The banning of the burka and niqab in Canada's citizenship courts has elicited some bizarre and hysterical reaction from Islamists, their leftist allies, and the liberal media.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's words had barely echoed across the country when the usual apologists of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda in Canada were churning out press releases denouncing the minister. The liberal media joined in with the Toronto Star falling just short of labelling Minister Kenney a bigot, referring to his action as "bigotry."
However, the Toronto Star's hysteria was mild compared to the reaction of a prominent Calgary cleric and a feminist academic from Kingston. First the cleric. Imam Syed Soharwardy is better known as the man who locked horns with then-publisher of the Western Standard Ezra Levant, and lost.
Reacting to Minister Kenney's announcement, Imam Soharwardy, who leads the grandiose-sounding Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, implied the minister was an Islamophobe and likened his action to that of the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany. CTV News reported him as saying:
Muslims are going through that situation right now that the Jews faced before the Holocaust. Because intimidation of their faith, bad mouthing of their faith, bad mouthing about their book, bad mouthing about their beliefs. That was going on in Germany before the Holocaust, same thing is happening now about Muslims. So this is absolutely an alarming situation that a few Islamophobes are winning.
Soharwardy's outlandish statement drew a quick rebuke from the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. CEO Avi Benlolo, expressing "outrage," said in a statement:
Soharwardy has debased the memory of six million slaughtered Jews with a facile comparison to a new rule with which he, but not all Muslims, disagrees. To draw a parallel between a government decision requiring new immigrants to respect a basic value of this country - a decision supported by many Muslims, including the Muslim Canadian Congress, and the horrific experiences of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis, demonstrates a complete insensitivity to and total lack of comprehension of the genocidal intent of Hitler's Final Solution. Sadly, the Canadian media seems to have given him a pass instead of confronting these outrageous statements.
If Imam Soharwardy invoked the Holocaust to denounce Minister Kenney, feminist professor Bev Baines, of Queen's University, was not far behind when she accused Kenney of "undressing" Muslim women to deny them citizenship of Canada.
Appearing on the SUN News Network's show Byline, Baines defended wearing the burka or niqab as an act of feminism. She told host Brian Lilley, "Minister Kenney wants to undress them." As a visibly shocked Lilley repeated her words, Baines reiterated her position, saying, "Absolutely. When you take off their niqab, you undress them."
Listening to this feminist defence of the burqa and niqab simply floored me. Was this the same Baines who had once warned that the intrusion of religion in public policy would dilute gender equality?
Back in 2006, in a research paper titled "Equality's Nemesis?" that appeared in the Journal of Law and Equality, the same professor who was defending the Islamist niqab had warned against what she referred to as the "threat" religions would pose for "women's equality rights."
An extract of her paper, available on the Internet, says:
The feminists who fought to strengthen the guarantee of sex equality in section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms never suggested that the state was the only threat to women's equality. We were concerned that the multiculturalism provision might be interpreted to limit women's equality and this concern led us to lobby for the second sex equality provision that ultimately became section 28. However, I don't think we fully grasped the threat that the major religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - would pose for women's equality rights.
How can an Imam who only last week was celebrating Hanukkah with a Rabbi show such insensitivity towards the Jews? How could a feminist who only recently warned of the threat religious law posed to women's equality, support the niqab?
It seems we are living in an era of mediocrity where the merging of leftist and Islamist narrative has numbed our ability to see the obvious contradictions this unholy alliance poses to our civilization. How long will this era continue? Will Minister Kenney find allies from across the political divide?
One day I hope to see the Liberals and New Democrats join the Conservatives to say out loudly that they find the niqab to be a medieval monstrosity that is a manifestation of misogyny that has no place in Canada and that this ghastly attire is not a religious requirement, but a political statement thumbing its nose at Canada and its Western allies. Quebec has produced such cross-political consensus against the burka and niqab. Will Canada?
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Walkom: What's right about Jason Kenney's very wrong no-veil rule
Canada News: Walkom: What's right about Jason Kenney's very ...
