Nenshi and ‘people like him’ are the ones politicizing niqab issue, Jason Kenney says (with a straight face)

2015/10/03 Leave a comment

The back and forth between Calgary Mayor Nenshi and senior Minister Jason Kenney on the politicization of the niqab, starting with Nenshi (who I think has it nailed):

Stephen Harper is playing a “dangerous” political game with his position on the niqab and “dog whistle politics” when he speaks about the Syrian refugee crisis, said Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

In an interview on SiriusXM’s Everything is Political, Nenshi told Evan Solomon that Harper’s decision to challenge the Federal Court of Appeal decision over the ability of a woman to wear a niqab during citizenship ceremonies is being done merely in the service of scoring political points.

“This is unbelievably dangerous stuff,” Nenshi said. “I spoke with a group of mayors and councillors from all over Alberta last week, and in my speech with all of these people from small town Alberta, I stood up and said this is disgusting and it is time for us to say stop it—to say this is enough,” Nenshi said.

He called out the Conservatives’ request for stay on the Federal Court of Appeal decision on the niqab. “They are spending millions of millions of dollars of yours and my money on what is an unwinable appeal in order to appeal to a certain political segment because they think the polls say that most people don’t want this,”  Nenshi said.

Nenshi was complimentary on the stances both Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau have taken on the issue.

Source: Nenshi’s harsh words for Harper – Macleans.ca

Hard to imagine him saying this with a straight face as he knows better (no matter how seriously he believes in the substance of the Government’s position):

But Kenney, the Conservative cabinet minister from Calgary who introduced the niqab ban, denied the Tories are seeking to gain political advantage from the issue.

“If anything’s dangerous, it would be legitimizing a medieval tribal custom that treats women as property rather than people,” Kenney, currently running for re-election in Calgary Midnapore, said in an interview Thursday.

“It seems to me that it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it. I don’t think this should be an issue of contention.”

The Conservatives point to surveys showing public support for banning the niqab in citizenship ceremonies and they have jumped in the polls since the issue became prominent during the campaign, which will see voters cast their ballots on Oct. 19.

Kenney, who is currently defence minister, said Nenshi’s comments would have no impact on the campaign, either nationally or in Calgary.

And he said it would have no affect on his working relationship with Calgary’s mayor moving forward.

“We’re all used to Naheed’s running social commentary on everything. That’s nothing new,” said Kenney.

Source: Nenshi and ‘people like him’ are the ones politicizing niqab issue, Jason Kenney says

Filed under Admissability, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Stephen Harper writes open letter to Canada’s ‘world-class public service’ in order to correct ‘misinformation’ | National Post

2015/10/03 1 Comment

This is funny and is likely not targeted at public service voters:

After publicly taking swipes on the campaign trail at bureaucrats in Ottawa, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives say they are the party to best protect the interests of federal public servants and are proud of Canada’s “world-class public service.”

Harper released an open letter Thursday to Canada’s public service that thanks them for their hard work on implementing government policies and cutting red tape, but also tries to correct “misinformation” he says is being spread by opposition parties and unions about the government’s plans on sick leave and pensions.

With Conservatives facing tough challenges in a number of Ottawa-area constituencies – including John Baird’s former riding of Ottawa West-Nepean – the Tories put on a full-court press Thursday to try to solidify the support of voters in the National Capital Region and combat recent announcements from the NDP and Liberals about their commitments to the public service.

Unfortunately, in the current election context, misleading statements are being made about certain issues that matter to you and your families, including sick leave and pension entitlements

Senior Ottawa Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, flanked by several Ottawa-area Conservative candidates, Thursday unveiled Harper’s letter to the public service and try to reassure bureaucrats that they have nothing to fear should the Conservatives win another mandate.

Harper, in his two-page letter, lauded the work of federal bureaucrats in Ottawa and elsewhere.

“Canadians are well-served by our world-class public service, and I have seen this first-hand as Prime Minister. During our time in Government, we have worked with you to ensure your efforts are focused on the things that matter most to Canadians, and to create a healthier workplace where good work is recognized, red tape is removed, and benefits meet real needs,” Harper says in the open letter.

“Unfortunately, in the current election context, misleading statements are being made about certain issues that matter to you and your families, including sick leave and pension entitlements.”

