Our Leaders and Anti-Muslim Laws

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks from the podium at a vigil for the victims of the deadly vehicle attack on five members of the Canadian Muslim community in London, Ontario, on June 8, 2021.NICOLE OSBORNE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Farmers Market is open in downtown Belleville, so we stopped by on Saturday morning for a few items. We purchased some delicious Syrian food from one of the families who came to our community in 2015 and 2016 as refugees. Most of those newcomers have done remarkably well, and while this family was not part of the 23 extended family members our sponsoring group brought to Canada, we have spoken with them regularly through the years. They are warm and enterprising and very impressive.

On Saturday it was mother and father and two of their older children at the stall, Bother mother and daughter were wearing the hijab, a head-covering common for women who are Muslims. When they first arrived the daughter was not expected to do so because she was a child but she's now regarded as a young woman. My mind went to the tragic murder of a Muslim family in London the week before, killed by a man who had never met them but randomly killed them because of their religion, the colour of their skin, and their dress. 

Later I read a Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece by Robyn Urback who bluntly decried politicians who have expressed horror at this hate crime yet allow one province -- Quebec -- to pass legislation which is essentially religious discrimination against Muslims: 

How does one reach the level of shamelessness to at once pledge that the government will do everything in its power to combat discrimination and Islamophobia in Canada, and then, moments later, shrug off questions about Ottawa’s indifference to a patently discriminatory provincial law that prohibits those who wear religious symbols from working certain jobs?...

Surely it was not lost on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the same symbols that ostensibly made the Afzaal family a target for the man now charged with their murders and attempted murder in London, Ont., would have also made them ineligible for certain jobs in Quebec. Indeed, 15-year-old Yumna could’ve grown up to be almost anything she wanted in Canada – except for a teacher in one of Quebec’s French language boards, if she had chosen to wear a hijab. 

Bill 21 is quite clearly legislated discrimination, and it would almost certainly be in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had Premier François Legault not pre-emptively equipped it with the notwithstanding clause when he tabled it years ago... 

“To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you,” Mr. Trudeau said on Twitter a day after the London attack. If he was being honest, he would have added: “unless you live in Quebec.”

Urback's observations are so accurate, in my opinion, and should be widely shared. 

I have written before about listening to women Muslim scholars who are convinced that the hijab and the burka are cultural rather than religious requirements, and that Muslim women should not feel obligated to wear them. I feel mildly uneasy when I see women in these garments, with a sense that this is a form of oppression, yet I realize that many Muslim women wear them by choice as a sign of religious devotion. 

I grew up in an era when most women wore hats to church and it was required in many denominations. Some Roman Catholic nuns still wear a wimple. There certainly wasn't and isn't the sort of discrimination and contempt in these circumstances as is directed toward Muslim women. 

What I know is that it is not my right to impose my cultural and religious values on others, nor to discriminate and restrict freedom of religious choices. And I have no time for those who intimidate or humiliate or do violence against women because of what they wear.