Nothing Conspicuous, Please

"As they came up to me, one spat right in my face while the other started insulting me with really horrible words ... You with the hood, go back to your country."
"As they went by, one of them completely removed my head scarf. As soon as I turned to pick it up, they were running away. I was really scared. I was in a state of panic. I screamed, but nobody came to help me."
I am seriously considering leaving the province if things continue like this. This is my home, but I no longer feel at home."
Mylene Pichette, Montreal

Graham Hughes for National Post    Mylène Pichette, a Muslim convert who lives in Montreal, was assaulted by two men this week. 

 

Mylene Pichette converted to Islam fifteen years ago, when she married an Algerian immigrant. She has three children, one of whom is a 14-year-old girl who also wears a hijab, and she worries now for her daughter's safety. Her daughter travels by bus to and from school: "I told her to put a hat over her scarf when she's riding the metro to avoid insults", she said in an interview.

Ms. Pichette doesn't have to travel far to do as one of her attackers shouted at her. She has always lived in Quebec; "forever", she says, has her family lived in the province. The only difference between her now and traditional 'old stock' Quebecois is that she is a practising Muslim. In her fifteen years of living in Montreal as a Muslim, readily identifiable with her headscarf, she had never before been insulted or assaulted, or felt fear.

"This charter is making us sick", she said. "The PQ (Parti Quebecois government) is dividing Quebec in two. It's terrible. It has not even been adopted and look at all the damage it is causing." She, like many other Muslim women feeling exposed to public ire, feels vulnerable and fearful. A Montreal company that focuses on issues of diversity last month did an online survey of 556 Quebec Muslims. The result was that 85% of respondents felt the social climate to be tense.

The PQ minister responsible for the proposed charter of values to eliminate obvious religious symbols like the Muslim hijab, the Sikh turban, and the Jewish kippa from making a presence in the civil service claims a civilized discussion of the matter is required. Yet he excused himself from a debate he had been scheduled to take part in at Montreal's Concordia University. He was concerned that anti-charter protesters could disrupt the venue.

"I made the decision not to participate in the debate to avoid having the discussion around the charter -- which up to now has taken place amid calm, tolerance and respect -- tarnished by ugly incidents", he stated. But, in fact, the calm, tolerance and respect is absent from the public which appears in its majority to approve the values set out by the proposed charter of values. Hard to imagine that tolerant Quebecers might find fault with items as innocuous as a woman's head scarf, a turban, a skullcap; they are not new in the public sphere.

"I am very upset about the degree of Islamophobia that is spreading in our society. Sometimes you hear it in milieus where you don't expect. People's emotions are aroused, and as a result, afterwards you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Even if in the best of cases, this law is never [passed], you will have caused a certain degree of social disharmony", said Julius Grey, a constitutional lawyer, consulted over the issue by Muslim and Sikh groups about a possible court challenge.

Quebec prides itself on having dissociated itself successfully during its 'Silent Revolution', from the stranglehold of the Catholic Church which had traditionally been the guiding political, social, religious force in the province. Quebec, like France, wants to be seen and to pride itself on successfully having made the transition to a purely secular society. Just as it is jealously possessive of its language, it is so as well of its secularism.

But it also suffers from an unfortunate sense of being beleaguered by forces it feels are attempting to overturn its advances; it is more than a trifle paranoid over its language primacy rights, and its secular status as a nation. Yet it welcomes immigrants in a spirit of inclusiveness, particularly if they're of French-speaking origin, regardless of where in the world they come from. But as a multi-racial society which Canada has become, and a proudly pluralist one, a certain degree of tolerance goes a long way.

The headscarf and the chador are not the burqa, a completely estranging, alienating garb that defines a woman's place as separate and aloof, unwilling and unable to mingle in the society in which she has chosen to live. The message given by the burqa is a closed one, the message given by the headscarf is anything but; it is a tidy cultural choice which, showing the full face, does not broadcast rejection of society, nor does the kippa, nor the turban.

"Now people come out without any kind of shame, attacking as though they are doing a favour for Quebec identity. This is a really serious slippery slope that we are all sliding down right now. I don't like to be alarmist. I don't like to talk like this. But I am seeing it happening in front of me. I am seeing Muslim women scared to walk in the streets."
Salam Elmenyawi, president, Muslim Council of Montreal