Kenney, Nenshi hold their ground on niqab issue
The war of words between Mayor Naheed Nenshi and a federal minister over the niqab continues, and neither side shows signs of backing away from what has quickly become one of the most talked-about issues in the upcoming election.
On Friday, federal multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney clarified that a comment he made in a Calgary Herald interview about the niqab face covering was not meant as a racial slur towards Nenshi, who has lambasted the Tories for the federal government’s legal fight against a handful of Islamic women wearing the niqab during citizenship ceremonies.
“Well, it seems to me that it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it,” Kenney told the Herald. “I don’t think this should be an issue of contention.”
Nenshi soon responded on Twitter, saying, “People like me”, eh? Let’s just assume (Jason Kenney) means “thoughtful people”, shall we?"
But Kenney told a political radio show he was referring to politically correct liberals who are “unintentionally legitimizing this symbol of the oppression of women.”
“My response to my friend Naheed Nenshi was simply to say that some of the hyperbolic language that’s being used to critique this sensible reinforcement of the public nature of the citizenship oath is unhelpful,” Kenney said in an interview with Evan Solomon on SiriusXM’s “Everything is Political" on Friday.
On Twitter, the hashtag #peoplelikeNenshi started trending Thursday and as of Friday afternoon, more than 14,000 tweets had been written with the tag.
Kenney said it’s “completely ridiculous” to suggest that his comment was in some way related to Nenshi being a member of the Shia Ismaili community.
“He’s a friend of mine. He knows how close I am to all of the cultural, ethnic and religious communities in Canada, particularly his own Ismaili community,” Kenney told Solomon.
Nenshi was unavailable for comment Friday, but told CBC News he knows Kenney didn’t mean anything by the comment.
“But it was an interesting turn of phrase,” he added.
In the same interview with the Herald, Kenney said “We are all used to Naheed’s running social commentary on everything; that’s nothing new.”
“He could have been seen as being pretty patronizing to the mayor of the city that he lives in,” Nenshi said.
The niqab ban has prevented two women from proceeding with their citizenship ceremonies, and Nenshi said his defence of the right to wear the niqab has made him the recipient of questions such as, “do you hate women? Do you believe in these medieval barbaric practices that treat people like property or whatever it is.”
“I don’t much like the niqab, and I wish people wouldn’t wear it,” Nenshi continued.
“But what I like even less is telling people what to do. If we’re hearing that it’s a symbol of oppression...and we shouldn’t let their husbands and their brothers tell them what to wear, how is that any different from letting Jason Kenney tell them what to wear?”