During the summer of 2014, Professor Natasha Bakht of the University of Ottawa wrote in Convivium, a magazine to which I contribute, that Muslim women have the religious right to cover up. She describes the Canadian reaction to the niqab as “illogical” and “bias-laden.”
Now, Zunera Ishaq, a Pakistani woman living in Mississauga, is suing the Conservative government. She says the
ban on wearing her niqab while swearing allegiance to Canada violates her Charter rights by failing to accommodate her religious beliefs.
Ishaq’s lawyer, Naseem Mithoowani, told federal court Justice Keith Boswell at a hearing in October in Toronto “The true motivation of the policy is to compel Muslim women to abandon, albeit briefly, their religious adherence.” He added “The failure to remove the veil is at the heart of this policy, more than being seen taking the oath... This is about Kenney deciding that niqab does not fit into the mode of Canadian citizens.”
Her
lawyers added Kenney is “Confusing his personal beliefs with his obligations as a minister of the Crown.
Lorne Waldman, co-counsel for Ishaq, pointed out that the Citizenship Act does not require people to be seen or heard taking the oath. True. When Canada became a country in 1867, no one thought to write in the constitution that one must not cover one’s face when taking the oath because no one covered their face at that time except perhaps bank robbers. When our Constitution and its new Charter of Rights and Freedoms were brought home by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, I doubt anyone thought to add that admonition either. It would have been mocked.
While Professor Bakht tries to justify wearing a niqab at court, at citizenship ceremonies, when voting or in public service, and lawyers for Zunera Ishaq take to the courts for the rights of women to wear the niqab, we must keep in mind the niqab by its very nature, is a priori intrinsically objectionable in a democracy. It is a symbol, diachronically and synchronically, of suppression and oppression and the statement that women are “lesser than.”
I do agree with the Professor that there is a bias. And that bias toward promoting and protecting Western culture was clearly stated by Jason Kenney. He said "to segregate one group of Canadians or allow them to hide their faces, to hide their identity from us precisely when they are joining our community is contrary to Canada's proud commitment to openness and to social cohesion."
The most important job for our government is the protection of Western culture; balancing the freedoms we have in this country, (freedoms for which I assume immigrants come to this country), with personal rights. How quickly new immigrants learn about demanding personal rights yet have no understanding of responsibilities to the underlying foundation of democracies. The social contract.
Rousseau’s social contract, one of the building blocks of democracy, is the agreement with which a person enters into civil society. “The contract essentially binds people into a community that exists for mutual preservation. In entering into civil society, people sacrifice the physical freedom of being able to do whatever they please, but they gain the civil freedom of being able to think and act rationally and morally.”http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/socialcontract/characters.htm
The social contract by its very nature requires trust.
And here in the West much of that trust has developed because we recognize, we “see” one another. Police, judges, members of parliament, all those in public service are uncovered. Democracy, sui generis requires that for the ability to trust.
A niqab does not meet the standard for the social contract. It denies me the very basic right to see you. And that right to see you must trump a “religious” belief that a woman must or should cover her face. I fear if women in Canada are choosing to wear a niqab, then it speaks to the very failure of the ability of our culture to inculcate the great legacy of freedom to our citizens.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, recently lamented: “For too long we have been self-conscious and even ashamed about
British identity. By embracing multiculturalism and the idea that every culture and belief is of equal value we have betrayed our own traditions of welcoming strangers to our shore.”
Canada, like all Western countries, is founded on the same principles as Britain: ethical monotheism, the Judeo/Christian ethic that has evolved over thousands of years. We have opened our doors to embrace “the other.” But there seems to have been a misunderstanding. Inclusiveness does not include the right to destroy from within, a culture that is open. It isn't incumbent upon our culture to accept all the values of another in the name of tolerance. Rather, it's incumbent on the other, who has chosen to come to the West, to be open to all of its possibilities. And it's up to the host, to assist in every way possible, to help newcomers to let go of the ties that enslave them to their past in order that they can embrace the freedom that the West embodies.
Ironically, the seeds of destruction of Western civilization lie in its basic principles of free will, freedom, security of person. Democracy is fragile because we have within us an innate fear of freedom; what Erik Fromm calls the “flight from freedom” which too often leads to submission.
The Russian author, Dostoevsky, in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov written in 1880, explored submission. In his parable within the novel, The Grand Inquisitor, he writes about the burden of freedom. Jesus comes to Seville, Spain at the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century. He is taken prisoner by the Grand Inquisitor and questioned.
John Gray in his 2002 book “Straw Dogs” wrote “The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that humanity is too weak to bear the gift of freedom. It does not seek freedom but bread-not the divine bread promised by Jesus, but ordinary earthly bread. People will worship whoever gives them bread, for they need their rulers to be gods. The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that his teaching has been amended to deal with humanity as it really is:
‘We have corrected Thy work and have found it on miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts’”
The terrible gift? Free-will.
Multi-culturalism is a misnomer. Yes, Canada is a diverse country, but in ethnicity not culture. We are one culture. While Western culture has evolved over time improving on the implementation of equality for all, Islamic culture, a culture based on submission, is devolving. While the majority of nuns are no longer wearing a habit and more Christian and Jewish women in Canada are taking on positions once held only by men, women in Islamic countries have been losing their freedoms. One just need
look at photos of Muslim women in the 1970s and compare them to today.
A culture of freedom cannot open its doors to a culture of submission. And make no mistake; this is a question of culture, not religion. It behooves us to follow the advice of Lord Carey. We must “recover a confidence in our nation’s values.”
