Prejudice against Muslims higher than towards any other group in US, poll finds

2024/08/30 Leave a comment

Not too surprising given encampments and other Israel-Gaza protests:

Favourable attitudes towards Muslims among Americans have declined and public prejudice against them remains higher than any other religious, ethnic or racial group, a poll published by The Brookings Institution has found.

Released on Tuesday and conducted between 26 July and 1 August, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll (UMDCIP) consists of two tracks, one measuring the change in American public attitudes concerning Islam and Muslims and the second which studied prejudice towards racial, religious and ethnic groups – including Jews and Muslims.

Generally, favourable views of Muslims and Islam increased over the last year. The findings show a drop to 64 percent from 78 percent in comparison to 2022 regarding favourable views of Muslims, and a drop to 48 percent in favourable attitudes towards Islam.

Favourable views of Muslims dropped among both Democrats and Republicans, but the drop was starker among Republicans.

In February 2024, 52 percent of Republicans viewed Muslims favourably, but in July 2024, the figure dropped to 46 percent. For Democrats, the drop went from 83 percent in February to 80 percent in July.

The survey sampled 1,510 American adults with oversamples of 202 Blacks and 200 Hispanics.

Anti-Muslim versus anti-Jewish sentiment

Following Israel’s war on Gaza, there has been a dramatic increase in incidents of hate and prejudice against both Jews and Muslims globally.

Prejudice toward Jews and Judaism is included in the poll for the first time.

Among all respondents, favourable views of Muslims were at 64 percent and 48 percent for Islam while it stood at 86 percent for Jews and 77 percent for Judaism.

“The gap between attitudes toward people and religion is not uncommon and has been consistently found in our previous polling, particularly toward Muslims,” the poll says.

Another key factor is race. While only nine percent of white people view Jews as unfavourable, 37 percent of white people view Muslims as unfavourable. Among Black and Hispanic people, the difference is less stark, with 29 percent of Black people viewing Muslims as unfavourable, and 21 percent for Jews. For Hispanics, 33 percent view Muslims unfavourably, with 22 percent for Jews.

College education, familiarity and personal relationships with Jews and Muslims are significant contributing factors that lead to more favourable views towards both Jews and Muslims, according to the poll.

Generational gap

The poll shows that younger Americans have more favourable views towards Jews than Muslims overall, but there is a generational gap. Americans under 30 still have more favourable opinions of Muslims and Islam than Americans aged 30 and over.

While factors explaining this trend still need probing, the reason for the less favourable views of Jews among young people may be the fact that white people tend to have more favourable views of Jews than non-whites, although the share of white people among younger Americans is smaller.

Prejudice toward Muslims is also higher than other groups when it comes to their perceived contributions to American society, the poll says.

Polling shows that only one-third (37 percent) of Americans believe Muslims strengthen American society, while a majority of Americans say the same about every other ethnic, racial and religious group.

Young Americans (under 30) have identical views of the degree to which Muslims and Jews strengthen American society, but older Americans believe Jews (55 percent) contribute far more to American society than Muslims (32 percent).

The lowest figure is found among older Republican Americans, with only 21 percent believing Muslims contribute to American society.

Source: Prejudice against Muslims higher than towards any other group in US, poll finds

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Muslim, Jewish voters leaning away from the federal Liberals as Gaza war grinds on: poll

2024/05/17 Leave a comment

Hard to reconcile Muslim and Jewish perspectives. Middle of the road is often road kill, as is the zig-zagging of the government:

A new poll suggests Muslim and Jewish voters are leaning away from the federal Liberals in voting intentions — a possible sign that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to straddle gaps in public opinion over the Israel-Hamas war are falling short.

The new poll of voting intentions by the Angus Reid Institute says the federal NDP is leading the Liberals among Muslim voters 41 per cent to 31 per cent, while the federal Conservatives are beating the Liberals among Jewish voters 42 per cent to 33 per cent.

“This does feel to the Liberals, in terms of their outreach around diaspora politics, to now be a fairly untenable situation,” Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, told CBC News.

“The Jewish diaspora is now saying, ‘You haven’t gone far enough in condemning Hamas and condemning the violence and stopping antisemitism in Canada.’ And you’ve got pro-Palestinian voters and populations, many of whom are Muslim, obviously saying, ‘You haven’t gone far enough to condemn the Israeli Defence Forces for its counterattack in Gaza.'”

The data shows only 15 per cent of Muslims polled say they would vote for the Conservatives, while just 20 per cent of Jewish voters say they would support the New Democrats.

Kurl said that under Trudeau’s leadership, the Liberals have made a concerted effort to appeal to Muslim voters since 2015, when the Conservatives under Stephen Harper ran an election campaign that included controversial promises like a ban on the niqab and a “barbaric cultural practices” tip line.

An Environics Institute poll looking back on that election found 65 per cent of Muslims who said they voted cast their ballots for the Liberals, while only 10 per cent voted for the NDP.

“We saw the Liberals go out and court Muslims in Canada to vote Liberal,” Kurl said.

She said the Liberals appear to be feeling the fallout from trying to appease both Muslim and Jewish voters since Hamas’s attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023. Israeli officials say up to 1,200 Israelis were killed and 253 were taken hostage in that attack. Health authorities in Gaza say the Israeli military operation launched in response has killed almost 35,000 people….

Source: Muslim, Jewish voters leaning away from the federal Liberals as Gaza war grinds on: poll

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Task force rejects calls for special employment status for Jewish, Muslim public servants

2024/02/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Curious that the report mentioned the Muslim Federal Employees Network (MFEN) but not that of the Jewish Public Service Network (JPSN). Conscious or inadvertent? I made a submission that was not listed, perhaps being deemed not a”comprehensive written submissions.” (Link: https://multiculturalmeanderings.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=56715&action=edit). 

That being said, inclusion of religious minorities would prove a challenge and require religious self-identification and analysis would require deep intersectionality to be meaningful. Census data provides some insights but haven’t had time yet to analyze 2021 data:

Months before the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war ramped up ethnic and religious tensions in many Canadian communities, a government task force rejected requests to recognize Muslim and Jewish public servants as separate groups facing systemic workplace barriers, CBC News has learned.

Muslim and Jewish public servants asked to be designated as employment equity groups under the Employment Equity Act nearly two years ago in submissions to the task force, set up by Employment and Social Development Canada.

CBC News obtained the Muslim Federal Employees Network (MFEN) submission through an access to information request, and the one from the Jewish Public Service Network (JPSN) by asking for a copy.

“The inclusion of religious minorities would provide obligations on behalf of the employer toward removing barriers to religious minorities in the public service, so that they may bring their whole selves to work, including Jews,” says the JPSN’s submission, which also asked that Jews be identified both as an ethno-cultural group and as a religious group under the law.

“Discrimination and socio-economic barriers continue to exist for Canadian Muslims. These barriers will not disappear without intervention,” said the MFEN’s submission. “We recommend that Muslims are added to the Employment Equity Act as a designated employment equity group.”

The Employment Equity Act (EEA) was introduced in 1986 to knock down employment barriers facing four marginalized groups: women, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and members of visible minorities.

The legislation requires that federally regulated employers with more than 100 employees use data collection and proactive hiring to ensure that these groups are not under-represented in their workforces. No designated employment equity groups have been added to the EEA since its creation.

The MFEN and JPSN submissions were prepared in spring 2022, long before the latest deadly conflict erupted between Israel and Hamas in October of last year.

Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan shared the task force’s findings with the media last December, after his office initially received them in April 2023.

The task force said it decided “not to recommend the creation of a separate category for some or all religious minorities at this time,” but encouraged further study.

Jewish, Muslim employees report discrimination

In its submission, the JPSN cited Statistics Canada figures showing Jews were the group most often targeted by hate crimes between 2017 and 2019.

