Pandemic masks, niqabs and Bill 21

Silly arguments and false parallels won’t make Quebec’s secularism law disappear

It was inevitable. Linking Bill 21 and wearing face coverings during the pandemic, that is.

For several opponents of Quebec’s secularism law, it seems that the Legault government’s recommendation face-coverings be worn for reasons of public health during the COVID-19 pandemic — a recommendation being made by medical authorities in countless other jurisdictions — was just too tempting a target.

My purpose today is not to defend Bill 21; my support for the law is a matter of record and I feel no need to restate my arguments. It’s just to point out that silly arguments are not going to make it disappear. In fact, they are a disservice to the cause of freedom of religion, which can stand on its own two legs without the need for specious reasoning.

There can be no reasonable comparison between a government encouraging all its citizens to wear a small face mask to protect life during a pandemic and a supposedly divine requirement that women be covered from head-to-toe, except for a slit or screen for the eyes, when outside the home.

It has been established that face coverings help prevent the spread of the coronavirus by the wearer. Wearing one is the socially responsible thing to do when one is in public, and especially when conditions for social distancing are not optimal, for example in the métro.

With respect to face coverings, Bill 21 says (in a provision that is a holdover from the Liberal’s failed Bill 62): “Persons who present themselves to receive a service from a personnel member of a body (government) must have their face uncovered where doing so is necessary to allow their identity to be verified of for security reasons.” Contrary to what some have suggested, nobody is barred from accessing anything, as long as the person who covers her face — let’s assume it is a choice — allows her identity to be verified or uncovers her face for security reasons.

How that comes into conflict with the Quebec’s recommendation that we wear masks for protection is not clear to me. And in fact, there is a specific exception in Bill 21 for face coverings worn for health reasons, so there is no contradiction in the law.

Some have argued that our acceptance of face coverings during the pandemic, and the lack of any requirement that they be removed for purposes of identification, amounts to discrimination against Muslim women who wear the niqab.

Well, there’s a big difference on that score, too. I can recognize a person who wears a mask, but not someone under a niqab or burka.

It’s amazing that one has to point out the obviousness of it all. And no, wearing face masks does not make all of us niqabis, nor does it mean we all “have succumbed to a form of oppression,” as Katherine Bullock, who is a lecturer in Islamic politics at University of Toronto, has served as chair of Isna-canada and who herself wears a hijab, suggested, presumably tongue-in-check, in a recent article published by The Conversation. In the article, which was critical of Quebec’s restrictions, Bullock also wonders whether the public getting used to face masks being worn for health reasons during the pandemic will lead to greater social acceptance of niqabs.

Let’s hope not.

Meanwhile, others have used the current situation to renew their battles against the secularism law more broadly.

Even The Washington Post fell into the trap of comparing the overall ban on niqab in public in France and the imposition of medical masks.

It’s OK to laugh at the irony of niqab bans vs. medical masks, en passant, but there is something deeply offensive when this so-called contradiction is advanced, in times of pandemic and death, to make a political argument, and even in some cases, to accuse an entire people of intolerance.

There is a specific exception in Bill 21 for face coverings worn for health reasons.