Source: Stephen Harper writes open letter to Canada’s ‘world-class public service’ in order to correct ‘misinformation’ | National Post

Full text of the letter: Open letter 2[1]

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Herbert Grubel: Canada should not open its doors to the world

2015/10/03 Leave a comment

The contrary view to Corcoran (Terence Corcoran: Open our doors to the world). The Grady/Grubel study he refers to have been effectively countered by Pendakur (Fiscal Effects of Immigrants in Canada, Fiscal Effects of Immigrants in Canada):

Fifth, the most important difference between modern Canada and when previous waves of immigrants entered this country is the existence of the welfare state. In the absence of its universal social benefits in the past, only healthy immigrants with strong work ethics, drive and skills came to Canada. Under present conditions, potentially many immigrants would not possess these qualities and impose heavy fiscal burdens on our welfare programs and ultimately bankrupt them. It is for this reason that Milton Friedman, one of the world’s most ardent advocates for human and economic freedom concluded that, “The welfare state and free immigration are incompatible.”

The problem identified by Friedman has been quantified in a study by myself and Patrick Grady, in which we found that the average incomes and tax payments of recent immigrants (documented by Statistics Canada) are much lower than those of the average Canadian and that the immigrants consume roughly the same amount of government services as the average Canadian. The difference between the taxes paid and services consumed by the average recent immigrant equals about $6,000 annually. Given the total number of these immigrants, the annual fiscal burden on Canadian taxpayers comes to about $30 billion.

Sixth, immigrants in large numbers cause a substantial redistribution of income, decreasing the incomes of workers and increasing the income of employers. Drawing on the basic results of a study of the redistribution effect in the United States by Harvard University Professor of Economics George Borjas, in Canada the decrease of the annual income of labour is $40 billion and the gain of employers is $43.5 billion, resulting in a net gain of $3.5 billion for the latter. This gain is called the immigration effect and is due to increased opportunities to trade.

Advocates for free immigration make much of this gain but the data show that it is very small relative to the redistribution of income. These advocates also laud the increase in Canada’s aggregate national income resulting from the immigrants’ economic activities. However, all of this increase accrues to the immigrants in the form of wages, lowers per capita incomes and is accompanied by greater congestion and pollution in metropolitan areas. Increased demand for and cost of housing reduces the ability of young Canadians to own homes and start families, creating frictions between generations.

The economic and social costs just discussed do not make the case against all immigration but make the case for the selection of immigrants with prospects for economic success that are high enough to eliminate the fiscal burden and the admission of immigrants in numbers small enough to prevent the risk of creating the substantial redistribution of income, the establishment of ethnic enclaves, the threat of jihadist terror and the problems associated with substantial and rapid population increases.

In the context of the current debate over policies for the admission of refugees from the Middle East, it is important for all Canadians that these considerations are given proper weight in the selection of immigrants and decisions about their numbers.

Source: Herbert Grubel: Canada should not open its doors to the world

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

Sex-education protests give birth to new private schools in Toronto

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

Hard to see that this will improve the economic and social outcomes of these communities, some of which are struggling (see Toronto school board sets higher improvement targets for students based on race, sexual orientation), not to mention the broader issue of integration into a diverse society:

In a strip mall in northwestern Toronto, behind a blank storefront, old wooden desks are lined up in rows of three. At 3 p.m., children pour into the parking lot carrying books, while a little girl and boy stay behind at their desks, giggling and copying vocabulary from a blackboard while they wait to be picked up.

The school opened in September and has 30 students. Their six teachers lead Somalian and Arabic language lessons on top of the regular curriculum, plus Islamic studies.

They’re poorly paid, as tuition is only $250 monthly per student. But there’s a waiting list of more than 200 and the teachers have been promised that the school will balloon, along with their salaries, as soon as its directors can find a bigger space.

Called Rauf Academy, it is one of a handful of similar brand-new schools in the Toronto area, a legacy of parental anger over Ontario’s new sex-ed lessons that promises to outlive this year’s protests, such as a day of mass absences planned for Thursday.

“We heard the rumblings that a lot of parents are going to remove the kids, so we said, well, that might give us the kick-start, the momentum we need,” said Rauf Academy’s director, Yacoob Bayat.