It quoted a B’nai Brith Canada audit in 2021 that reported a “733 per cent increase of violent anti-Semitic incidents.”

In its submission, the JPSN presented anonymous testimony from Jewish public servants. One Jewish employee said they were told they “really bring new meaning to Jews having a lot of money,” after mentioning their background. Several Jewish employees also said they have been called “cheap.”

The submission cited workplace barriers too, such as important meetings being scheduled on religious holidays, excluding observant Jews, or “managers scrutinizing and questioning the validity of leave requests for Jewish holidays.”

The Muslim Federal Employees Network, meanwhile, pointed out that the EEA’s protection for visible minorities won’t protect Muslims.

“There are non-racialized Muslims such as Eastern European Bosniaks, Indigenous Muslims and white converts,” it said in its submission. “In some cases, it may not be possible to determine if someone is Muslim without them disclosing it first. For example, not all Muslim women wear a hijab.”

The MFEN said Muslim federal employees face various forms of Islamophobia. In its submission, it cited reports of Muslim women being subjected to comments “about their ability to do their federal public jobs because they wear a hijab,” and of Muslim men “who are seen to be terrorists and perpetrators of violence.”

It said Muslim federal employees have sometimes struggled to obtain security clearances “because of biases around their countries of origin or their names.”

In its report, the task force did not mention the JPSN’s request, although it cited the MFEN report and two other submissions from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and the Sikh Public Service Network.

The task force recommended designating 2SLGBTQI+ and Black workers as employment equity groups. It said it had been told by the minister’s office to consider adding those two groups, which allowed it to obtain targeted funding for community consultations.

“In contrast, despite our extensive consultations, we did not receive representations from many of the concerned groups in the broad population beyond the federal public service who wanted us to consider adding religious minorities,” the task force said.

Final decisions on adding more groups to the legislation will be made by O’Regan.

In a statement, O’Regan’s office said it might consider further changes to the EEA.

“These initial commitments are only our first steps in our work to transform Canada’s approach to employment equity,” it said.

The statement said O’Regan “will continue to engage affected communities, including religious minority communities.”

The office said it looks forward to tabling new government legislation but did not offer a timeline.

It said it’s also working to arrange meetings between O’Regan and Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, and Deborah Lyons, special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.

Source: Task force rejects calls for special employment status for Jewish, Muslim public servants

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Phillips: How Muslim voters are exerting their growing political influence

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Another number: Canadian Jews from more than 5 percent of the population in 13 ridings compared to Canadian Muslims forming more that 5 percent in 114 ridings:

But the Trudeau government surely didn’t need much encouragement to move in that direction, and it didn’t necessarily have to do with geopolitical calculations. You only have to look at changing demographics in this country and their far-reaching political implications.

This can be touchy territory, so let’s specify a couple of things upfront.

There’s nothing wrong with any community, including Muslims, organizing to maximize their political impact. That’s as Canadian as butter tarts. Virtually every group has done it — from the English and Irish to francophone Quebecers, Ukrainians, Italians, Sikhs, you name it.

And ethnic voting doesn’t explain everything about this or any issue. You don’t have to be Muslim to be appalled at the death toll in Gaza, no more than you have to be Jewish to be sickened by the massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

But in this case, there’s no ignoring the increase in Muslim voters. A few numbers: the 2001 census showed there were 579,000 Muslims in this country (or 1.95 per cent of the population). The most recent census, in 2021, put that number at 1.77 million (4.9 per cent).

That’s a dramatic rise. By contrast, Muslims are only an estimated 1.1 per cent of the U.S. population, meaning their relative demographic weight in Canada is almost five times as large.

Another relevant comparison: in 2001, Canada’s Jewish population was put at 330,000. The 2021 census measured it at 335,000 — virtually the same. So while the country’s Jewish population flatlined, its Muslim population tripled….

