Andrew Coyne: To uncover or not to uncover — why the niqab issue is ridiculous
2015/10/02 1 Comment
Hard to argue his logic. But whether logic will carry the day against emotion and wedge politics is another matter:
Is accepting the right of others to adhere to a religious doctrine and style of dress that others find distressing or demeaning to women an example of the dreaded cultural relativism? No, it is an example of pluralism. What’s the difference? Relativism holds that truth does not exist; pluralism, that there is such a thing as truth, but that none of us is in automatic or absolute possession of it.
A liberal society is pluralist, not relativist. It allows each of us to pursue our vision of the good life, to hold and espouse our ideals of what is just, without prejudice to the notion that goodness and justice exist: indeed, precisely so that we may more nearly approach them as a society. Neither is a liberal society incompatible with the idea of cultural norms: beliefs that are commonly shared, practices that are commonly observed. It draws the line only at enforcing these norms upon the unwilling.
It would be one thing if the women who insist on their right to wear the niqab at the citizenship ceremony, to the point of going to court to defend it, were in fact being forced to wear it. But there is no evidence of this: quite the contrary. Far from meek and submissive, they give every sign of being quite obstreperously independent, rock-ribbed individualists, willing to assert their rights even in the face of a hostile majority.
We talk a lot about Canadian values in this debate. I am inclined to think that, in their own way, it is the niqabistes who best embody those values. In their ornery unwillingness to bend to others’ sensitivities, in their insistence on going their own way on a matter of principle, those women are in the finest Canadian tradition of hellraising. I think we ought to let them be.
Source: Andrew Coyne: To uncover or not to uncover — why the niqab issue is ridiculous
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
I think Andrew Coyne is right in principle and in his conclusion. As Justin Trudeau said, “The State should not dictate what women are to wear.” And the issue is certainly being exploited by Harper as a “wedge issue” and as an effort to promote a “cultural war” in Canada.
On the other hand, I think a little more imagination might be exercised as regards the history of those who object to the niqab, to their fears, and to the reason for those fears.
In Quebec, as in France, religion often did stand for the repression of women’s rights – and for anti-Semitism and pro-Fascism among other things – and a long battle, which left a great many collective and individual scars, was needed to throw off the tyranny of repressive and even tyrannical religious beliefs.
We, in the English-speaking world, are rather ignorant of and insensitive to this issue. Personally I find the niqab stands for things for which I have an extreme dislike, and I too am afraid of the creeping totalitarian, moralizing, patriarchal, anti-hedonistic, and anti-democratic obscurantist forces in our society, often represented by such symbols as the niqab, but not it alone. A Muslim Toronto taxi driver, after we had dropped off my date (a very articulate woman), gave me a lecture on how “you Canadians” are too easy on your women, give them too much freedom, let them go out alone.”
So by evoking liberty and individual feistiness and principles of freedom Andrew Coyne is being, perhaps, a bit abstract and ahistorical, as well as ignoring some real problems with different ‘values”.
And he is, implicitly, representing as idiots people – particularly non-niqab wearing women – who are far from idiots. There are real concerns here; the clash of values is not a figment of Stephen Harper’s diabolic imagination. That said, if women want to wear the niqab let them. The best way to deflate an oppressive symbol is to expose it to the light of day.