Tempest in a niqab
By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - 155 Comments
What Naema Ahmed’s expulsion from a French class really shows
Photograph by David Boily/ La Presse
UPDATE: The Quebec government tabled a bill Wednesday requiring faces to be in plain view when obtaining or delivering government services.
In August 2009, Naema Ahmed, a pharmacist, mother of three and an observant Muslim living in Montreal, began what is known in French as a cour de francisation—literally, a Frenchifying class—at CEGEP Saint-Laurent in the city’s north end. Apart from being taught the (often confounding) rules of French conjugation, students taking the 33-week, 1,000-hour class learn rhythm, intonation and the practical use of the language: how to shop for groceries and clothes, as well as how to ask for help if they get lost or confused. They also learn the basic workings of Quebec society: that it is French-speaking, secular and considers men and women as equals. In other words, the class teaches integration nearly as much as it does the French language.
At the behest of a school official, Ahmed lifted her niqab—a garment worn by certain observant Muslim women that covers the whole face except the eyes—when registering for the course. When she showed up for class, however, Ahmed refused to remove her veil in the presence of the three male students in attendance in the class of 19. The following 11 weeks, according to a government source, “were one step forward, two steps back”; the teacher often had to halt oral exercises between students to accommodate Ahmed—she didn’t want to speak unveiled to the men of the class. Moreover, the source said, Ahmed at first agreed to remove her niqab for certain exercises, then changed her mind as the classes wore on. “There was no will on her part to compromise,” said the source. (Ahmed was contacted by Maclean’s for this story, but she declined an interview.)
Midway through the second 11-week block of classes, the teacher had had enough. She went to the director of the school, Paul-Émile Bourque. School officials further attempted to have Ahmed remove the veil, which failed; Bourque then called the province’s Immigration Ministry, which runs the classes. (The $4,000-program is entirely subsidized by the Quebec government.) With the consent of Yolande James, Quebec’s minister of immigration, Ahmed was asked to leave the class. It was likely the first time in the program’s 40-year history that a student was turned away on account of a few square centimetres of black cloth.
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Harper must act now to protect free speech
By The Editors - Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 4:24 PM - 118 Comments
The Prime Minister admits there’s a problem. And he says he doesn’t have a clue how to fix it.
Stephen Harper used to have very clear—and colourful—ideas on human rights commissions and what should be done about them.“Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society,” he said in a 1999 interview with Terry O’Neill of BC Report newsmagazine.“ It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.” He went on to complain about the “bastardization” of the entire concept of rights in modern society.
Of course, that was back when Harper was president of the National Citizens Coalition. Today he’s Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister. And he appears to have lost his fear of totalitarianism.
In an interview this past January with Maclean’s, the Prime Minister was asked what, if anything, he intended to do to halt the encroachment on individual freedom by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the name of regulating hate speech.
It is an issue of crucial importance to this country and our strongly held traditions of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
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Norman Bethune to the rescue!
By selley - Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 1:44 PM - 0 Comments
Must-reads: …Lawrence Martin on the RCMP “information czar”; Peter Worthington on what Hillary hath
Must-reads: Lawrence Martin on the RCMP “information czar”; Peter Worthington on what Hillary hath wrought; John Ivison on gas taxes; Margaret Wente on Chinese fishermen.
Ooh! Ooh! Let’s call it Bikergate!
At least one B.C. columnist isn’t ready to let Maxime Bernier off the hook just yet.“You’re darn right” the Foreign Affairs Minister’s girlfriend is “our business,” an unusually combative Barbara Yaffe argues in the Vancouver Sun, because “he must be—and be seen to be—above reproach in all things.” (We double-checked—she is indeed talking about Mr. Bernier.) Other than this sudden appearance of fallability, the only “concern” she raises is his—by which she presumably mean Julie Couillard’s—access to sensitive information. So, security checks for Cabinet Ministers’ significant others would be a good idea, right? Nope! “The only thing required to regulate these matters is ordinary good judgment and a watchful prime minister,” she contends. Problem is, the nation’s “ordinary good judgment” has pretty much declared this a non-issue, so we’d say the burden’s on Yaffe to make the case. It doesn’t help when Couillard has “pretty significant links to biker gangs” in the sixth paragraph but is only “connected—however circuitously and remotely—to members of an outlaw gang” in the 18th.
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Canada—Stagflating towards the poorhouse since 2008
By selley - Monday, April 28, 2008 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments
WEEKEND ROUNDUP
Must-reads: Doug Saunders on “re-Talibanization”; Scott Taylor on Rick Hillier’s successor; …JamesWEEKEND ROUNDUP
Must-reads: Doug Saunders on “re-Talibanization”; Scott Taylor on Rick Hillier’s successor; James Travers on our crumbling democracy; David Olive and George Jonas on air travel; Greg Weston on the in-and-out.
Law and Order: Canadian Criminal Intent
In which rowdy hockey fans put cops to the test, star chambers impose human rights orthodoxy on unsuspecting Christians and the Supreme Court vows to keep dogs out of our backpacks. Continue…
