Life behind the niqab: My story

Naima Sidow knows what the world looks like from behind a niqab.

Some of it she can even laugh about, like the homeless guy downtown who decided she was a ninja and jumped up to challenge her to a fight.

Behind the veil she wore a bemused expression.

“I’m standing there thinking, ‘I don’t know how to fight,’” she recalls.

“Luckily a really nice lady passed by and helped me out.”

Then there was the startled guy she accidentally bumped into in a Walmart aisle early one summer.

‘Wow,” he said, “I didn’t know it was Halloween already.”

Canadians’ intense disapproval of religious niqabs in public crosses political lines and cultural origins, a new poll suggests.

The Local Parliament Project poll found 64 per cent of respondents support banning Muslim women from front-line federal public service jobs if they wear Islamic veils. Only 19 per cent oppose such a ban, which the Conservatives have said they would consider if they are re-elected.

Likewise, 72 per cent agreed the wearing of niqabs should be forbidden at public citizenship ceremonies, a prohibition two federal courts recently ruled illegal. Just 14 per cent disagreed.

Distaste for niqabs worn in public is not limited to “old-stock” Canadians. Seventy per cent of respondents born outside Canada support the ban at citizenship ceremonies, while just 16 per cent disagree.

Almost as many object to federal workers wearing niqabs when interacting with the public.

The opposition to niqabs in front-line federal jobs crosses all political stripes: 74 per cent of respondents said they voted Conservative in 2011, followed by NDP voters (66 per cent) and Liberal voters (56 per cent). About 86 per cent voted Bloc Québécois and 51 per cent for the Green Party.

Most surprising is the speed at which public opinion caught fire, said Peter Loewen, the academic project’s principle researcher and associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and the Munk School of Global Affairs.

“What’s remarkable is we can go from something which was literally a non-issue, on which people had no opinions two weeks ago, to having overwhelming support for something because it’s been brought up by the political class,” Loewen said Friday.

The simmering controversy burst into the federal election campaign Sept. 15, when the Federal Court of Appeal, responding to a government appeal, upheld a lower court ruling that it is illegal to stop women from wearing niqabs at the swearing-in ceremonies.

In a matter of days, a subject about which most Canadians likely had little knowledge or considered opinion was rocketing off pollsters’ charts. Much of it was fuelled by campaigning Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who early on declared, “it is offensive that someone would hide their identity at the very moment where they are committing to join the Canadian family.”

The government is now seeking an appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court judgment. The random online poll was conducted Oct. 6 and 7 with 1,650 respondents. They were asked to state their degree of approval/ disapproval on two statements: Women wearing a niqab or face covering should be forced to reveal their face when giving a citizenship oath; women working in the federal civil service should not be allowed to wear a niqab or face covering when interacting with the public.

The margin of error is 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The results are posted at http:// www.localparliament.ca/