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 don’t think this law bans all hijab but just the niqab which is the one that also covers the face and is generally seen as fundamentalist in most Muslim countries. The bill itself says face and not head covering. Not to say that this entire bill isn’t driven by some level of xenophobia (Christian symbols and holidays are seen as heritage/culture while non-Christian ones are seen purely as religious etc)
Exactly – these items of clothing are not even religious, they are cultural! Cultural cleansing under the cover of state secularism.
Most articles spefically mention hijabs even though the word face keeps getting mentioned which is indeed strange. Assuming the ban is all religious symbols and not only face veils it would include the Hijab.
The reporting in French I saw said “voile integral” which is niqab/burqa and I checked the bill itself and it just said face covering (excluding medical purposes)