Jason Kenney bans wearing of veil at citizenship swearing in ...
Niqabs, burkas must be removed during citizenship ceremonies ...
Has anybody tried wearing a Bikini in an Islamic Country?
And protested because its banned?
Judges should have been asked to approach applicants with face coverings and quietly ask them to please drop the veil for the recitation; they could stand at the back if they wished. If the applicant demurred they would be advised that they could remain permanent residents with all rights that entails and could take the oath in the future. After all, those who want to drive remove the veil for their license picture.
All these sky-god religions are a menace to our sisters.
Perhaps rather than focusing on conservative hypocrisy (the usual response – which I agree is obviously accurate), you should challenge the cowardice of those who claim to be liberal and/or secular but are silence in the face of these abuse?
Europe and Canada openly restrict other speech and symbols promoting racial inequality and injustice, policies created and pushed by the left. Banning the veil, if not headscarf, in public circumstances is simply a logical continuation of existing policies.
If you want American-style freedom in religion, then you have to grant it in speech as well. And if religion gets special rights over other ideologies, then you are simply attacking secularism and equality before the law in an open manner.
You also seem guilt of privileging religion. Why is one person barred from wearing a disguise for secular reasons in certain contexts, but a religious person can?
Banning the veil is no more "ridiculous and ludicrous" than other forms of regulating extreme speech and expression in Canada and Europe, which many on the left not only support, but created.
I have spoken about the veil ban, here: http://muslimmouse.blogspot.com/2011/12/jason-kenney-new-grand-mufti-of-canada.html
So why don't you stop talking on behalf of veiled Canadian Muslim women like myself, and let ME talk?
I do not know what the Law of Canada requires, for example, with respect to photographic identification, passports, etc. But I would like to see you travel, the world over, with a veiled face, and a passport where your face is hidden behind a burqua, or niquab, or whatever you are wearing and calling it.
In Muslim countries, at least some of them, women can not step outside their doors without a male companion, or without wearing a veil. But the niquab and the burka were not ubiquitous and worn when Muslim women visited Europe half a century ago. They were, and acted like, normal people. These getups are not required under Islamic Law. Even the Catholic Nuns in the West are no longer wearing those similar outfits.
Feel free to live by Islamic Law...in an Islamic Country. I wil fully respect you when you do so. However, when you live in the West, you are expected to obey the laws and tules of the country you reside, or travel, in.
Unfortunately, Canadians have forgotten the values which founded this country and allowed it to flourish. I am now heartbroken that the people I have grown up with, who showed me such friendliness and respect, whom I had and continue to have genuine affection for, have turned into a population which fears anything and anyone who does not conform to a certain mythical idea of what being "Canadian" is really about.
To me, what made Canada great was that every individual from every background was free to hold and practice their beliefs without being mocked, scorned, and ostracized. Being Canadian was not about the way you dressed, but the way you contributed to society and how you made the world a better place.
It is this Canada that I miss, and it is this Canada which I fear no longer exists.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the
intolerant.â€-- Karl Popper
NOW...on this issue...since it is the country's law...then we have to obey the law..or make the tough choice by going elsewhere where we can live and practice our faith 100% to our liking...
Thanks for everybody keeping this discussion civil.
If you are still monitoring this board, then I would like to highly recommend to you the poetry of Rumi and the writings of Frithjof Schuon, Kabir Helminski and his wife, Camilla, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Lings, Ali Hajwairi, and ibn Arabi.
Take care,
Come on, try rational debate, let us know you what you yourself think, for once!
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His most favorite label is "Islamists", which he recklessly throws around knowing fully well that some in the West have declared war on the Islamists.
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"Otherwise you are spot on that misogyny is at the root of this "dress code""
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No, he is not, and he knows it.
If he is a knowledgeable person, he would know that these women wear the niqab at their own volition because they believe that this is what God and His Messenger have commanded them to do.
They do it because of their religiosity as their duty as a Muslim.
I disagree with their interpretation, but do understand where these women are coming from, as I have known many women who wear the niqab at their own volition, many times against the wishes of their male relatives.