{"id":40525,"date":"2017-10-20T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40525"},"modified":"2017-10-19T09:32:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:32:22","slug":"quebecs-niqab-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/10\/20\/quebecs-niqab-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec’s niqab ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> on the Quebec provincial government’s latest anti-Muslim legislation:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s mostly about the Quiet Revolution. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been assured by wise owl pundits about all this intolerant-looking rigmarole in Quebec. When polls show far more Quebecers than other Canadians hesitant to vote for a turban-wearing Sikh like NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, the owls exhort us to contextualize: Quebecers\u2019 rejection of the Catholic Church\u2019s outsized role in their society left them suspicious of all public displays of religiosity (except Catholic ones, weirdly). This explains higher levels of antipathy toward other religious symbols as well, we are told: kippas, kirpans and hijabs. Hijabs specifically are antithetical to a uniquely French brand of feminism, the owls explain. We must understand that French Canadians, like the French, simply do not believe in multiculturalism; other cultures must adapt to and exist within the dominant one. Without understanding all this, we cannot comprehend what\u2019s really happening.<\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s what really happened Wednesday: after years of dithering, the Liberal government in Quebec City made it illegal to provide or receive government services with one\u2019s face covered \u2014 which is to say no niqabs on university campuses, no niqabs at the police station, no niqabs on the bus or on the M\u00e9tro. Not even the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois\u2019 much-loathed values charter proposed the latter. So what are we to make of this, owls? Was the Quiet Revolution, this proud rejection of church influence over the state, really about bestowing upon the state the power to tell religious people what they can and cannot wear on buses and trains? Shall we sing Gens du Pays<\/em>?<\/p>\n

How stupid do the Liberals think people are? How stupid do they think Canadian judges are? Stupid enough, apparently, to believe that this isn\u2019t really about niqabs, but about a general outbreak of people riding public transit without their faces showing. Justice Minister St\u00e9phanie Vall\u00e9e said the rule applied equally to niqabs, balaclavas, dark sunglasses and anything else that might obscure all or part of the face. It\u2019s a simple matter of \u201csecurity, communication and identification.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley on the Quebec provincial government’s latest anti-Muslim legislation: It\u2019s mostly about the Quiet Revolution. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been assured by wise owl pundits about all this intolerant-looking rigmarole in Quebec. When polls show far more Quebecers than other Canadians hesitant to vote for a turban-wearing Sikh like NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, the owls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,9,10],"tags":[618,47,908,113],"class_list":["post-40525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","tag-clothing","tag-islam","tag-liberalparty","tag-quebec"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-axD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40526,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40525\/revisions\/40526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}