His staff count two other homegrown schools nearby in Etobicoke, and another school director says two more opened their doors in Mississauga a month ago.

The sex-ed curriculum took effect in September, although its lessons won’t be taught in Toronto schools until later this year. Mr. Bayat said the province made another mistake by not reaching out to protesting parents, leaving them feeling there would be no meaningful religious accommodation.

Islamic schools have long gotten their starts in Toronto with bare-bones operations like this one. But Mr. Bayat and other school leaders say their ultimate goal is to create an alternative for Muslim families, a community-funded system of free education. So far 11 schools are working together as an informal board.

“As crazy as it sounds, maybe this was a good thing. Maybe this is what the community needed to galvanize and to do something,” said Mr. Bayat, a car mechanic originally from South Africa. “Communities in general, they know we’ve got a problem, but unless somebody takes the lead, nobody really does anything.”

Others in Toronto’s Muslim community say they don’t want parents to lose sight of the benefits of regular public education.

“The level of quality is really high,” said Rabea Murtaza, a mother and college teacher who is a member of a two groups supporting the new curriculum. “And if you walk away, you lose the opportunity to make any difference at all.”

Source: Sex-education protests give birth to new private schools in Toronto – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism

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

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

EU States Fail to Record Anti-Semitism as Incidents Increase

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

A reminder of the importance of collecting reliable, and to the extent possible, consistent data.

The StatsCan Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2012 is such an example, particularly useful given the inter-group comparisons by ethnicity and religion, and is more objective than statistics collected by individual groups.

A report published Wednesday by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) in Vienna finds that anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise throughout Europe, but the virtual absence of proper data collection and “gross under-reporting” make it difficult to trace the trend accurately.

“Despite the serious negative consequences of anti-Semitism for Jewish populations in particular, as the FRA’s relevant survey showed … evidence collected by FRA consistently shows that few EU Member States operate official data collection mechanisms that record antisemitic incidents in any great detail,” the report says. It points out that “this lack of systematic data collection contributes to gross underreporting of the nature and characteristics of anti-Semitic incidents that occur in the EU. It also limits the ability of policy makers and other relevant stakeholders at national and international levels to take measures and implement courses of action to combat antisemitism effectively and decisively, and to assess the effectiveness of existing policies. Incidents that are not reported are also not investigated and prosecuted, allowing offenders to think that they can carry out such attacks with relative impunity.”

But even where data do exist, according to the report, “they are generally not comparable, not least because they are collected using different methodologies and sources across EU Member States. Furthermore, while official data collection systems are generally based on police records and/or criminal justice data, authorities do not always categorize incidents motivated by anti-Semitism under that heading.”

Source: The Jewish Press » » Report: EU States Fail to Record Anti-Semitism as Incidents Increase

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Tories move to strip citizenship from Canadian-born terrorist

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

So what this means, is that someone born in Canada, whose radicalization happened in this country, can have their citizenship revoked (pending the court challenge).

The Harper government is attempting to revoke the citizenship of a convicted terrorist who was born and raised in Canada, Maclean’s has learned—a first under a controversial new law that has triggered intense debate during the election campaign.

Saad Gaya, 27, is believed to be the only Canadian-born citizen (terrorist or not) to ever face the prospect of being stripped of his citizenship. Until now, there was no legal mechanism to undo what has long been considered an irreversible birthright.

A member of the so-called “Toronto 18,” Gaya pleaded guilty to his role in an al-Qaeda-inspired bomb plot and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Although he was born in Montreal and grew up in Oakville, Ont., the Tories say recently enacted legislation provides the power to rescind Gaya’s citizenship because they believe he is a dual national of Pakistan—by virtue of the fact his parents, who immigrated to Ontario more than three decades ago, were born there.

Gaya, who has never lived in Pakistan, has launched a Charter challenge in Federal Court, arguing that the government’s revocation system amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” and could have “a sufficiently severe psychological and social impact.”

“For many individuals captured by the new revocation provisions and who would now face deportation, including the Applicant, their other nationality derives from a country with which they have no meaningful connection, have little or no familiarity with the language or culture, and have no family or other support network,” reads Gaya’s court filing, submitted Sept. 18. “The Applicant was born and grew up in Canada. His family is in Canada and has been since before he was born.”

