antiveiling discourse continued...(would you let a masked person babysit your toddler?)

[LayZie G.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never having witnessed fascism taking hold, I wouldn’t claim to know it to see it. But whenever commentators have likened the Parti Québécois’ proposed “secularism charter” to the early drumbeats of some historically dire intolerance, my first instinct has been to scoff.

 

It’s certainly ****** and unfair to threaten public servants with unemployment if they don’t forsake certain religious customs, all to solve a problem that no one except the pollsters seems able to quantify. It’s certainly disturbing that any political party would stoop so low in search of support, and all the more so that the PQ seems to be finding it down there.

 

But whatever the polls say, Montreal seems more cosmopolitan every time I visit. Despite reports of an uptick in anti-Muslim confrontations, surely it’s a fantastically unlikely breeding ground for any sort of widespread, street-level discrimination.

 

Related

Dan Delmar: Upcoming Quebec election will be a referendum on tolerance

Anne-France Goldwater: Quebec’s Charter is a frontal attack on equality for women

 

Surely. But events recently took a shivery turn: A week ago, a woman spotted two daycare workers, dressed in niqabs, marshalling their young charges through the streets of Verdun, in southwest Montreal. And as one does nowadays, she snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook.

 

Thousands of people saw it. And not all of the commentary was polite.

 

“These children must have nightmares after seeing ghosts all day,” read one comment.

 

“Let’s burn these women and rape them like pigs,” another suggested.

 

“Two bullets,” wrote another. “It’s hunting season.”

 

Talk radio host Benoît Dutrizac took to Twitter, and the airwaves, to condemn the two educatrices. When one parent defended the daycare — “The teachers are great, the service outstanding,” she tweeted — Mr. Dutrizac rounded on her.

 

“How can you endorse the concept of having to hide a woman in public?” he tweeted her. “You should be ashamed.”

 

In Le Journal de Montréal, columnist Richard Martineau took the opportunity argue Quebec shouldn’t be letting daycare workers wear hijabs, either. Both are “insults” to society, he alleged.

 

The president of the Quebec association of private daycares — yes, this fracas is over a private, unsubsidized daycare — deplored the two women’s garment choice. “They must have their faces uncovered,” said Louise Chabot, president of the Centrale syndicale du Québec, the union representing Quebec’s daycare workers. “This is a must, especially with children.” Either she didn’t know that the two women uncover their faces indoors, or she didn’t care.

 

 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotQuebec Family Minister Nicole Leger said the daycare was inspected to see if it was operating with six children or fewer.

No one has alleged that the women or the daycare broke any rules. Nevertheless on Thursday we learned that inspectors had paid them a visit — not because of the media frenzy, families minister Nicole Léger avowed, but “relating to whether or not they are operating legally — if they have [the required] six children or fewer.” What interesting timing.

 

The proprietor of the daycare and the multicultural assortment of parents who patronize it are sticking up for these two women, as are some wise voices in the punditocracy, both anglophone and francophone.

 

Nevertheless, having broken no regulation or law, two productive members of society suddenly find themselves as this week’s living embodiment of Quebecers’ outsized cultural angst, the subject of public opprobrium and threats. I wouldn’t blame them if they were losing sleep.

 

And what did Quebec’s politicians say about this?

 

“This is shocking, this is troubling, this is not acceptable,” democratic institutions minister Bernard Drainville said on Wednesday.

 

He meant the women’s clothes, not the death threats and vitriol.

 

“This is why we need to pass our [secularism] Charter. Because our Charter will ban this type of behaviour,” he added.

 

It won’t, actually. Bill 60 as it stands doesn’t cover private institutions. But Mr. Drainville wouldn’t rule out changing it so that it would. And he suggested the Verdun daycare should force its employees to unveil at all times anyway.

 

The Liberals agreed. The Coalition avenir Québec agreed. Even Françoise David of Québec solidaire, the tolerant face of the sovereignty movement, insisted that an “uncovered face is a requirement for education and communication.”