But no party can ignore the new reality. Demographics, they say, are destiny. And right now they’re showing Muslim voters must be taken seriously.

Andrew Phillips is a Toronto-based staff columnist for the Star’s Opinion page. Reach him via email: aphillips@thestar.ca

Source: How Muslim voters are exerting their growing political influence

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Austria offers citizenship to the descendants of Jews who fled the Nazis

2020/08/31 Leave a comment

Of note, the impact of Brexit on citizenship applications:

Tens of thousands of British citizens are among the many descendants of Jewish refugees who can apply for Austrian citizenship from Tuesday under a new law that campaigners say finally delivers a measure of historic justice for their ancestors’ expulsions under Nazi rule.

About 120,000 Jewish refugees fled persecution after the Nazis took power in Austria in March 1938. The second most common destination after the US was the UK, with up to 20,000 refugees registered in 1945.

Most refugees naturalised in their adoptive countries out of necessity, but the postwar Austrian state had a bar on dual citizenship, so considered them to be foreigners.

Obstacles to former refugees reclaiming Austrian citizenship were lifted in 1993, after the country began its first real debate about its culpability for Nazi-era crimes. Around 10% of survivors took it up. But a law extending the possibility of dual citizenship to descendants eluded its advocates in the Austrian parliament, suggesting a lack of interest in restoring the once 200,000-strong Jewish community, even in principle. One rightwing MP reportedly objected: “Enough has been done for the victims already.”

Source: Austria offers citizenship to the descendants of Jews who fled the Nazis

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Islamic leaders make ‘groundbreaking’ visit to Auschwitz

2020/01/24 Leave a comment

Significant:

Muslim religious leaders joined members of a U.S. Jewish group at Auschwitz on Thursday for what organizers described as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation” to visit the site of a Nazi German death camp.

The interfaith visit came four days before the 75th anniversary of the camp’s Jan. 27, 1945, liberation by Soviet forces and as world leaders gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate the Holocaust.

The secretary general of the Muslim World League, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, led the tour to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in Poland. The Nazis operated extermination and concentration camps in Poland when Germany occupied the country during World War II.

The American Jewish Committee said that Al-Issa, who is based in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, led a delegation of 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders, from some 28 countries during the “groundbreaking” visit. At one point, they prayed with their heads pressed on the ground at Birkenau, the largest part of the camp and the most notorious site of Germany’s mass murder of European Jews.

The AJC delegation included members of the organization, among them children of Holocaust survivors.

“To be here, among the children of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish and Islamic communities, is both a sacred duty and a profound honor,” Al-Issa said. “The unconscionable crimes to which we bear witness today are truly crimes against humanity. That is to say, a violation of us all, an affront to all of God’s children.”

Auschwitz was the most notorious in a system of death and concentration camps that Nazi Germany operated on territory it occupied across Europe. In all, 1.1 million people were killed there, most of them Jews from across the continent.

The visit comes as Saudi Arabia works to be seen abroad as a moderate and modernizing country following decades of adherence to a hard-line interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism. The Muslim World League, under al-Issa’s leadership, has embraced the effort.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s strategy to modernize the kingdom is aimed in part at attracting greater foreign investment and fostering a national Saudi identity that is not founded solely on conservative religious values.

Al-Issa’s outreach to Jewish organizations also coincides with a broader alignment of interests and ties emerging between the Arab Gulf states and Israel, which share a common foe in Iran.

On Friday, members of the delegation will visit the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and attend Muslim and Jewish religious services there.

Source: Islamic leaders make ‘groundbreaking’ visit to Auschwitz

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Sudan Invites Jews Back To Country To ‘Enjoy Citizenship’

2019/09/09 Leave a comment

Unlikely many will for social and economic reasons:

Members of Sudan’s Jewish community who had left the country in previous years were free to return and “enjoy citizenship” like other ethnic groups, Minister of Religious Affairs Nasr-Eddin Mofarah said on Friday.

Speaking to Al Arabiya TV, the newly appointed minister said Sudan was welcoming of diverse ideas, values, cultures and “intellectual persuasions.”

He even added that the Muslim-majority country was welcoming of other religions, citing the number of Christians and Jews who still lived in the country and those who might have left.

“I urge them (Jews) from this platform to return to Sudan and recover their right to naturalization and citizenship because Sudan is a civil state where citizenship is the source of all rights and duties. We also have other religions and faiths embraced by different people,” he said.

The announcement came after Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announced his Cabinet on Thursday, the first since former President Omar Bashir was ousted in April.

The Cabinet includes Asmaa Abdalla, Sudan’s first woman foreign minister, and a former World Bank economist. Hamdok also picked women to lead the Sports and Youth Ministry, the High Education Ministry, and the Labor and Social Development Ministry.

The new Cabinet has come about as part of a power-sharing agreement between the military and pro-democracy demonstrators, following pressure from the US and its Arab allies amid growing concerns the political crisis could ignite a new civil war.

Mofarah said Islam had been a peaceful part of Sudanese life for centuries, and had not been introduced through violence or conflict.

He also stressed the importance of religious tolerance in the post-Bashir era.

“Religious tolerance has also been given a significant importance in the Holy Qur’an, in which Muslims have been urged to accept and respect other religions and live in peace with them,” Mofarah said.

“This constitutes a clear call for the Sudanese to live according to the saying ‘you have your religion and I have mine,’ as long as there is no infighting, sedition or wars and as long as people interact,” the minister added.

“The issue of peace, tolerance, loyalty and resilience is one of the indicators that will allow us to build this nation on new foundations, centered around freedom, justice, equality and noble moral values,” he said.

Sudan’s power-sharing deal calls for the government to reach a peace agreement with the rebels within six months.

Source: Sudan Invites Jews Back To Country To ‘Enjoy Citizenship’

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Ukraine’s Newly Elected President Is Jewish. So Is Its Prime Minister. Not All Jews There Are Pleased.

2019/04/27 Leave a comment

Interesting dynamics:

When Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish comedian recently elected the president of Ukraine, announced that he was running, the chief rabbi for the eastern Ukrainian region where Mr. Zelensky grew up was shocked by the hostile reaction.

But the opposition, Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki said, did not come from the Orthodox Church, a bastion of anti-Semitism in the past, or from a Ukrainian nationalist movement that collaborated with the Nazis during Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. They could not seem to care less that Mr. Zelensky was a Jew, the rabbi recalled.

Instead, the hostility came from Mr. Zelensky’s fellow Jews, both secular and religious, for whom painful memories of czarist-era pogroms and the Holocaust are still very much alive.

“They said, ‘He should not run because we will have pogroms here again in two years if things go wrong,’” said Rabbi Kaminezki, the chief rabbi in Dnipro, the capital of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Despite its scarred history, Ukraine today is no hotbed of anti-Semitism. It already has a Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, and if he stays on after Mr. Zelensky is sworn in, Ukraine will be the only country outside of Israel where the heads of state and government are Jewish.

Religion barely came up during the campaign.

The reason, said Igor Shchupak, a Holocaust historian in Dnipro, is that past persecution of Jews was carried out mostly when Ukraine’s territory was under the control of foreign states, principally Russia and Germany, that made anti-Semitism official policy.

“We have anti-Semites today, but we have no anti-Semitism as a state policy,” he said.

A survey by the Pew Research Center found that only 5 percent of Ukrainians surveyed would not accept Jews as fellow citizens, compared with 18 percent of Poles, 22 percent of Romanians and 23 percent of Lithuanians. Ukraine now has the world’s third- or fourth-largest Jewish community, but estimates of its size vary wildly, ranging from 120,000 to 400,000 people, depending on who is counting.

“The times of pogroms are over,” Rabbi Kaminezki said. “This is not on anybody’s agenda here.”

The rabbi has known Mr. Zelensky for years and has joined him at birthday parties in Switzerland for a self-exiled Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoisky, who is Jewish. He said he had been appalled that his own community, in its initial alarm over the Zelensky candidacy, was in effect siding with a small group of supporters of the incumbent president, Petro O. Poroshenko, and far-right nationalists who were trying in vain to make an issue of the comedian’s non-Christian roots.

Aside from a few posts on social media, which included a comment on Facebook by an adviser to Mr. Poroshenko that “the president of Ukraine must be Ukrainian and Christian,” Mr. Zelensky’s background played “zero role” in the election campaign, said Mr. Shchupak.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

Of note:

The charcoal illustration on the front of the London Saturday Journal, a popular Victorian magazine, published in late March 1841, pictured a rather sinister looking man, with a cap in hand and a sack on his back looking slyly at the reader. Entitled “The Jew Old Clothes Man”, an article inside the magazine goes on to describe Jewish second-hand clothes sellers in London in particularly prejudiced terms.

The cover is one of the many chilling images and texts on display at a new exhibition at London’s Jewish Museum. Entitled “Jews, Money, Myth,” the exhibition, on till July 7, examines both the role that money has played in Jewish life as well as the ways in which the associations — mostly negative — between Jews and money and profit have developed over the centuries.

The exhibition is particularly timely. Concerns around anti-Semitism have risen in the U.K. as they have across much of the rest of the world. While the Labour Party has faced allegations that it has not been tough enough on anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Jewish charity Community Security Trust reported a record number of anti-Semitic incidents last year. It is striking that even in Camden, a diverse London neighbourhood, entry into the museum is subject to security checks.

Even as major political parties have attempted to crack down on anti-Semitic rhetoric, others have got away with sharply divisive language. In 2017, the former head of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage faced considerable criticism over remarks on LBC radio about how a “Jewish lobby” in the U.S. was “very powerful”. He is yet to apologise.

In this context, the exhibition is particularly striking and powerful, drawing both on objects involved in Jewish rituals, art, literature, and other objects of life such as board games. It also has some newly created videos to explore and build up an understanding of how the tropes around Jews and money have come to be built up — as well as the reality. “Throughout history, there have been both rich and poor Jews. The exhibition shows how Jewish wealth and poverty have been created by circumstances as well as the activity and acumen of Jews themselves — rather than ‘Jewishness’ itself,” says a note on the exhibition.

Objects, ancient and modern

There are ancient Judean coins, ceremonial objects involved in charitable giving and, in more modern times, the paperwork of efforts made by Jewish communities in the U.K., during and before the Second World War to bring Jewish refugees to Britain. Chillingly — particularly in the context of the heated discussion on immigration and refugees under way across much of the West — there is a reminder of the difficulties that Jewish refugees faced coming to the U.K. even at that time: to seek refuge, they needed to prove they were able to finance themselves privately.

There are literary explorations of the stereotypes built up around Jews and money — from Shakespearean characters such as Shylock and Charles Dickens’s Fagin, to literature such as the Nazi propaganda book The Poisonous Mushroom.

There are also exhibits such as Rembrandt’s “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” rather sympathetically picturing the biblical figure down on his knees begging for forgiveness from a group of priests as he attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver he was said to have betrayed Christ for. That story, the exhibition notes, has been key to propelling anti-Jewish stereotypes till this day.

Given the weight of the matter, it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the material resorts to black humour and satire, such as a video by U.S.-based artist Doug Fishbone. At one point, he notes the extent to which Indians in the West are now out-earning Jews there, leading British politician and author Lord Archer to declare, back in 2008, that Indians were the new Jews. “Maybe they will be accused of being the puppet masters behind the throne too?” asks Mr. Fishbone in his video.

Source: The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Laïcité: des organisations juives sonnent l’alarme

2019/03/29 Leave a comment

A reminder that it is not just Muslims that will be affected by Bill 62:

Interdire à certains fonctionnaires de porter la kippa ou d’exhiber une étoile de David représenterait une grave atteinte aux droits garantis par les chartes et serait contesté devant les tribunaux, préviennent d’importantes organisations juives.

B’nai Brith et le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CCJI) s’inquiètent du dépôt imminent par le gouvernement Legault du projet de loi sur la laïcité.

Selon La Presse et Radio-Canada, Québec va interdire le port de signes religieux aux fonctionnaires en position d’autorité, y compris les enseignants, les directions d’école et ceux qui portent une arme.

« Ce qu’on entend du projet de loi est contraire aux valeurs canadiennes et québécoises. La CAQ doit éviter la pente glissante qui consiste à réduire les droits fondamentaux », prévient Harvey Levine, directeur du bureau québécois de B’nai Brith.

Le débat public sur les signes religieux au travail s’est surtout centré sur le hidjab. Mais les organismes juifs canadiens rappellent que la kippa serait aussi visée, tout comme le turban sikh ou la croix chrétienne.

« Il s’agit selon nous d’une menace pour les libertés religieuses des juifs, des musulmans, des sikhs, et tous les autres groupes religieux visibles dans cette province », indique M. Levine.

La laïcité de l’État peut être atteinte sans que l’on s’attaque aux droits religieux, estime le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA).

« Bien qu’il existe un fort sentiment en faveur de la réaffirmation de la laïcité au Québec, notre communauté estime que la laïcité de l’État est un devoir institutionnel et non personnel. L’attachement à la laïcité ne repose pas sur l’apparence des individus », indique Reuben Poupko, coprésident du CIJA-Québec.

Pour le chef de l’opposition à l’hôtel de ville de Montréal, qui porte la kippa, l’idée d’interdire les signes religieux à certains fonctionnaires est basée sur une mauvaise prémisse : celle selon laquelle un employé de l’État qui porte un signe religieux ne peut être neutre.

« Il est difficile pour moi de croire qu’en 2019, on remette en question les motivations des gens selon leur manière de s’habiller, a récemment écrit Lionel Perez dans Montreal Gazette. Retirer les signes religieux n’éradique en rien les préjugés. »

Jusque devant l’ONU

Le B’nai Brith et le CIJA craignent que le projet de loi sur la laïcité n’enfreigne des droits garantis par les chartes. La Charte canadienne des droits et libertés protège certaines libertés fondamentales, parmi lesquelles les libertés de religion et d’expression.

Le premier ministre François Legault se dit prêt à utiliser la disposition de dérogation (communément appelée clause nonobstant) pour soustraire sa future loi aux tribunaux. Pour lui, il s’agit de « protéger notre identité ».

Selon l’avocat montréalais Julius Grey, la disposition de dérogation ne peut toutefois protéger le Québec et le Canada contre un camouflet devant le Comité des droits de l’homme de l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU).

« Si le gouvernement espère éviter le débat judiciaire en invoquant la clause nonobstant, il doit se rappeler qu’il existe un forum international où ce genre de chose peut être débattu », souligne Me Grey.

« Il est téméraire de préjuger de ce qui sera dans le projet de loi, dit-il. Mais il me semble que la confrontation judiciaire est plus ou moins inévitable. »

Ce comité de l’ONU a par exemple épinglé la France à au moins deux reprises sur la question des signes religieux. Dans un cas, l’ONU a donné raison à une employée d’une garderie congédiée car elle portait le voile islamique. Les décisions de ce comité ne sont toutefois pas contraignantes.

« Bien sûr, la décision du Comité des droits de l’homme des Nations unies n’est pas contraignante comme le jugement d’une cour québécoise ou de la Cour suprême », explique Julius Grey.

« Mais je vois mal comment le Québec, malgré un jugement de cette nature, justifierait de maintenir sa position. »

Source: Laïcité: des organisations juives sonnent l’alarme

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