That Saad Gaya was a terrorist is not in dispute. A former honours student at Hamilton’s McMaster University, he confessed to participating in a 2006 conspiracy to detonate bombs in southern Ontario in retaliation for Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan. Although a judge concluded he was not the plot’s driving force, he was a loyal, willing underling who followed every order; the day he was arrested (June 2, 2006), police videotaped him at a north Toronto warehouse unloading what he believed to be a truckload of explosive fertilizer.

Gaya himself described his criminal behaviour as “shameful,” “politically naïve,” and “irrational.”

Yet despite his undeniable guilt, the Tories’ push to revoke Gaya’s citizenship presents an uncomfortable (and potentially unconstitutional) possibility: that a person born in Canada could lose his Canadian status and be deported to a country he’s never known—all because his parents were born there and, by extension, passed their dual nationality onto him.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Tories move to strip citizenship from Canadian-born terrorist

And in giving credence to the slippery slope argument, and reinforcing the wedge politics, the PM suggests expanding this to other crimes:

A re-elected Conservative government might look to strip dual citizens of their Canadian citizenship if they commit other heinous crimes, Stephen Harper said in a radio interview Wednesday.

Harper was on The Andrew Lawton Show to talk about Bill C-24, a new law the Tories passed this spring that strips dual citizens convicted of terrorism of their Canadian citizenship.

Lawton asked Harper if he might strip other dual citizens in the future if convicted of other crimes, giving by way of example a serial killer, a rapist or someone who did something to children.

“Well, you know, obviously we can look at options into the future,” Harper responded.

“The reason we did this expansion… to terrorists and treason offences really is consistent with the way the law has always worked. You know we’ve been able to revoke citizenship, for example, for war criminals. So it is really been in cases where the person’s criminal acts are not just vile, but they actually demonstrate that the person has no loyalty of any kind to the country or its values.”

Harper said he couldn’t understand why Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair believe C-24 demeans Canadian citizenship.

“I think most Canadians, whether they are immigrants or other Canadians, understand that what demeans Canadian citizenship would be to allow war criminals and convicted terrorists and people who are actually out to destroy and defame our country to keep their citizenship,” Harper said. “They have a position that is frankly indefensible to virtually all Canadians.”

Bill C-24: Harper Says Tories May Consider Stripping Other Criminals Of Citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, Revocation Tagged with ,

Court won’t block rollout of new screening process for public service | Ottawa Citizen

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

While I understand the Court’s reasoning with respect to fingerprinting, credit and criminal checks, as these are objective measures, I am less convinced by the need for sweeping searches of social media, given the greater degree of subjectivity in assessing security risks (e.g., while advocating for ISIS is an easy one, what about environmental activism, criticism of government policies etc).

Given that new recruits will invariably be digital natives, with rich social media histories, there will invariably be less clear cases. The old adage remains, ‘let he or she who is without sin,’ as most new employees will likely have some sharing that in retrospect was not wise:

The Federal Court has refused to stop the rollout of a new security screening process for Canada’s public servants, which includes fingerprinting, credit and criminal checks and sweeping searches of social media as the minimum clearance needed for the job.

The decision was a setback for the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which had sought an injunction to partly halt the implementation of the process, which is supposed to be fully operational by October 2017.

The union is appealing the decision.

In her decision, Federal Court Judge Catherine Kane said the union raised a “serious issue” but failed to prove the key tests needed for an injunction. She said the union didn’t provide “concrete evidence” of “irreparable harm” and offered only “speculative assertions” that the public interest would be harmed by proceeding.

“The applicants have raised one or more serious issues but have not established with any non-speculative evidence that any one of its members will suffer irreparable harm in the interim period,” Kane wrote.

The judge, however, found that the government would face “irreparable harm” if it had to halt the process and such a delay would not be in the public interest in ensuring Canada’s national security.

“There is also a public interest in maintaining international relations and in maintaining the trust and confidence of Canadians in the government employees who administer and deliver programs and services and have access to a wide range of information from and about citizens,” Kane wrote.

“The public has an interest in ensuring that government employees who handle their information are properly screened.”

PIPSC originally filed a legal challenge alleging that the new screening process is unconstitutional and violates the Privacy Act. That case has not yet been heard.