 

Perhaps it is. I’m not sticking up for the niqab. But if any Quebec politician has conspicuously called for calm, or implored Quebecers not to go around photographing people who offend their sense of cultural propriety and soliciting mass scorn on social media, it escaped my notice.

 

It’s precisely the dehumanizing element of the photograph and the backlash that makes this so unsettling: It’s as if these two women aren’t citizens wearing something we’d prefer they not, but a phenomenon to be tackled. Societies can get to a lot of very dangerous places from that starting point.

 

So it sure would be nice to hear, at least, a few soothing voices from officialdom. Having lovingly nurtured this false crisis for so long, and for such cynical ends, the political class might want to double-check it’s still able to exert any control over it.

 

 

Chris Selley: • cselley@nationalpost.com

 

 

 

 

 

Source: National Post

[LayZie G.]

A Canadian TV host from Quebec rocks the Burka....

 

 

 

Source: Huffingtonpost

[Alpha Blondy]

LayZie G.;987408 wrote:

that's very concerning.

[guleed_ali]

Alpha Blondy;987410 wrote:

that's very concerning.

That's very none of anyone's business.........

[Alpha Blondy]

^ actually.......their eyes could be blurred.......causing them to have an accident.

[GaraadMon]

If the parents of those children in the photo have no qualms over the caregivers' fashion sense, why should anyone else's opinion matter? This diseased turd called Quebec has been pilfering the rest of Canada of it's wares for far too long. It's time to let the frogs go.

[AfricaOwn]

Blackflash;987435 wrote:

If the parents of those children in the photo have no qualms over the caregivers' fashion sense, why should anyone else's opinion matter? This diseased turd called Quebec has been pilfering the rest of Canada of it's wares for far too long. It's time to let the frogs go.

Exactly

Their minds so diseased, common sense, logic and reason simply do not exist. These %&% just won't be happy until you think like they do.

[Khayr]

Alpha,

 

Waa xaadhal baadhan taaxey!

You spew verbal diarrhea.

 

The french are very bigots.

[Alpha Blondy]

Khayr;987772 wrote:

Alpha,

 

Waa xaadhal baadhan taaxey!

You spew verbal diarrhea.

 

is this af-Somali, abti?

[thefuturenow]

Same old movie, new actors.

A society turns to condemn Islam. Their sons and daughters convert to Islam. The Muslims with weak faith opt for "freedom." The End.

 

One of my favorite all time videos regarding this topic.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h1zuwpFdo4

 

This is pure gold.

[DoctorKenney]

The proportion of veiled woman to the rest of the population is so unbelievably low that I'm shocked that this is even up for debate. It seems like the Quebecois want to pre-emptively prevent women from dressing in a niqaab if they so choose.

 

Same thing happened in France, despite the fact that there's only a few hundred Niqabis in the entire country of 60 million people. The number of Niqabis are so small it's not worth mentioning, but look how they turned it into a huge national debate. It's pathetic.

[cadnaan1]

Alpha Blondy;987805 wrote:

is this af-Somali, abti?

 

 

adiga Qawdhan ayaad iska tahay anaa ku jilcinaayo wuxuu ka wadaa waad hadal badantahay

[Allyourbase]

It is an absolute disgrace and an utter eyesore to observe how this demeaning getup has infiltrated our society. Wherever you go in Somalia you see the majority of women and their little baby daughters dressed like this:

 

 

 

 

When the generation of our mothers and grandmothers were not beholden to this backword ideology imported from the forsaken deserts of Arabia:

 

 

So sad.

[Hawdian]

^ waxan ku faraxsan iney dumarka muslim oo somaliyeed is asturraan ee mala ada dhibto ku heysata. @ all yourbase its a disgrace to read your views on this issue. Nobody is forcing you to wear anything so cut the crab buddy . We all know this issue is not about the clothes of women its another attack on muslims and islam by secular crazy wackors that preach tolerance but always act opposite.

[Allyourbase]

Its all about identity sxb, you are happy to follow hairy desert dwellers where I embrace Soomali dhaqan, look, ethos. Bila dhaqan waaxid