If it makes you happy, the English medias in Quebec sides with the CEGEP’s decision to give her the booth. Even some Muslims spokepersons are OK with that decision.
In a failed effort to learn more of detop’s claim for English media’s support of the government within Quebec, I came across this cite which answer’s your question more directly.
What’s different about Quebec ?
Sure. Why not? What use are they that laws regarding co-habitation and child support can’t cover off anyway? It would also put to rest the same sex marriage debate, too.
I’m not against testing potential immigrants on certain basic values before they are allowed to come here. It’s our country to set the rules on entry. Why let in 8th century barbarians (we’ve got enough of our own to deal with after all)?
Here, click on the March 5th editorial.
I see your point, but Quebec does make it pretty difficult for women to take their husband’s last name after getting married, doesn’t it?
So don’t wear a veil.
Nobody’s asking you to respect her cultural values.
If you don’t like her culture, don’t practice it. Personally, I think religion’s stupid, which is why I don’t practice it. Nobody drags me out of bed Sunday morning to go to church, and I don’t stop the Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus from going to their meetings and praying to their imaginary friend. My, how this country is admirably arranged. I vote we do the same thing for fashion choices.
You are quite mistaken. Obviously at least some residents of Quebec prefer to wear a veil. Since the lady in question is a Quebec resident she is part of local culture. So some small part of Quebec culture involves wearing a veil Perhaps you ought to respect (and appreciate the diversity of) Quebec society.
Unless of course you maintain that majority of people in Quebec can tell the minority what and who the officially approved culture does and doesn’t include.
Including going to class naked?
See, it’s easy to trivialize something like a niqab as a mere “fashion choice” if you ignore its actual purpose and the actual requirements for its use. But how about something like full public nudity? Is that also just a “fashion choice” that we should let everybody make their own individual decisions about? If not, why not?
I notice Miller didn’t answer this question either when I asked it a few posts ago. Any of you expansive-niqab-rights supporters willing to take it on?
I thought that was the tradition in Quebec. That’s why our family left the province.
I could certainly imagine legal and societal accommodation being made for those who must go naked for religious reasons. Sure, why not?
And you would maintain that society is obligated to do so for the sake of religious freedom, just as you claim that society is obligated to do so in the case of the niqab?
Sure. People who have a religious requirement to be naked are citizens, taxpayers, voters and part of the culture too.
They may be citizens, taxpayers, and voters, but they’re not part of the culture. They’re also, considering Quebec winters, pretty cold.
Why is a person in Quebec not a part of Quebec culture? Are they unpersons? Obviously culture is a construct of the people who live in a place.
She’s not an unperson, but she’s also not Quebecoise. She has a foreign culture and foreign values, and to the extent that this culture and these values conflict with Quebec culture and Quebec values, she needs to be the one to give way, if she wants to live in Quebec. I’d say the same thing about somebody from Quebec if they moved to Egypt. You adopt the culture of the place you live, you don’t demand that that culture change to suit you.
How could the values of a person in Quebec not be a (small, new) portion of the culture of Quebec? The culture imposing itself on people is exactly backwards; people make impressions upon it. That is how cultures refresh themselves.
Why should I behave as a Saudi? Is not my culture worth keeping? It sounds like you are making a “place for everyone and everyone in his place” sort of proposal.
Well, presumably you behave as a Saudi in certain ways, at least when interacting with strangers, in order to avoid behaviors that are considered discourteous in Saudi society. (I suppose you don’t habitually show people the soles of your feet or shake hands with women, for example.) It’s not really feasible to live in a very different foreign culture and behave just as you would in your own.
I am polite because I am polite. But I need not choose to be polite. Politeness is part of me, not forced on me by the some policeman or politician.
No, because laws against public nudity aren’t specifically designed to exclude certain religious groups.
The intent of the new rules against niqabs are clearly not meant, despite what some here have claimed, to help women achieve equality. They’re meant, specifically, to be directed at Muslims, because they’re different.
Prohibitions against nudity aren’t meant to pick on a specifial racial or religious group. This niqab stuff quite obviously is.
And furthermore, if you’re seriously expecting me to buy that full blown nudity is comparable in disruptiveness to wearing a veil, give me a break.
So if I transfer to Egypt to take a job in Cairo, I should be forced to adopt Islam as my religion and not correspond with Jewish friends? Do you think that speaks WELL for Egypt?
And incidentally, how has this woman demanding anyone else adopt her culture? She wants to wear a niqab. Has she demanded other women wear them as well?
Any CULTURE, not religion. This is not a religious requirement in Islam no matter what she may think or say.
I think it would apply to any group that required their women to hide themselves from society.
She is saying that she won’t treat men and women equally. Women can see her face, men can’t. She is enforcing her misogynous culture upon the rest of us. The fact that she is using taxpayer’s money to do so gives us the right to not give it to her.