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Niqab ban harkens back to the dark days of Duplessis

Our attitudes haven't changed much from when we locked up Witnesses

By Paul Waters - The handful of Quebec women who insist on wearing niqabs have done us all a service by unveiling just how weak-kneed and fragile is our commitment to personal liberty and religious freedom. In fact, watching all the parties in the National Assembly gang up on a couple of dozen women reveals that in many ways, Quebec hasn't evolved much since the dark days of Maurice Duplessis. ...

Tout le monde, il est beau...

Quebec's veil law is a slap in the face to Muslim women

The bill is insulting, and dismisses Muslims as sub-human

By SHAHINA SIDDIQUI - I have been reading in horror and sometimes nervous laughter the many tirades against the face veil that a tiny number of Canadian Muslim women wear in public. The arguments against the niqab range from the despicable to the ridiculous. Read the blogs or comments in major newspapers in Canada and you would think that we live in the most bigoted, intolerant nation in the w...

Quebec shows the way


Tarek Fatah - In a bill that could soon become law, Quebec will refuse all government services, including education and non-emergency health care, to Muslim women wearing face masks (know...

We've fallen short of our ideals on rights


Exactly 50 years ago this summer Prime Minister John Diefenbaker gave Canada a Bill of Rights, a law which "recognized and declared" a range of "human rights and fundamental freedoms." Last week's news stories about Quebec's Bill 94, and about U.S. shock pundit Ann Coulter, are a sad reminder of how far we have slipped since then. On July 1 1960, proposing his Bill of Rights in Parliament, Diefenbaker c...

Canada anglais et Québec sur la même longueur d'onde...


Ce qui, avouons-le, n'arrive pas très souvent. Mais ce qui, dans ce cas-ci, ne me surprend aucunement. Donc, ce samedi, un sondage pancanadien Angus Reid/The Gazette, montrait que plus de 80% des Canadie...

Quelle mauvaise foi!!! La détestation rend fou...

Quebec's witch hunt against niqabi minority


In Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, police or vigilante militias crack down on women not wearing the niqab or the burqa. In Quebec, authorities want to crack down on women who do.

Red flag on niqab ban

bill 94; Don't intrude on rights, experts warn

By MARIAN SCOTT, KEVIN DOUGHERTY and PHILIP AUTHIER of The Gazette - The Quebec ban on face coverings such as the niqab (above) or burqa also applies to the entire edu...

Unreasoning anxiety elevated to law


Canada is a multicultural country, although not every person who lives here believes in multiculturalism. Some say it encourages newcomers to cling to the values and mores they left behind. When people wear clothing or artifacts that announce their religion or ethnicity, this can be interpreted as a lack of commitment to Canada. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but generally speaking our laws and jurisprudence ...

Legislating xenophobia


Chris Selley - I’m not quite sure what Quebec’s new Bill 94 means, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean what Premier Jean Charest and Immigration Minister Yolande James are saying it means. Here’s Ms. James: “To work in the Quebec public service or to receive the services of the Quebec state, your face has to be uncovered.” Here’s Mr. Charest: “Two words: Uncovered face. The principle is clear.”...

Quebec unvils its own 'fragility'


Graeme Hamilton, National Post - Files Of 146,000 people served in health-insurance board offices in Montreal and Quebec City in 2008-09, 10 were veiled. MONTREAL - A reader of Montreal newspapers could easily get the impression that the city's streets are teeming with fully veiled Muslims. Photos of niqab-wearing women, their eyes visible through a narrow slit in their head-coverings, are freq...

Niqab nonsense


Is the province of Quebec really proposing a law that could prevent Muslim women from getting medical treatment if they refuse to uncover their faces? That is one of the possible scenarios in the misguided anti-niqab bill announced by Quebec premier Jean Charest this week. The proposed law is a clumsy, politically-charged hammer. The niqab issue, however, is one that demands flexibility and common sense -- no...

Quebec's niqab ban sets up a legal showdown

Experts say new law forbidding wearing of Muslim headdress could violate Charter of Rights

Jacquie McNish and Sarah Boesveld - Quebec could be heading for a human rights showdown if it proceeds with a proposed law to ban women from wearing face-covering veils on government premises, constitutional experts warn. "This legislation will probably be considered a breach of human rights," said Lorraine Weinrib, a leading constitutional expert and professor with the University of Toronto's law scho...

