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Canadian Muslims outraged as Quebec moves to ban religious symbols at schools, including hijab

Canada’s largest Muslim organisation is outraged over a bill introduced by the Quebec government that would ban headscarves for school support staff and students.

“In Quebec, we made the decision that state and the religion are separate,” said Education Minister Bernard Drainville, CBC News reported. “And today, we say the public schools are separate from religion.”

But the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), who are challenging in the Supreme Court the original bill that forbids religious symbols being worn by teachers, say the new bill is another infringement on their rights and unfairly targets hijab-wearing Muslims.

“This renewed attack on the fundamental rights of our community is just one of several recent actions taken by this historically unpopular government to bolster their poll numbers by attacking the rights of Muslim Canadians,” the NCCM said in a social media post.

150 comments

  • Legault keeps "solving" problems that don't exist to try to appear more nationalistic than the PQ.

    They are just pushing moral panic against Muslims to appear like they are doing something to protect QC culture. At the same the same time they have defunded french language classes. And they keep not saying anything about how the feds are consistently discriminating against African francophone potential immigrants.

    There is no culture war with Muslims in actual Quebec society beyond the shit the CAQ is stirring to stay in the news. There are no armies of niqab wearing fanatics trying to take over our cities. But it costs the government nothing to push this crap. This is all shadowboxing for appearances.

  • By banning religious signs you do the opposite of separating religion from the state, since the state is forcing people to hide any sign that the person is from a religious group.

    There is also the problem that there is thousands of religions that may have their own signs how can you known all the religion signs and ban them? Also beards can be considered a religious sign should we also ban it or require a certain beard length limit just like peoole used to measure how short a women skirt is?

    I hope this don't make more visible divisions between canadian. Right know most of the separation is shiwn online.

    • I heard arguments about it in other spaces that made a lot of sense to me. Like a judge who ought to be able to visibly set their religion aside while exercising their authority, rather than signaling possible conflicts of interest in the very office such would compromise. I think I'm even on board with that reasoning. By that same reasoning, maybe it's appropriate to also restrict displays of religious affiliation by school staff.

      But why students?

      That's blatant cultural suppression and I cannot conceive a remotely coherent justification for it. And why the focus specifically on people showing their faces? Can you imagine if we mandated a certain amount of cleavage? How the fuck is this anybody's business?

      This just has me re-evaluating the cultural protectionism/outgroup suppression I'd previously deemed adequately justified.

  • “In Quebec, we made the decision that state and the religion are separate,” said Education Minister Bernard Drainville

    What is religion anyway? Worshiping men (politicians) is okay, but worshiping Allah is not?

    As someone else pointed out, even from a liberal pov, this is wrong as it is anti-freedom and anti-personal autonomy. Women should have the right to choose what to wear according such a philosophy. Using the unconvincing loophole of "but they were forced to wear hijab" to turn this into something pro-freedom/pro-autonomy hardly changes that fact.

    It's a dangerous path to take, as these politicians will not only step on Muslims' rights, but also set a precedent that the government (a few elites) can dictate when people are wearing too much. It also undermines the entire notion of protecting women's rights.

    Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) should have been a red flag that Canada's rulers are mildly deranged along with being morally bankrupt.

150 comments