DISRESPECT ISN’T FUNNY

The Canadians who covered their faces with potato sacks, masks and ghost costumes to vote in Election Canada’s advance polls did it to make a political statement about the niqab, the face-covering veil that has so dominated recent public discourse. In making their point, they exhibited behaviour that was deeply disrespectful.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said it is essential that people’s faces be exposed during the Canadian citizenship ceremony, and polls indicate the majority of Canadians agree with him. In contrast, Elections Canada permits people to vote while wearing a face covering. The rule, which is not new, offers them the choice of showing their face or signing an oath attesting to their eligibility to vote.

Zunera Ishaq, who is Muslim, won a protracted legal battle last week to challenge the government’s ban and wear her niqab to take the oath of citizenship. As required, she removed it in private to be identified, but maintained that it was her religious duty to keep her face covered in public. Those who chose to vote while wearing masks or bags over their heads made a mockery of her faith.

The effect is similar in the case of the Montreal woman who claimed to belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, widely acknowledged to be a parody religion. She went to court to seek permission to wear a colander on her head in her driver’s licence photo, in the process showing disregard for people who cover their heads out of religious conviction: men who wear kippahs or turbans, for instance.

She earned a deserved rebuke from the Superior Court justice who denied her request for wasting the court’s time, although Pastafarians, as adherents call themselves, are able to wear colanders in official photos in some countries. Like the voters wearing masks, they’re making a political statement about values and tolerance. Unfortunately they demonstrate intolerance themselves about those whose religious convictions they do not share.