Citizenship: A Country's Social Contract

"I believe, and I think most Canadians believe, that it is offensive that someone would hide their identity at the very moment where they are committing to join the Canadian family."
"This is a society that is transparent, open and where people are equal."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

"We also are a government, and I think a people, that is concerned about protecting women from violence, protecting women from human smuggling, protecting women from barbaric practices like polygamy, genital mutilation, honour killings."
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander

In a free and open democracy voluntarily isolating oneself, deliberately building separation, represents rejection of the indigenous values of the country that one has migrated to, while aspiring to take advantage of all the social goods that accrue to all citizens of liberal democracies. So the privilege of citizenship becomes a convenience, a benefit without obligation other than a one-sided arrangement whereby government offers security and social benefits, without reciprocation by a landed immigrant seeking citizenship adapting to the welcoming country's values and social culture.

"I gathered the courage and decided to speak out. I decided to raise my voice so that I can challenge this policy, which was a personal attack on me and Muslim women like me."
"This is the beautiful part of Canada -- every person here is free to live in a way in which he or she feels it is right or not. It's my personal faith so let me do what I wish to do."
"It is obligatory to cover myself when I'm going out."
Zunera Ishaq, 29, Pakistani immigrant, Mississauga, Ontario

J.P. Moczulski for National Post    Zunera Ishaq, who wants to be allowed to wear her Niqab during the Canadian citizenship ceremony, poses near home home in Mississauga, Ont. on Monday.

Informed that she would not be permitted to wear her niqab during the citizenship ceremony, Zunera Ishaq, a former high school teacher in her native Pakistan chose to appeal that government ruling to the Federal Court. This month a federal judge ruled that the policy introduced in 2011 was unlawful. The Prime Minister noted his intention to appeal the ruling, noting it was "offensive" that someone would seek to "hide their identity" at the very time they were being sworn in as citizens of Canada. "It is not how we do things here", he stated.

Is it courage, or is it the impudence of contempt for what Canadians hold dear that has motivated this woman? She speaks of equality while demanding exceptional treatment in her insistence that it is her right as a pious Muslim to appear in public in the manner that she prefers. And so she may, keeping herself separate from all others whose visages are clearly visible, comfortable with the society in which they live. But there are limits to the relaxed attitude about personal choices, and that limit was reached in the matter of the citizenship granting ceremony.

The current minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan who travelled widely in that particular geography and took up an associated position with the United Nations, is quite personally aware of the oppressive situation for women in those societies such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clearly, this woman left her native country for reasons associated with freedoms she was denied in Pakistan. Yet on arrival in Canada, and finding the freedoms she longed for, she insists that she is entitled to being treated in an unequal manner in an equal society.

All others must reveal their physical identity at the citizenship swearing in ceremony and carefully recite a pledge, but not she. She has imposed a voluntary obligation upon herself not to appear in public without being fully veiled. That is her choice. It is not a religious obligation, which she cites as a pious Muslim, since Islam itself makes no such demands. The need to have women completely covered is a symptom of an oppressive male-dominated society common to Islamic countries where a culture has evolved that women wear burqas and niqabs else men are not held responsible for sexual violations.

This is the hallmark of a savage inheritance of an earlier time, where women have few supports under the prevailing laws, and where rape can be construed as resulting from a woman's encouraging wiles, holding her responsible for the violent humiliation and harm she may suffer, even while wearing a burqa or niqab. A study released a year ago by the Canadian Council of Muslim Women characterized niqab-devoted women as representing a very small sub-culture sustained by "determined individuals".

Ms. Ishaq is clearly one of those "determined individuals", who feels entitled to defy Canadian values in light of her exceptionalism, defended on the basis of religious need, when no such need exists, and if it did, it should be weighed against the need to assimilate to a degree into the larger culture of the indigenous population which has granted her desire to escape the social-cultural confining excesses of her native country, to live in peace and freedom in one with those guarantees. In turn, she has scorned those values.

Presenting herself as completely unfit for the privilege of Canadian citizenship. And the federal judge who ruled in her favour has done no favour to Canadian values himself. His ruling represents yet another instance where appointed figures of authority whose profession is meant to interpret the law has turned to rejecting the laws that elected Parliamentarians have erected in reflection of Canadian values.