Quebec is considering expanding Bill 21, which already keeps public sector employees from wearing religious clothing/objects while on the job. Not only teachers, for instance, but also students, would, in this proposed expansion, not be permitted to wear hijabs.
Of course the Muslim community spokesman in my headline reveals the problem: Secular legislation is wildly popular in secular Quebec. Banning religious garb is indeed a surefire way to bolster your poll numbers. So the question at issue is whose “fundamental rights”? UD, for instance, considers it a fundamental right of secular countries, states, and provinces to protect their secularity in certain restricted realms (government schools being one of them). Further, she fully admits that her support for restricted secular laws has to do not only with respect for the strongly expressed will of people in some localities that the secular nature of their sense of themselves as a culture be enshrined in law, but also with her belief that schoolgirls too young to have any say in the matter should not be draped head to toe. This obviously repressive form of fundamentalist religious expression offends her liberal sensibilities; it degrades the promise of equality at the heart of democratic regimes. I don’t think parents have a fundamental right to wrap their eight year old daughters in head and body sheeting before they can go outside.