This has no place in this discussion.
If you want to make it personal, go open a BBQ Pit thread or take to e-mail or PM.
[ /Moderating ]
Living in a society means that your freedoms are not anywhere near complete. Muslim women have the right to wear the niqab here, but they don’t have the right to, for example, drive in it and endanger other people on the road.
Is that the case? I understood immigrants were required to learn French and use that language in public. Is that not the case?
I don’t believe so. Their children may be required to be schooled in French, but I think that’s the extent of it. Oh, and if they open businesses, they’ll have to have French predominant on their signage. But it would be news to me that there’s a requirement to learn and use French outside of that, beyond the practical requirements of functioning in society.
On the other hand, I do think it’s deeply ironic that the government of Quebec is preventing an immigrant woman from learning French in order to “defend Quebec’s values.” Ummm, what? I thought French was so important that it’s worth violating the Charter to protect it. And anyways the most surefire way to get this woman out of her veil is to encourage her to interact with mainstream society, which is what she’s actually trying to do by learning French. Trying to force her to take off the veil is more likely to cause her to retreat into her home and keep it on. It’s pure foolishness.
Let me just point out that I disagree with my fellow Canadian on just about everything he posted. I placed this issue in GD rather than the Pit to focus unemotionally on the issue of Quebec’s intolerance as a result of their determined programs to preserve their distinct culture. The niqab issue is indicative of that.
Cultural preservation in and of itself is a laudable objective up until it clashes with other cultures. When the individuals with power deliberately interfere with another’s personal harmless culture , that is going to far. When the full force of the government steps in to quash an individuals cultural proclivity, then the issue becomes really alarming.
Such has now happened in this particularcase
This is in response to Ahmed having enrolled in another language course. James heard that Ahmed had enrolled in another language course and sent her Director General of Francization, Roger Giroux to meet with Ahmed and tell it to her face.
And if this woman were demanding the right to cut the heart of her enemies in French class and offer it to Quetzalcoatl, boy, I’d be right in there with you in arguing that she should not be allowed to do that. But we’re not talking about ritual murder. We’re not, in fact, talking about anything that causes direct harm or damage to any other person. We’re talking about a woman wearing a veil. You’re arguing that this is an acceptable ban simply because you don’t like the veil. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to abridge someone’s fundamental civic rights. I think the bar should be one hell of a lot higher than simply, “We don’t do things that way 'round here.”
What’s most troubling about your position is that you’ve offered no rational as to why it should be restricted to this case. You say you’re okay with allowing a hijab or a yarmulke. But why shouldn’t we ban that? In our society, it’s considered rude to wear a hat indoors. Maybe not as rude as covering your face, sure, but it’s definitly part of our social conditioning. Can you explain how the logic behind your support of banning veils from schools does not apply to banning a yarmulke, other than the fact that you, personally, don’t have a problem with the yarmulke?
I don’t think that’s a particularly apt comparison. The mouthbreathers who offer up, “You’re intolerant against the intolerant!” generally fail to grasp that no one is arguing for total, universal tolerance of any and all things. They’re creating a strawman position. I don’t think I’ve created a strawman of your position, though. You’ve argued that diversity and egalitarianism is an important part of our culture. And you’ve argued that the best way to defend those freedoms is to make sure certain classes of people are not allowed to partake in them. That strikes me as a pretty clear philosophical contradiction, and one that rather badly damages your argument.
Unless I badly misunderstood the story, the class wasn’t taking place in an automobile.
No, it was a class involving communication.
I have no trouble teaching such classes to ladies in full face veils.
I was using an example for argument purposes.
What were you arguing against? Nobody has suggested that religious freedom be used as an excuse to create deadly hazards on public highways. Nobody is arguing that freedom should allow you to physically hurt other people.
The woman in the story was not hurting anyone. She was a danger to no one.
No, it’s pretty trivial to draw a distinction there. How about if we were talking about ritual public nudity? If this woman’s religious principles required that instead of covering her face in the presence of men, she had to keep her body completely uncovered at all times in the presence of anybody, would you argue that our society would be obligated to respect her religious freedom by allowing her to do so?
This is the fundamental point of our disagreement. I think that in our society, it is disrespectful and discriminatory to refuse to allow members of a particular group of people to see your face when you’re voluntarily interacting with them in the public sphere.
I think this is in fact harmful: harmful to the men who are being disrespected by this failure to show equal courtesy, and harmful to our public sphere in which the basic ethic of equal respect and acknowledgement for all classes of people is supposed to be upheld.
You happen to disagree, because you feel that “harmful” should be construed only as meaning “direct harm or damage”, along the lines of cutting out somebody’s heart (or, presumably, stealing their money or any other form of obviously criminal malfeasance).
Okay. You’re entitled to define “harmful” more narrowly than I do, but that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with your choice of definition.
I don’t expect that continually repeating my previously-stated opinion on this matter will do anything to change your mind, and certainly your continually repeating your previously-stated opinion isn’t doing anything to change mine.
Easily. (By the way, I added the references to parallel examples of specifically Muslim forms of headgear along with the references to Jewish yarmulkes, so that my excerpted quote from your post wouldn’t accidentally give the false impression that you might have been trying to suggest that I was objecting to the niqab merely out of anti-Muslim prejudice.)
The difference between a niqab on the one hand and, for example, a hijab on the other is that the former involves a disrespectful distancing of the wearer from a particular group of people, while the latter does not.
It’s a pretty simple and clear-cut distinction.
Nope. The only way you can make that rather convoluted argument is if you insist on equating “those freedoms” with “unlimited license to follow any customary practice whatsoever in the name of religion as long as it does not cause direct physical (or financial or other obviously criminal) harm to anyone else.”
I’ve made it quite clear on several occasions that I don’t take such a broad view of the concept of freedom of religion. I think that a free secular society is at liberty to restrict even religious practices that don’t cause direct harm of an obviously criminal sort, if they conflict with other principles important to that society.
I understand that you feel that the principle of religious freedom means “anybody can do anything in the name of religion as long as it doesn’t cause direct harm of an obviously criminal sort to somebody else”. And I understand that therefore, from your point of view, it’s unfair to prohibit a Muslim woman’s religious practice of wearing niqab, because that practice isn’t doing any directly and obviously criminal damage.
But what you need to try to understand is that I don’t interpret the principle of religious freedom as broadly as you do. Therefore, when I say that I think it’s okay to restrict a religious practice even if it isn’t doing directly and obviously criminal damage to somebody else, I am not unfairly denying a certain class of people the religious freedom that others enjoy.
I think the problem here is a failure of logical thinking on your part rather than a philosophical contradiction on mine. And, as I said, at this point it’s clear that neither of us is going to convince the other.
I agree. She was in a language class in a stationary classroom. No physical harm was done by her unwillingness to face the class, sans veil. Thus, we ought to put examples involving motor vehicles, and motorcycle helmets, and ski masks, and such, aside.
But let’s assume, for a moment, that this woman’s English was very poor and she was taking an English language class in another part of Canada. What do we suppose the reaction would have been? In Ontario? In BC? In Alberta? In PEI? In the other six provinces?
This is a question calling for opinions, and it might do us all good to hear some on this topic, especially from people outside of Quebec. This is Quebec’s problem, of course; but I for one, would be interested in hearing how inhabitants of other, traditionally-English, provinces would deal with this situation, were it to occur in their province.
I really can’t find anything regarding the niqab in the ROC, (other than the Muslim Canadian Congress pushing for an outright ban on Burkas and Niqabs) but back in 2007 there were two incidents wrt the hijab on the soccer field, one in Alberta and one in Quebec that made the news.
The hijab is banned on soccer fields in Quebec. The officials are worried that the girls might get strangled. TheAlberta situation is unclear because back in 2007 the ban was for an indefinite time pending a final ruling which I haven’t heard about since.
Both British Columbia and Ontario allow the hijab on the soccer fields.
The World Soccer Association bans headgear .
Miller & those who agree with him: I’m wondering how far you would go. Let’s change the parameters of the situation. Let’s make the girl one of my cousins, who believes in a quite radical sect of Christianity. And let’s replace the generic men with gay people*. Now do you believe that my cousin’s refusal show his face around you would be reasonable? Or would you start saying that the refusal qualified as hate speech and ought to be actionable? Or something I’ve not thought of?
*Or should I say homosexuals? I never know anymore.
But it does do harm to people. It perpetrates a practice that was designed to keep women as property. By us allowing it here, we condone the practice and allow people to continue doing it. If it was well known that we don’t allow such practices in Canada, then those who want to do so won’t come here.
It perpetrates a traditional mode of dress. Telling ladies how to dress is a fool’s errand.
This is part of what makes me uncomfortable with Canada being completely tolerant of intolerant practices - I’m a woman living in Canada. You could argue that every immigrant who comes to Canada who thinks women are garbage under their feet contributes to undermining my rights.
Gosh, do we really need to turn this into more of a French vs. English debate than it already is? We were doing such a good job just debating the core issue.
Had this happened somewhere else in Canada, maybe some racist jerk would have taken offense, and maybe not. I suspect many other French classes in Quebec the issue would not have blown up into a national controversy. This sort of thing can happen anywhere.
Oh, so now we’re going to prohibit practices that were designed to keep women as property, are we?
So when will you be writing your MP demanding that marriage be made illegal? How about women taking their husband’s last names?
And all traditions are equal, and we should never dare to question them, right?
Displaying modesty and (by wearing a veil )is a tradition deeply rooted in her culture.
But displaying equal treatment to everyone (by not wearing a veil) is a tradition deeply rooted in *my[/] culture.
Respect is a two way street…if I respect her cultural values, I expect her to respect mine.
As a Muslim woman she would be offended if I look at her face…but as a Western man, I am just as offended when she refuses to look at mine.
She wants us to remain separate; I want us to be treated as equals.
But “separate but equal” is not a recipe for social cohesion.
All cultures have their rules of behavior, which determine the ethical values of that culture.
Yes… some cultures are based on better ethical values than others. Choose your values carefully, and live by them.
And remember the old line that if you keep your mind too wide open , your brain falls out.