From CTV News Montreal
Protesters denounce Bill 94
A niqab-wearing woman holds a placard at a demonstration against Bill 94 on Saturday, April 17, 2010.
Updated: Sat Apr. 17 2010 6:16:25 PM
ctvmontreal.ca
About 100 demonstrators gathered in front of Montreal city hall Saturday afternoon to express their anger over the Bill 94, legislation tabled by the Charest government that seeks to ban the niqab and the burqa.
If passed, Bill 94 would force anyone providing or receiving government services to do so with an uncovered face.
The bill was proposed last month in the midst of a renewed debate over reasonable accommodation, sparked when a Muslim woman was expelled from a French course for refusing to remove her religious face covering.
Afifa Suleman, an 11-year-old girl wearing a niqab at Saturday’s protest, said she plans to ask her parents to move back to Pakistan if the bill passes.
“Where they have respect for religion, for women and their modesty, that’s where I’d go,” she said.
Christina Dudander, a non-Muslim woman who attended the protest, said the government’s proposed legislation is excessive — given that just a few dozen women in Quebec wear the niqab or burqa.
“It’s really a very small issue, it does not involve a very big problem at all. Why do they pick on women who can’t defend themselves?” she asked.
The protest was organized by Meena Samreen, a Montrealer who spent five years living in Pakistan.
Samreen believes the biggest problem in the west is a lack of understanding when it comes to Islam.
“Go to a mosque, go and sit down and listen to a sermon. It’s not what people think. It’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said.
Samreen also said Bill 94 is hypocritical.
“We send our troops to protect those women, to open educational institutes for them, and here we’re stopping women from going into educational institutes because they choose to cover their faces,” she said.
But others, like Anabelle Gendron, are uncomfortable with face coverings in public settings.
“They should take their religion and do it at home, but in school I don’t really think it’s appropriate,” said Gendron.
That´s easy, just behave like the saying tell us:
” In Rome be a Roman”.
If muslims do not feel good in the Western Civilization, well… go home. Take a plane and have a nice trip.
Good bye and Farewell.
To all muslims in Canada… If you don’t like the laws of our land and our western culture, please leave now! We Canadians do not want you here…
I wish that more governments would crack down on Muslim dress codes for women.
France and Belguim, to give tow examples, have seen armed robberies done my men dresed in burqas. Its a convenient disguise that Muslim men can easily use to commit terrorist acts.
I say, ban them as possible disguises as well as for being symbols of the oppression of Muslim women everywhere. Every time I see a woman in any Muslim garb, I am reminded of the yellow stars and pink triangles that people had to wear in Nazi Germany.
We all know what that led to.
Kufar and proud.
@ Rui Miguel M Mateus comments: the right to wear religous head wear is in our charter of rights so when these woman chose to wear it they are doing as the saying goes.
@ Lenin-McCarthy: the laws in Canada allow women to cloth them selves in the ways they chose. this bill is the only thing threatening Canada’s culture and its doing so bye taking people’s right away to practice there religion without prosecution.
@ RRWest: the niqab and burka are not dress code for Muslims. wearing of either one is a choice a Muslim women may or may not take its not enforced in any way. on your reasons for making it illegal for women to make that choice for example you said they are a possible disguise. thats a very weak argument because your only banning one type of disguise and there are hundreds of thousands of disguises that one could buy and wear perfectly legally like snow took’s, hats, sunglasses, scarfs, the list goes on i hope you get the point. for them being signs of oppression your misinformed if you truly believe that there a choice and it would be oppressive to take that choice away. for your last and most hurtful comment about the Nazis. the Jews were forced by there government to wear those stars and crosses not in any way comparable to the way Muslim women choosing to practice there religion. in fact government enforcing rules against a minority of people is what should be making you remember “what that led to”.
do not let our government start taking human rights away from us. even if your not a member of a people who are having there rights stomped on your still a person and you would not want the rights that protect you taken.
