Harper waging phoney jihad on the niqab
The prime minister of Canada has spent $250,000 preventing a law-abiding immigrant from becoming a Canadian. Stephen Harper is going to spend more, as he challenges two separate court rulings that it is “unlawful” to force Zunera Ishaq of Toronto to take off her niqab for the citizenship ceremony.
This is not a scandalous waste of tax dollars. It is money well spent. It has helped lift the veil on state-sponsored bigotry, the like of which we have not seen in contemporary Canada.
The niqab is to Harperites what abortion is to right-wing Republicans — a flag to rally followers and get them all riled up to go and vote, while keeping them distracted from what matters, such as the economy.
The Harperites are waging a phoney jihad on the niqab, considering what the Prime Minister’s Office said in 2009 about it:
“In an open and democratic society like Canada, individuals are free to make their own decisions regarding their personal apparel and to adhere to their own customs or traditions of their faith or beliefs.”
That was well before the Harper gang discovered that bullying a Muslim woman is red meat for its braying base — just as the separatist Parti Québécois found Muslim-baiting useful to fire up its pure laine constituency.
As for the rest of us, we are being had, sucked into a non-issue that is dividing Canadians and sapping our social harmony.
The ban on the niqab was imposed in 2011 by Jason Kenney, then minister of citizenship, despite confidential warnings from his department that it won’t stand in court, according to Sean Fine, the Globe and Mail’s justice reporter. A senior bureaucrat wrote: “The minister would like this done, regardless of whether there is a legal basis.”
Sure enough, the Federal Court ruled that Kenney was contravening the Citizenship Act, which orders citizenship judges to “allow the greatest possible freedom” to religious beliefs.
Undaunted, the government went to the Federal Court of Appeal. It lost there as well. Last week, the court ordered Ottawa to give Ishaq her citizenship, pronto, so she could vote on Oct. 19, as she is keen to.
But the Harperites won’t give up their battle or prattle.
They say a person cannot hide his/her identity, even though Ishaq’s is not in question and will not be because she has said she will show her face to officials ahead of the public citizenship ceremony.
The Harperites also say Ishaq should show her face because public opinion demands it. What if the public favoured anti-Semitism or racism?
Invoking popular support is strange for a prime minister who claims to be guided by principle, not popularity, when he’s being bullheaded about some of his controversial policies.
Harper also claims that the niqab ban is backed not only by Canadians but also an “overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims.”
So, those who agree with him are “moderate.” Those who don’t aren’t. If you are not a moderate, you are obviously an extremist. That includes the non-Muslims who believe that a government has no business telling women what to wear.
Harper even argues that the niqab is not Islamic, only a tribal practice. Ken- ney got a fatwa from Sheik Mohamed Tantawi, Egypt’s top Muslim authority, who “clarified for me that people in the West who think this is a religious obligation do not understand Islam law. So, I am not going to second-guess the most pre-eminent Sharia authority in the Sunni world.”
But he is second-guessing the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in 2004 that a religious practice is what the practitioner sincerely believes it to be — “the State is in no position to be, nor should it become, the arbiter of religious dogma.”
The Harperites are ignoring our top court and the Federal Court but taking sharia dictation from a mufti in Cairo.
In yet another irony, they are behaving like some autocratic Islamic states that act as arbiters of what is, or not, acceptable Islam — and don’t allow churches, synagogues and temples, either.
In Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, disobedient women are flogged; in Harper’s Canada, they are deprived of their right to citizenship.
It is a sign of the times that we have allowed our national government to bring us to this disgraceful state.