Meanwhile, it sought an injunction to stop public servants from the “irreparable harm” of turning over all kinds of personal and sensitive information before that court decision is rendered. It argued that once information is revealed and privacy is lost, it can’t be regained.

Departments have until October 2017 to implement the new security standard, which replaced a 20-year-old standard. Implementation coincidentally began days before the killing of a Canadian soldier in Quebec and the shooting of reservist Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, which threw the government into a heightened security crisis.

Like the old policy, the new security protocol requires a basic reliability status and an enhanced reliability status. There is also a secret and top-secret security clearance.

PIPSC is objecting to the amount of information the government will be collecting for the “basic reliability status” — the minimum standard of screening for any public service job — arguing that the type of information required is unreasonable, unnecessary and unjustified.

The institute says that credit and criminal checks with fingerprinting and open-source searches are invasive and not necessary for most ordinary employees who don’t work in intelligence and security.

It argued the screening measures force employees to reveal details about their lifestyle and personal choices. They violate “reasonable” expectations of privacy and “employees shouldn’t have to trade off privacy rights” to become employees.

The union wanted the government to go back to the old standard for those who don’t need “enhanced reliability status” until the court decides on its constitutional challenge.

The government, however, argued the overhaul was necessary because the old one didn’t live up to the security standards of Canada’s allies. Halting screening for basic reliability would be confusing and unworkable because it’s the base level all employees would have to meet first.

The government has been screening employees since the 1940s, but a standard was not introduced until 1994. The government argued it had to modernize the standard to keep up with technology changes, security threats and to “maintain trust in government by citizens, stakeholders and other foreign governments.”

The government also noted that credit and criminal checks, including fingerprinting, aren’t new and were previously done on a case-by-case basis.

The government said that old policy had already been rescinded so there would be a big gap in screening which would undermine Canada’s relationship with its allies and their confidence in Canada’s security.

In her ruling, Kane said the basic reliability status was the foundation for all security clearances, and reverting to the previous standard would be “impractical, inefficient, costly and would create inconsistency, confusion, gaps in security screening pending the determination of the judicial review.”

She said government has a responsibility and authority to make policy to screen its employees and contractors to “ensure proper administration of government.”

“Modernization of the standard is in the public interest. The advances of technology cannot be ignored,” she wrote.

“On the one hand, technology that allows broad access to networks of information and collaborative work environments has many benefits but, on the other hand, permits a wider range of people to access information they otherwise had no access to and no need to access. “

She said drawing that line between employees’ privacy and ensuring that government programs operate securely “is not the role of the court on this motion.”

 Source: Court won’t block rollout of new screening process for public service | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Religious Minorities in the Public Service: What the data tells us

2015/10/01 Leave a comment

Public_Administration_-_Religious_Minorities_-_Core_Public_AdminTo complement the employment equity analysis in my book Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote (see here), I applied the same methodology using NHS data for religious minorities.

This was prompted in part by Minister Clement’s comment that hijabs and niqabs “are frequently worn” in the public service and that “I’m sure we have employees in the public sector who wear a niqab – I’m sure we do.”

The full series of charts, tables  and related analysis are found here.

The main conclusions:

Policy makers at all government levels should complement their internal employment equity data with the NHS to assess whether there are issues with respect to particular groups. This analysis of religious and visible minority data indicates that there is variation among groups, and this needs to be considered as part of employment equity strategies and programs. The five-year frequency of this NHS data also provides a longer-term view of employment equity trends than the annual government reports, which tend to focus on year-to-year changes.
Given overall demographic trends, the percentage of newer religious minorities in government will likely continue to increase. While most members of religious minorities may not need or request accommodation, the more traditional members will, and it is likely that the number and type of requests will increase.
Getting back to Minister Clement’s statement, while we know that some 8,800 Canadian Muslims work for the federal government (47 percent women), we do not have any information regarding their religiosity and the extent to which deeper religiosity is reflected in men’s facial hair or women’s head coverings (which do not mean identical religiosity, beliefs or interpretations of the respective religions). Nor do we have such information regarding other religions (e.g., Canadian Jewish public servants wearing the kippa, or Canadian Sikh public servants wearing turbans and carrying the kirpan). Nor to my knowledge is there any publicly available summary of religious accommodation requests.
We may not have hard numbers to back his assertion that “we have employees in the public sector who wear a niqab.” However, any public servant who wished to wear a niqab would provoke considerable bureaucratic discussion regarding whether this could be accommodated. That no such discussion has come to light suggests that there are no such cases at the federal level.
At some time, however, it is likely that someone will request such an accommodation (just as voting, citizenship and judicial processes have shown). While some would argue that such a request should be accommodated, this would not be healthy to an integrated workplace and society given the degree to which the face provides needed cues to interpret words.
In the interim, the public service may wish to consider collecting and analyzing data related to accommodation requests in core public administration to complement employment equity reporting and strengthen the current framework by providing a more comprehensive and consistent evidence base.

