Quebec passes bill banning the niqab and burqa
Quebec has passed a law banning public service workers, and also those who receive services, from wearing face coverings. This means that everyone who uses public transit and government services must now unveil.
Quebec’s Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée stated that “having your face uncovered is a legitimate question of communication, identification and security”; but the Quebec National Assembly’s adoption of Bill 62 to ban the burqa is not sitting well with everyone. Some insist that it is a violation of human rights.
For example:
Nicole Filion, coordinator of the Ligue des droits et libertés, a human-rights defence group, warned that the law will “have a discriminatory effect on religious groups who are targeted, in particular women
Meanwhile, newly elected Federal NDP (New Democratic Party) leader Jagmeet Singh took a “stronger stance against the law than the Liberal government, which has so far been reluctant to condemn it outright.”
Singh also called the ban a violation of human rights. Singh needs to stop his shameful politicking and pretending to care about human rights. He and Nicole Filion should research enough to know that women are treated as inferiors in countries where the burqa is mandated, and that according to the sharia, women are deemed to be inferior to men. In the words of the well-known women’s rights advocate Aayan Hirsi Ali, who has personally suffered under the strictures of the sharia:
Burkas ought to be banned for security reasons. But for me the issue is not security alone. It is the equality of women. Expecting half of humanity to go around covered in black sacks is just evil sexism. We should no more want to see it imported into Australia than we should want to see wife-beating legalised.
I will repeat a sad story I was personally told by a blood lab technician. She told me she witnessed many women wearing full burqas come to the blood clinic for tests and have their husbands answer their medical questions. When they finally roll up their sleeves for the test, clinic workers saw bruises and burns, but did not report them for fear of being branded racists and “Islamophobes.” These women also suffer from vitamin D deficiencies, not to mention the torture of having to wear full coverings in scorching temperatures. If the burqa and all it represents is being advocated by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Canadians beware.
Other countries that have implemented full or partial burqa bans are France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, Turkey, and Switzerland.
“Quebec passes bill banning niqab, burka while receiving public services”, by Graeme Hamilton, National Post, October 18, 2017:
MONTREAL – Niqab-wearing Quebec women who want to ride the bus, visit the library, go for a medical check-up or meet with their child’s teacher are now legally required to uncover their faces while receiving provincial and municipal government services.Quebec’s National Assembly adopted Bill 62 Wednesday morning, a controversial law that is the Liberal government’s answer to a decade-long debate over the accommodation of religious minorities in the province.The bill passed despite opposition from the Parti Québécois and Coalition Avenir Québec, which argued the legislation does not go far enough in restricting the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols.Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée has maintained that the bill’s requirement that government services be provided and received with the face uncovered is not aimed at any religious group.“Having your face uncovered is a legitimate question of communication, identification and security,” she said on the eve of the bill’s adoption. But the title of the law — “An act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality” — leaves little doubt of the true motivation.Initially aimed only at provincial services, the Liberals widened the law’s scope in August to embody municipal services, including public transit and subsidized housing offices.Vallée this week clarified that the ban, which comes into force as soon as it receives assent from the lieutenant-governor in the coming days, will apply for the full time that a service is rendered. In other words, it would not be enough for a woman to show her face as she boards a bus; she would have to keep it uncovered for her entire trip.Nicole Filion, coordinator of the Ligue des droits et libertés, a human-rights defence group, warned that the law will “have a discriminatory effect on religious groups who are targeted, in particular women.”…
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