Comme un courant anti-Québec


Le fond de vérité à propos de l'achat d'Énergie Nouveau-Brunswick par Hydro-Québec, c'est que cette transaction avortée a provoqué dans les derniers mois des craintes légitimes dans la population de cette province, mais aussi un fort courant anti-Québec de Saint-Jean de Terre-Neuve à Toronto. Et même plus loin, vers l'Ouest.

Tempest in a niqab

What Naema Ahmed’s expulsion from a French class really shows

by Martin Patriquin UPDATE: The Quebec government tabled a bill Wednesday requiring faces to be in plain view when obtaining or delivering government services. In August 2009, Naema Ahmed, a pharmacist, mother ...

Gilles Duceppe sur la défensive


Le niqab des solitudes

Comment expliquer les réactions si différentes au Québec et dans le reste du pays à propos du voile de Naema Ahmed?

Hélène Buzzetti - Ottawa — Le niqab révèle autant qu'il cache. Ce voile islamique intégral, dont le port par une femme égyptienne dans son cours de francisation a provoqué une tempête, a mis en lumière une divergence profonde ...

Multiculturalism

Quebec's view on niqab creates fault line

English-speaking Canada assails province's opposition to headwear; Quebeckers respond with cries of ‘marshmallow multiculturalism'

“Public debate in Quebec is vigorous, and the level of the debate is complex. On diversity, the debate is very poor in Canada. It’s marshmallow multiculturalism. You’re okay, I’m okay,” she said. “It’s tolerance, but it’s very soft and will face its own challenges at some point.”

Muslim women don't need saving from themselves (McGill Tribune)


Muslim women don’t need saving from themselves By Sheetal Pathak Published: Mar 18 Accommodation is a word with baggage in Quebec. In 2007, the public sphere was overtaken by debates about what accounts for reasonable and unreasonable accommodation. Who were w...

Two solitudes and the niqab

There's a French version and an English version to this story – and they're completely different

The case of Naema Ahmed, the niqab-wearing woman who was expelled from a French-language class in Montreal, has turned into a cause célèbre across the country. It is ...

Pas de «Talibans» au Québec...


Comme quoi, heureusement, il y a des choses qui ne passent tout simplement pas. Par exemple, de faire comparer la décision du gouvernement du ...

Le Québec et le niqab - Comme des talibans ?

L'opinion du Globe and Mail ne fait pas l'unanimité dans la presse du ROC

Chose certaine, dans l'affaire du cégep Saint-Laurent, s'il y a un quasi-consensus au Québec pour approuver la façon dont le gouvernement a traité l'affaire, au Canada anglais deux camps à peu près égaux ont émergé cette semaine.

Le voile de la xénophobie


Une femme portant le niqab, ce voile noir qui masque le visage à l'exception des yeux, se voit exclue d'un cours de français et, par le fait même, déclenche une polémique intéressante qui ouvre la porte à des dérives regrettables du genre: «Qu'on les retourne d'où ils viennent!», comme le disait un commentateur au sujet d'un article du Devoir paru cette semaine. La Semaine d'action contre le racisme (du 21 au 28 ...

Intolerant intrusion


There obviously need to be some limits on the accommodation of religious and cultural minorities. Female genital mutilation is one example. Child marriage is another. But the case of Naema Ahmed is not about accommodation at all - it is about the limits of tolerance, and in Quebec it is that which is proving to be unreasonable. The Egyptian-born Ms. Ahmed was twice expelled from a French-language class for immigrant...

Just what Quebec needs: a dress code


Thanks to Immigration Minister Yolande James, we now have a clearer idea of what constitutes those "Quebec values" to which we all - immigrant and native-born alike - are supposed to adhere. And it turns out that personal liberty, freedom of religion, and a willingness to embrace the French language do not enjoy the primacy of place we might have expected. A bare face apparently trumps all those desirable val...

<i>Dressed to kill</i>, l’oreille collée sur la radio poubelle !

Personne n’a encore analysé la relation trouble entre le délire meurtrier du caporal et la radio poubelle de Québec.

La manière d’aborder la radio poubelle c’est de la considérer comme un phénomène de socio-pathologie qui peut influencer des esprits faibles et les amener à déraper dangereusement, et commettre l’irréparable. Le cas extrême est celui du caporal Lortie : Dress to kill. Quelle fut sa relation trouble avec la radio poubelle? Le psychiatre qui a évalué Lortie a dit qu’il entendait la voix de Dieu, en fait c’éta...

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