The niqab? Really?

Over the past several days, the issue of whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear the niqab while taking the oath of Canadian citizenship has swallowed up much of the federal election campaign — not least in Thursday night’s French (read: Quebec) debate. Each party has taken its turn claiming righteous indignation at the others’ stances, converting an otherwise straightforward issue of religious accommodation into a moral panic about creeping Islamophobia or the slippery slope of Shariah law.

The debate, if we can call it that, was rekindled last week, after the Federal Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court’s ruling striking down a government policy (though it is not law) banning face coverings at citizenship ceremonies. The Conservatives seized the opportunity to drive this wellworn political wedge in deeper, vowing to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada and pledging to introduce a legislated ban within 100 days of re-election.

That prompted the other parties to declare (or re-declare) their positions on the issue. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, to his credit, straightforwardly reaffirmed his party’s support of the court’s decision, saying, “we will be looking at ensuring that Canadians’ rights are respected right across the country.” The Bloc Québécois, trailing badly in the polls and desperate for an opening, lunged hard in the other direction, releasing a 20-second ad showing a great black gob of oil dropping from a pipeline and morphing into a niqab (no, we don’t get the connection either, but presumably viewers were supposed to be equally repelled by both). Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe went so far as to demand the notwithstanding clause be invoked to deal with the apparent national emergency presented by a few dozen women covering their faces at citizenship ceremonies.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, meanwhile, seemed caught in the middle: not wanting to alienate the party’s support in Quebec and facing divisions within his caucus, he defended the court’s decision but noted that “anyone seeking citizenship must uncover their face to identify themselves before swearing the oath.” Which is of course the status quo — as a matter of current practice, women wearing the niqab must show their face in private to a female citizenship officer just before the ceremony — and which highlights just how bogus this issue really is.

A little perspective, please. Of Canada’s Muslim population (just 3.2 per cent of the total, according to the 2011 census), only a tiny minority of women opt to wear the niqab in everyday life. By law, these women are permitted to cover their faces while engaging in nearly all activities, except where legitimate issues of identification or security come into play, such as posing for a driver’s licence photo, going through security at an airport, testifying (in some cases) in court — or becoming a citizen. No one seriously contests the need for these exceptions, just as no one should seriously question the broader rule, embodied in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that individuals and groups have a right to conduct themselves as they see fit, even in ways that others might find inappropriate or objectionable, so long as they do no actual harm to anyone. It is up to the state, always, to show why freedom should be limited, not the individual to show why he should be free. Which is why the government’s case failed.

Demagoguing an issue in a close election campaign is all very well, but not when it comes at the expense of an often-targeted and easily exploited religious minority. There are so many other, larger issues the parties could and should be debating. That instead they have devoted so much time to discussing whether a woman may remove her veil before taking the oath, or whether she must also take it off while reciting it, should shame them all.