Being a muslim girl raised in Canada I had gotten a lot of hateful remarks thrown at me ever since 9/11. I was ten at the time and I was told that “terrorists like you should go back to where you come from!” and these were words coming out of my friends mouths! I grew up never wearing a Hijab, Burka, or Niqab! I married a non -Muslim white man, and he is fine with my wearing the Hijab, Burka, or Niqab, which ever I feel to wear, if I would like to wear it because it is my religious right!
No where is it enforced that we MUST! wear either of them, it is said that we have the choice to wear if we wish. Now as I said, growing up, and even now, I do not wear either of them.
Now a days ever since the thought of the bill has gotten out all I hear is that the religious wears could be used as disguises. Well lets see, in Canada there has not been any cases of people disguising themselves in the Burka or Niqab and robbing a bank or any sort of criminal act!
Canada has always been the country praised for how people can immigrate here, be who they want, live the lives they want, and practice their religions freely. USA our brother country hasn’t gotten as many praises as Canada has, but now as it seems they should, they have not shown any signs of passing a bill such as this.
This bill is just one step for taking away the freedom of not only the women, the Muslims, but everyones! It is said that this bill is only being formed so that the women will not wear the Niqab in government service areas, but come on! The women are willing to take the Niqabs off in front of other women. All government service offices have women workers so why not just do as the women ask? There is no way its going to harm anyone by just doing them that one favour.
Some solid crap above. Muslims, like many religious minorities, enjoy playing the ‘intelectual slight of hand game’ of freedom to practice your religion is somehow equivalent to your ability to shove it in everyones face.
All choices preclude others in life. If a non Muslim marries a woman, it means he has chosen not to have sex with any other women for life. One choice, the choice of real marriage, means you lose certain other choices.
If you want to wear the niquab cause your Muslim then do so. Hell for all I care you can wear a suit of armour. But I reserve the right to hire who I want for my own reasons. You can chose this job or that religion but you cannot force me to change what matters to me, because of what matters to you.
Want to wear a suit of armour? You can’t work at my auto-wrecking yard. Want to wear some kind of bronze age symbol of subjugation to a paedophile, Then you can’t work for the government. But, as we really do have real freedom of religion in Canada unlike any Muslim country on the face of the earth (once again showing the merciless hypocrisy of Islam) you may wear it anywhere else you want. You can take the job and not wear it at work, or, you can chose to not take that particular job. See? Choices. Decide what matters more to you and make it. But we, the people of Canada do not owe it to you to desecularize our country to make your choices easier.
As much as I find the niqab/burqa repulsive, I find the demand by Muslim women to be served by another women to be equally repugnant. Islam NOT oppressing writes: ” Come on, the women are willing to take off their niqabs in front of other women”. All government service offices have women workers so why not just do what the women ask?”
The answer is easy. Canada does not operate on foreign principles of sex segregation. Muslims make a free choice and if in doing so they limit themselves, that is a consequence of that choice. That is freedom.
Canadian. Tuques, hats and sunglasses do not cover the face. Scarves for the most part are worn in Canada by most people who wish to keep warm in the cold, unless you are attending a leftist rally in Toronto, in which case covering the face in 30 C plus temperatures in July comes in handy to hide identity. Stop with the shit.
@Eeyore for your comments about how making choice makes you lose some choices. every choice you take has its consequences but like you said women have a choice to wear this and thats whats this bill is taking away. its not just stopping them from being employed like you mentioned you were ok with. this bill is stopping women who chose to exercise the right to practice there religion from accessing education, healthcare, and all other government services. as Canadians these women have to right to those facilities and services.for your other comment first the word is spelled unsecularize not descularize and thats what this bill is doing to these women by taking there right to religious practice away. not what what these women want us to do to Canada.
@Grace for your misunderstandings on the choice of women wanting to be served by women when it comes to them taking there clothes off. If you had to be searched at a airport for security reasons would you like the right to ask for a female security gourd because you would feel more comfortable. if you went to your doctor’s office for a check up that would involve being naked would you like the your right to ask for a female doctor taken away. the right for a women to chose service by a member of the same sex is a right that should be kept. this bill is not about stopping every one from covering there faces in public to stop crime so don’t try to say that a burqa or niqab is not the only kind of covering that one could by and wear in and should be banned because its not there are many other ways one can hide there face legally and without suspicion. this bill is about not letting women who wear the burqa or niqab from accessing government facility’s like schools and hospitals. as Canadians we should be proud that we let all of our people go to school and receive health care men women rich and poor Christians Catholics Jews and different type of people but this bill is trying to take what we as Canadians our proud of equal rights for all.
Canadian says: “this bill is stopping women who chose to exercise the right to practice there religion from accessing education, healthcare, and all other government services.”
First of all, this isn’t true. It means that they chose their religious practice over working with those departments as employees, but not to access the services. And even if it did, that is still a choice. I resent the notion that people are owed things they did not earn in the first place. Doubly so that they are owed these services under any conditions of their choosing. Also, it does not stop them from being employed. Just with government. Why do you feel the need to lie and misrepresent all that is said in this debate? Oh wait you did say you where a religious Muslim.
As to your comments to Grace, firstly, what is a ‘Security Gourd’? Is that some kind of pumpkin with a lock on it? And if Muslims just stopped blowing up, and attempting to blow up aircraft in the name of Islam, then we wouldn’t have these security gourds to deal with be they squash, pumpkin or other.
Normally I wouldn’t stoop to a spelling issue, but since you saw fit to attack mine…
Lastly, Muslims do not want equal rights. They want special rights. They want more and extra and at the expense of the rest of the population. This is evident all over the world. I do not need to cite examples because this blog is probably nearly 50% examples. So do not give me the argument that you just want equal status. Muslims already enjoy more than that in Canada. Ask any Toronto Muslim with more than one wife on welfare in the same home, breaking many Canadian and Ontario laws with impunity because in fact, a special case is made for Muslims.
If you as a Muslim women truly wanted equal rights with us filthy Kufar, you would demand that Canada’s government not allow for polygamy. As that, is a true degradation of the rights of women.
Canadian; do you also believe it is a ‘right’ for a Muslim to insist that only a Muslim doctor perform surgery? do you believe it is a ‘right’ for Muslim grocery clerks to refuse to handle pork, wine, and all other haram products? do you think it’s a ‘right’ for a Muslim to enter a bank and expect service while wearing a niqab? do you think it’s a ‘right’ for a Muslim woman to go to a publicly funded school and demand that her classmates look at her back because some of them are men? do you think it’s a ‘right’ to enter a job and not comply with uniform safety standards? do you think it’s a ‘right’ that Muslims avoid scrubbing in hospitals before surgery so as not to compromise their modesty by pulling their sleeves up past their elbows? do you think it’s a ‘right’ to issue fatwas calling for violence against satire or criticism of religion? do you think it’s a ‘right’ that Muslim men break Canadian law by marrying more than one woman? EQUAL rights mean just that: EQUALITY FOR ALL, not a parallel system based on special rights for some. Religion is not a requirement, it is a choice.
@ Grace: Its funny how misinformed you are! You speak of the Muslim religion with unprecedented fear. Educate yourself before you speak, and learn to except people are different. Women wearing Niqabs are in no way compromising your life.
In Canada the choice to practice religion or not to practice is a requirement. No one is going to force you to practice religion. And nothing gives you the right to tell people who do practice to stop.
You are bringing up things that aren’t related to this bill and just sound like bigotry.
Educating yourself would be the first step to be less fearful and hateful.
Islam NOT oppressing, You are playing fast and loose with the concept of ‘rights’. I do have a full understanding of Islam, otherwise I would not have been able to recognize your employment of the dialectic scam. I am neither fearful nor hateful and fully respect the differences of others.
As I have said before, religion is not a requirement, with observance being a choice.