The political situation around Québec’s proposed Charter of Values—the bill that would ban turbans and head scarfs in public contexts, e.g. as worn by teachers—is now reaching absurdity. (I wrote about it here.) Some decades ago, the province suspended individual rights by passing the language law, Law 101 as it is called (because of its then position on the order paper of the Québec Parliament). It was a controversial move that balanced the rights of individuals against the interests of a collective, and (as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms permits) suspended the former. This is permitted by the famous “notwithstanding clause” of the Canadian Charter: “Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15.” Québec invoked the notwithstanding clause in Law 101.
Fair enough. You can expect that in such a situation some will argue in favour of the supposed interest of the collective (i.e., the preservation of French in Québec) and others will argue in favour of the individual’s right to speak the language of her choice, which one might think was guaranteed by the freedom of expression provision of section 2 of the Charter. This is why the present situation in la belle province is approaching absurdity: the rhetoric of opposing the proposed Charter of Values seems unanimously to include praising Law 101.
Perhaps inevitably, the opposition Coalition Avenir Québec has pronounced itself in favour of a “moderate” version of the ban on religious expression. Once someone stakes out a completely absurd position, others will be magnetically attracted away from their own erstwhile positions. This is what has happened with regard to Law 101. Something that was legitimately criticized is now universally agreed to in order to boost credibility in opposing something even more lunatic.
While we are on the topic, may I say something about hijabs and Sikh turbans? There is now a tendency among liberal Quebeckers to say: a small crucifix (as worn by a society lady in Montréal) is a religious statement, but more discreet and less public than a hijab or turban. Whereas a turban screams “The Guru Granth Sahib is the word of God” (i.e. the Sikh scripture) in public, the little gold cross merely whispers, or perhaps just signs, the equivalent. (So says the madly confused and largely ignorant Antonia Maioni, a McGill professor of political science, in the Globe and Mail). I guess the cross is small and merely glints in the lavender-scented cleavage of the wearer, while the turban is loud and sits above a large and ugly beard.
This is a misapprehension. The Sikh turban says something about the wearer. It says he affiliates with his community, which happens to be a religiously based community. Even taken in an extremely literal way, it does not say anything about the beliefs of the wearer; it does not say anything about the religion. Similarly, a headscarf says something about the wearer: that she conforms to certain standards of modesty in this as well as in other things in her life. Neither the turban nor the hijab is a symbol of God. Much less of a god specific to a particular religion. They are both marks of a way of life. What does it say when you suppress that? What does it say when you simultaneously allow crucifixes and nun’s habits?
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