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.
I pretty much agree, but at least in the visible case I can construct scenarios where some marginal harm is possible. For example, displays that suggest biases so strong they cannot even be temporarily set aside while exercising authority would undermine the integrity of institutions granting that authority.
If a person who is wearing a hijab is not breaking any other laws, I don’t believe that it’s right to ban wearing a hijab. To construct a situation that makes this okay with nothing to suggest that there is actually a real threat here is really strange.
If you want to ban terrorism or defiance of authority from Muslims, those things are already illegal.
I’m not in Quebec and I don’t know what effects religious symbols are actually having. Someone who claimed to be from Quebec described a couple examples to me that sounded pretty reasonable - things like someone from one religion being condemned and sentenced/fined by a judge wearing overt symbols of an opposing religion. Until I have concrete data either validating or discrediting the impact or actual occurrence of such scenarios, I’m inclined to at least consider them.
All examples were closely tied to religious influence on top of a substantial power imbalance and wouldn’t really translate beyond that situation. I don’t see it as being particularly different from trying to dictate who someone can date or engage in sexual activity. That’s insane out of context - then add the context of a pre-existing boss-employee relationship.