 

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Barbara Kay: Ten reasons to ban the niqab — in public

2015/10/01 Leave a comment

Barbara Kay captures the popular view, but one that ignores the rights dimension (which distinguishes us from Saudi Arabia) and that wearing the niqab is not necessarily political. Her arguments, which capture the popular view, are simplistic and more rhetorical than grounded (and in some cases, using the same logic, would impact upon other religious practice or clothing).

That being said, discomfort over the niqab is real and justified.

When working on multiculturalism issues in 2008 when this issue came up (Quebec), I asked my staff, generally disposed to accommodation, whether they would feel comfortable with a niqab-wearing woman in the team. Silence!

  1. The niqab is not a religious obligation, it is, according to many Islamic scholars, a regional custom. But even in Saudi Arabia, where it is considered a religious obligation, it is removed by women participating in the hajj. Why must Canada be more niqab-consistent than Saudi Arabia?
  2. The niqab is indecent. Beyond “offence,” which can be cognitively managed, decency standards go to the heart of our psychological well-being in society, and is beyond our cognitive control. Our sense of decency is what regulates our comfort zone amongst strangers. Decency standards are not imposed by a charter, but spring up organically in all societies under a variety of historical and cultural influences. Decency standards differ amongst societies and shift with time, but the when-in-Rome principle is universally accepted by reasonable people.
  3. Decency here resides in the perceived broad middle of a spectrum. Just as full nakedness provokes extreme discomfort in most Canadians, so does full cover. That full cover is almost invariably a Muslim custom is immaterial to those of us who find it indecent. (So enough, please, with the “Islamophobia” shtick.)
  4. Double standards: it is inconceivable that we would allow men to mask themselves in civic interaction, even if they considered it a religious obligation, because masked men are threatening to women (and other men). We should not permit to women what we would not permit to men.
  5. The only societies that mandate the niqab as a social norm are those in which women are considered sexual chattel with virtually no rights. Willed indifference to the niqab is more than tolerance; it is an endorsement of gender-rights relativism in our national home — equality for our women, inferior status for theirs.
  6. The editorial notes that “only a tiny minority of women” opt to wear the niqab. This is precisely why it should be regulated now, when it is enforceable, not when potentially thousands of women adopt it and it is unenforceable.
  7. Some women wearing the niqab have had it imposed on them against their will. What is the lesser evil: that all women should be forced to show us their faces while interacting with us in the public sector, or that we facilitate the lifelong misery of voiceless women? We should err on the side of support for vulnerable women yearning to fully integrate into Canadian life.
  8. The niqab is a gross insult to Canadian men, as it suggests they require a physical barrier to prevent lascivious thoughts or behaviour.
  9. The niqab is a gross insult to uncovered women, suggesting their “immodesty” invites sexual attention.
  10. In the West, the niqab is often a political statement, a proud sign of militant Islamist activism. “Put on your niqab!” cried Hezbollah supporter Yvonne Ridley at a Montreal Canadian Islamic Congress fundraiser in 2007. It wasn’t modesty she was encouraging, but participation in the stealth jihad.

The niqab differs from other fashion accessories that promote faith and modesty like the kippah or hijab, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. The arc of contemporary Islamism, still in its ascendancy, frightens us. Our alleged “moral panic” is actually moral revulsion. When a symbol comes with this much baggage, libertarian rigidity in its support looks less like principled idealism and more like cultural self-sabotage. No leader who grasps and uproots this nettle need feel ashamed. True patriot love demands nothing less.

Source: Barbara Kay: Ten reasons to ban the niqab — in public | National Post

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →