Monday, March 08, 2010
A police niqab? No thank you, by Michèle Ouimet
What a beautiful case for throwing gasoline on the feu. A immigrant of Egyptian origin was expelled from his French courses at CEGEP Saint-Laurent because she refused to remove her niqab, the full veil that hides all face except the eyes.
This is not the college has decided to expel the pupil, but the office of Immigration Minister Yolande James.
The college has done everything to meet the lady who could wear the veil and make presentations at the back of the room, his back turned to students. During one lesson, she even asked the men to move because they faced him.
His claims were clearly unreasonable, yet the story has dragged on for months. The Ministry has finally decided she had to remove her veil, if it was the expulsion.
She chose deportation.
Why this issue has made it to the office of Minister James? Why the college Did not make the decision alone?
Because the issue of reasonable accommodation is always delicate, too explosive. A minister who is involved in a class to solve a problem of sailing! It is micro-management. Yolande James said she consulted the Prime Minister Charest before making his decision?
This story also shows how institutions are disadvantaged when demand spiked lands on their desk.
The Bouchard-Taylor commission has nothing resolved? However, Quebecers have played a huge part in its work: 17 regions visited, 800 witnesses, 900 written submissions. An incredible success, a great group therapy.
The two commissioners have delivered a report intelligent, nuanced. A brick of 310 pages that the government was quick to hide in the back of a cupboard, merely delivering a vague contract of citizenship that immigrants should sign their arrival in Quebec.
Since the beginning of the year, reasonable accommodations haunt the Liberals. Jean Charest thought getting rid of this troublesome debate by creating the commission Bouchard-Taylor.
Mistake.
***
When my colleague Vincent Marissal told me this story niqab, I told myself: "Oh no! yet the debate on reasonable accommodation!" I already saw the defenders of secularism rigid hands on deck to require the adoption of a law banning the full veil in public.
The France wanted to adopt such a law. Although the vast majority of French MPs are against the niqab and the burqa, they have recoiled from the idea of the ban. How to apply the law? By giving tickets to women who go around in burqas in the streets?
Who wants to have a policy of the niqab? A bit obnoxious, not to a country that prides itself on being democratic?
In Canada, the reality is different. A law is unthinkable, because "it would clearly be against the Charter of Rights, which guarantees freedom of religion," said the lawyer Pascale Fournier, a professor at the University of Ottawa.
Unnecessary, therefore, to go to Supreme Court. It has nothing to do with our time and our money.
???
A teacher or a lawyer might wear a headscarf that leaves the face uncovered without endangering the secular character of the school or court. With the burqa, we fall into another universe.
Someone in authority should not wear the full veil, because it is a strong symbol of inequality between men and women, like it or not Muslims.
By cons, secular society is not threatened because a woman is walking down the street or the subway with a burqa. Anyway, they are only a handful to wear the full veil. It does still not pass legislation to fifty women are often poor and isolated.
The issue of reasonable accommodation can not be resolved with legislation that would trace a line clear. It will always be the case by case basis.
The government can acquire the tools by creating, for example, a "board of harmonization" to assist institutions facing a complex problem of accommodation, as suggested by the Bouchard-Taylor commissioners.
If I were Jean Charest, I would go for the report of the commission in the back of the closet. Whether he likes it or not, the problem is far from settled.
Link
Labels: Arab World, Islam, Québec, Secularism
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 6:23 PM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]