The Martlet

No Muslim woman should be forced to wear a niqab, a veil that shows only her eyes.  But no Muslim woman should be forced not to wear one. Muslim women are – this may shock some people – entirely capable of choosing what to do with their bodies, including how to dress.

Jean Charest’s Quebec Liberals recently introduced Bill 94 to the National Assembly, which would prohibit Muslim women from wearing the niqab when accessing public services, including attending public school.

The bill was introduced after an Egyptian immigrant was expelled from a French class for refusing to remove her niqab. Still wanting to learn one of Canada’s official languages to better integrate into Canadian society, the woman enrolled at another school. Québec-Immigration tracked her down and expelled her again. The woman has since filed a human rights complaint.
A second woman, a permanent resident from India, was tracked down by Québec-Immigration and expelled from her French class in April for not removing her niqab.

A spokesperson for Québec-Immigration – yes, Immigration – claimed, “It is important for the teacher to see the student’s mouth to teach good elocution.”

Not a shred of evidence was cited to back that up. And noone can even attempt to learn “good elucution” if they’re kicked out of school. The notion that banning niqabs in class is educationally justifiable is pure bunk.

Now, the number of Canadian Muslim women who actually wear the niqab is almost nil. Of over 500,000, only several dozen wear niqabs. And of roulghy 200,000 Muslim women in Quebec, just over 20 wear niqabs. That’s 0.01 per cent. Have you ever seen a woman wearing a niqab at school? Didn’t think so.

Sensibly, Ontario simply allows women who wear niqabs to make an appointment with a female civil servant when they need to remove them to get a passport photo, a mammogram, etc.

So why is this xenophobic, discriminatory law even on Quebec’s legislative agenda? Because Charest’s Quebec Liberals are floundering in the polls. The main goal of Bill 94 is to divert attention from the Quebec Liberals’ failings. This discrimination against a minority group for political gain is disgusting and scary, and has chilling historical precedents.

I am not at all religious. I find religion silly, and many religious practices strange. But, hey – many would say that I’m silly and strange.

I feel personally threatened by any law that bans anyone from wearing unusual clothes. How I dress should be my choice. How a Muslim woman dresses should be her choice. 

The threat to free expression and individuality posed by Bill 94 is what irks me most. In Canada, Muslim women who rock niqabs are among the most unusual, non-conforming dressers. Bill 94 says, in essence, you cannot be too different, you must conform. The bill should worry all who cherish free expression and non-conformity.

In his essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill wrote that “the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”

Quebec’s niqab ban, assuming it passes, will hopefully be voided by every court that considers it.

In the meantime, those of us who value liberty, equality, non-conformity and individuality must speak out against the Quebec government’s discriminatory ploy meant to distract voters from its own blunders.