Online vitriol has increased almost overnight

Some people seem to have taken the CAQ’s ‘religious neutrality’ proposals as permission to spew hatred

It has been an emotionally scathing week for religious minorities here in Quebec. Overnight, we went from flourishing professionals contributing to society to keyboard warriors, fending off online trolls, hateful messages and social media vitriol.

Now that the newly elected government is proposing to ban the wearing of signs of religion for public employees deemed to be wielding state authority, trolls seem to think it’s open season on religious minorities, and that disgusts me. Premier-designate François Legault has, in a period of less than two weeks, unveiled (pun intended) a dark side of Quebec society. Many now seem to think they have permission to hurl insults at fellow citizens.

If I had a dollar for every time I have been told to “go back to where you come from,” I could retire early. (Do they mean Dollard-desOrmeaux, or the Royal Victoria Hospital, where I was born?)

I have also had to sit by and listen to the deafening sound of silence from most of our elected officials at a time when we need their support and comfort as those we elected to power. The only exception, so far as I’m aware, has been Pierrefonds-Roxboro Mayor Jim Beis, who penned a social media post this past week that drew a fierce response, everything from praise and gratitude to the most deplorable and

We need to hold dearly to our values of inclusion and respect.

reprehensible of comments.

Is this the Quebec we want? One that openly discriminates and threatens to terminate the employment of those who do not conform to the majority ideology or religious practice? How is it that we can stomach such an openly discriminatory and exclusionary proposed law, one that would implement religious neutrality in a way that is anything but neutral?

Fellow Quebecers, we need to hold dearly to our values of inclusion and respect for one another. These, too, are our traditions. We need to focus on building larger tables, and not bigger walls.

Advocates of the proposed restrictions often refer to immigrants and suggest they are trying to take over our society and impose their will on “us.” To me, as a Quebec-born Muslim woman raising her children here as third-generation Canadians, the debate has little to do with immigration.

Also, I am not imposing my choice — a freely made choice that is protected under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms — on anyone else. As someone who made a conscious decision to wear my hijab in my teenage years having been raised by an (at the time) secular family and against the wishes of my immediate family, I am fiercely proud to express myself by covering parts of my body that I so choose. My choice of attire is mine alone, no man or government can tell me otherwise. If we have learned anything as a society in 2018, it should be that no man, woman or child should dictate to any woman how they should or should not dress.

And I cannot help but think back to January 2017, when all Quebecers and Canadians mourned the killing of six men in a Quebec City mosque. The rhetoric that is bubbling up on social media and elsewhere right now is precisely what fuels that sort of crime. We need to learn from our past and not allow it to repeat itself.

I am wary of a government that does not protect the interests of all of its people. I am warier still of a government that chooses as its first mandate to champion such an incendiary, egregious, discriminatory and divisive law. How this issue is handled, legally as well as socially, will set the tone for the next four years.