to forbid public-sector employees from displaying any overt signs of culture or religion.

“It’s doing this in the name of a secular state, but the subtext is far different. If an SAAQ clerk or a teacher is barred by law from wearing a hijab, a turban or a kippa, what is the message? What is retained – by adults and kids – is that there’s something wrong with these symbols – and, by extension, their wearers.

“There is some good news in the survey. Younger Quebecers revealed themselves to be far more accommodating than their elders. That openness bodes well for the long term.”

Leader in the Montreal Gazette, 10 October 2007

Quebec women’s council calls for hjab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL — The Quebec government should ban civil servants from wearing visible religious symbols at work to promote the province’s status as a secular society, the Quebec Council on the Status of Women says. That means female Muslim teachers should not be allowed to wear a hijab in public schools, said the council’s president, Christiane Pelchat. “Teachers are role models and they should be promoting equality between men and women,” Ms. Pelchat said.

She used the following example to show how reasonable accommodation would impinge upon the right to equality between the sexes. A teacher in a public elementary school converts to the Muslim faith and wishes to wear the niqab, the veil that covers her face in its entirety except for the eyes. But the council says the government should not let her display the religious symbol.

“The niqab sends a message of the submission of a woman, which should not be conveyed to young children as part of a secular education which is required to promote equality between men and women,” the council said it a statement released yesterday. The council has determined that the niqab is a religious sign that is discriminatory towards women, Ms. Pelchat said. “It is only women who are covered,” she said. “Are there Muslim men who are covered up?”

The council is a 20-member body that advises the government on issues relating to women.

Canada.com, 27 September 2007

Canada’s chief electoral officer stands firm on veiled voters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Canada’s chief electoral officer said he will not use his discretionary powers to change the rules and force veiled women to show their faces in upcoming elections, saying it’s not his job to “juggle” fundamental rights. Marc Mayrand made the comments as he was questioned by members of Parliament before the procedure and house affairs committee Thursday morning.

Mayrand said those powers are only to be used in exceptional circumstances, and he does not consider veiled voting an exceptional circumstance. Asked whether he would use those powers if directed to do so by the committee, Mayrand said he wouldn’t, because it would require him to “offend the act and not uphold the law.”

CBC News, 13 September 2007

Three cheers for Canada’s chief electoral officer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Don Macpherson applauds the decision by Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, to uphold the legal right of veiled Muslim women to vote in next week’s federal by-elections in Quebec, and condemns Mayrand’s Quebec counterpart Marcel Blanchet for capitulating to right-wing threats to disrupt the electoral process.

Montreal Gazette, 11 September 2007

The latest from Taj Hargey and friends

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You might have thought that any Muslim organisation would welcome as a victory for civil rights the decision to lift a ban on veiled women voting in elections in Quebec.

Not the so-called Muslim Canadian Congress. In a press release headed “Allowing masked voters a rude joke, says MCC President” the MCC complains that “enabling voters to conceal their identity represent a compromise of the democratic process”, warns that “such allowances will embolden Islamists and their supporters to seek even greater concessions in the future” and expresses concern that “the current trend to appease fundamentalist forces may be symptomatic of a larger problem forcing governments to capitulate to the bullying tactics of Islamists”.

Mind you, this is the outfit that denounced fellow Muslims who demonstrated against Israel’s attack on Lebanon as “Canadian supporters of Hezbollah”.

The MCC, you may also recall, is the group who gave financial assistance to Taj Hargey in his campaign against the right of British school pupils to wear the niqab. And in today’s Times we find Mr Hargey himself, congratulating the paper on its scaremongering campaign against Deobandi influence in UK mosques: “Your Deobandi exposé is welcomed by progressive Muslims. Sadly, most British Muslims, through ignorance or fear, cannot resist the insidious designs and dogmas of this secretive and reactionary sect and its many dangerous offshoots in this country.”

Canada PM opposes Muslim veil decision

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harper and friendCanadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday he disagrees with a decision to allow Muslim women to wear veils covering their faces when they vote.

Elections Canada – an independent body that oversees national elections – said last week that Muslim women will be allowed to wear veils when they vote in by-elections later this month in Quebec, where the issue of the traditional covering has been hotly contested.

The decision means women who wear niqabs – which cover the entire face except for the eyes – or a burqa, an all-covering body veil, can bring a photo ID or another document proving their identity when they vote in the Quebec elections.

Harper said he “profoundly disagrees” with the decision and noted all four parties in Parliament this past spring voted to bring in a new law requiring visual identification of voters. “That’s the purpose of the law,” said Harper, speaking to reporters following an international summit in Sydney, Australia. ‘That was a law adopted virtually unanimously by Parliament. I think this decision goes in an entirely different direction,’ he said.

Harper said he hopes Elections Canada reconsiders, “but in the meantime, if that doesn’t happen, Parliament will have to consider what actions it’s going to take to make sure that its intentions are put into place.”

The decision comes after the Quebec’s chief election officer required Muslim women to show their faces in order to be allowed to vote in a provincial election. The decision was condemned by Muslim groups who said it forced women to decide whether to adhere to their religious beliefs or violate their faith and vote.

The by-elections – which typically occur when a Parliament members leaves their seat early – will be held on Sept. 17 in three different districts in Quebec.

The issue of the Muslim veil has repeatedly come up in the province, which is predominantly Catholic. In February, an 11-year-old Muslim girl participating in a soccer tournament in Quebec was pulled off the field after she refused to remove her headscarf.

Associated Press, 9 September 2007

US border guards deport Canadian Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Milgo Noor had an appointment at 3:30 p.m. this past Sunday to look at bridesmaid dresses in a Buffalo bridal shop. She never arrived. When the young bride-to-be tried crossing the border with her three bridesmaids – two sisters and a cousin – the women were detained for more than eight hours and two of them were escorted back into Canada in handcuffs.

Shortly after Noor, 26, showed her citizenship to a U.S. border guard at the Peace Bridge, more than a dozen customs officers “charged” at her vehicle, starting an ordeal that she said stripped her of her dignity. For three of the eight hours, Noor and her eldest sister Rukia, 32, were held in solitary holding cells. After asking repeatedly why they had been detained, they were laughed at by U.S. border officials. “You have no rights here,” they were told. “You came to us.”

Their rooms had a chair bolted to the floor, a wall-mounted surveillance camera and an alarm that sounded every 30 minutes. They were searched by border officials wearing gloves, the women said, as well as being fingerprinted and photographed. Noor said they were held without food or water. They sat while border officials ate pizza in front of them. “We asked for water and no one would even look at us. They told us to ‘Shut up and sit down’,” Noor said.

Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said the incident does not surprise him. He says his organization receives about five complaints per week from Canadian Muslims who feel they have been treated unfairly at a U.S. entry point. “They’re brown and they have a Muslim name. There’s two strikes against them,” Elmasry said, adding that had the women been wearing the hijab it would have been three.

His organization advises Canadian Muslims to avoid travelling to the United States, and issues alerts before the annual Hajj pilgrimage urging Muslims to ensure their flights do not have U.S. stopovers.

Toronto Star, 28 June 2007