Pauline Marois’ dangerous game is being exposed
Pauline Marois’ Charter of Quebec Values was meant to gather pure laine separatists and feminists against the rest of the population. It has ended up dividing the tribe itself. On Tuesday in the National Assembly, a handful of bare-breasted protesters from a marginal women’s rights group pulled off a stunt to expose one hypocritical aspect of the charter — keeping the big crucifix behind the speaker’s chair but banishing the religious symbols of non-Christians from the civil service and the broader public sector. On Wednesday, the umbrella group representing the province’s 97 women’s centres reported that the premier’s obsessive opposition to the Muslim women’s hijab is provoking harassment and violence against hijabi women. “They are being shoved, insulted and denigrated. Some have been spat in the face. The impact of the charter debate on them is undeniable.” On Thursday, Jacques Parizeau, former premier (1994-96), rocked the Parti Québécois establishment by saying that the very premise of the charter is phony — to preserve the neutrality of a state that’s already neutral.
More tellingly, the 83-yearold elder statesman accused Marois of Muslim-baiting even as she targets the Jewish kippa, the Sikh turban and other religious symbols.
He said prevailing antiMuslim prejudices are based on mayhem involving Muslims elsewhere, not Quebec.
“For the most part, the only contact most Quebecers have with the world of Islam is through images of violence, repeated over and over: wars, riots, bombs, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Boston Marathon. . . . The reaction is obvious: ‘We’ll have none of that here.’ ”
Marois is displaying the authoritarian traits of the old Catholic Church in Quebec and some of the worst dictators of the Muslim world. She is also echoing European Islamophobes. And she is copying Stephen Harper’s style of governance. She is a proud product of the 1960s Quiet Revolution, during which Quebecers cast off the church’s control of society, especially women. Now she wants to excommunicate hijabi women from the public payroll. European xenophobes, who have traded their overt anti-Semitism for overt anti-Islamism, express their animus in the liberal language of equality for Muslim women. They see the hijab as a symbol of oppression. So does she. Geert Wilders, the unapologetic Dutch Islamophobe, wants to impose a fine of 1,000 euros a year on hijab’s. Marois wants to go further and rob hijabi women of their livelihood by firing them from public sector jobs. Her proposed rules are reminiscent of those imposed by the early 19th century dictators of Turkey and Iran, Kemal Ataturk and the first Shah. Both banned the fez cap and the hijab, especially in government offices. Today, the Taliban and the Saudis force women to cover their hair and head. In all such cases, the male autocrats dictate the sartorial choices of citizens, especially women. Ironically, Marois is following their impulse. As for the parallels between Marois and Harper, there are plenty. She is using the charter as a wedge issue to rally the PQ base, just as he presses divisive issues to energize his right-of-centre constituency. She, too, is not deterred by lack of evidence. She is pushing the charter even though the Quebec Human Rights Commission got only 32 complaints last year related to religious rights. And both the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and the Quebec wing of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business Report few or no problems accommodating the religious requirements of employees or customers. Like Harper, Marois is ignoring expert advice. The Quebec justice ministry was reportedly against the charter. But she found an outside expert to back her. Academic Henri Brun of Laval University justified it as “a preventive measure” because of high immigration, especially Muslims from North Africa — a rationalization anchored in European antiMuslim xenophobia. Just as Harper spends taxpayer dollars on government propaganda, Marois has mounted a $2-million advertising blitz to promote the charter. Like Harper, she controls information, packs institutions with her own appointees and squelches dissent. On a government website promoting the charter, public feedback — 18,000 comments and 1,000 phone calls — is not accessible to the public, only to the government. The province’s Council for the Status of Women, which was deeply divided over the issue, has been stuffed with four new pro-charter appointees. (The more independent Quebec Federation of Women already opposes the ban on religious symbols.) The Bloc Québécois, the federal wing of the separatists, fired MP Maria Mourani from its caucus for condemning Marois’ “ethnic nationalism.” The premier is playing a dangerous game. It is heartening to see more and more Quebecers seeing through her smokescreens. Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca