Michael Den Tandt: Conservatives would be wise to call a truce in the culture wars

Minister Kenney’s attempt to explain more coherently the reasons for the ban on niqabs at citizenship ceremony and tone down some of the government rhetoric, led by the PM with an assist by Minister Alexander, among others:

Mr. Kenney then ventured a Q&A with Macleans‘ John Geddes, in which he provided the first thoughtful defence, that I am aware of, of his banning the niqab from citizenship ceremonies.

“Something politically correct Liberals don’t understand, which I do rather profoundly,” Mr. Kenney told Macleans, “is that the vast majority of new Canadians, including new Canadians of the Muslim faith, believe that there are certain important hallmarks of integration. They don’t believe that multiculturalism should be misconstrued as cultural relativism. They believe that multiculturalism should mean a positive regard for what’s best about people’s cultural and religious antecedents. But it should not mean a completely unquestioning acceptance of every cultural practice, especially those of an abhorrent nature.”

Mr. Kenney continued: “I can tell you that the vast majority of Muslims that I’ve spoken with strongly supported my decision in 2010 to state what I thought was axiomatic that a public citizenship ceremony had to be performed publicly.”

So there you have it; the crux, about which reasonable people may disagree. Absent from Mr. Kenney’s construction was the overreach — whether it be Prime Minister Stephen Harper thundering that Islamic culture is “anti-women,” to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander’s earlier conflation of the niqab and the hijab or headscarf — that have opened the Conservatives up anew to the hoary old charge that they are anti-immigrant.

Michael Den Tandt: Conservatives would be wise to call a truce in the culture wars