Bastion of women’s rights, Iran, rushes to the defense of hijab-wearers in Quebec.

The optics really aren’t great when the first foreign power to come to the defense of protesters against Quebec’s secularity law are authoritarian mullahs.

Unfortunately, however, the rest of the world has so far responded to some public workplace restrictions on the hijab with a deafening silence.

…it’s time to hear from the law-abiding citizens of Quebec. Here’s one.

It would be safe to conclude that a statement of identity for many Muslim women who promote the hijab is perhaps more important than following religious dicta. One can, for example, easily argue that many of these women don’t believe the hijab to be a religious requirement. They could easily remove the piece of cloth while at work but choose not to. One must ask why... Why the restrictive, chauvinistic, and patriarchal garb has assumed this much importance for these individuals is a puzzlement.

Indeed, nuns, priests and even monks are perfectly able to remove their religious garb; why not non-clerical women? What makes these women more rigid in their refusals (in Quebec, they are asked only to remove it while in the public-facing act of public positions) than clericals?

The hijab is undoubtedly a garb rooted in patriarchy. It should be discouraged rather than enabled, touted, and promoted wherever possible. Bill 21 seeks to do precisely that…

Touted reminds us of the recent hijab-promoting ad campaign in Europe that came to grief. Western democracies are willing to tolerate the hijab, but – in Quebec, and in Europe – not in all settings, and not in all forms of its presentation.

Just look at what happens when you don’t.

A family of four [ultra-orthodox Israelis] may have caused [Israel’s] largest Omicron outbreak to date because they chose not to quarantine after returning from a trip to South Africa… [W]hen they were supposed to be isolating at home, they were not. Instead, the parents went to work and the children to school and preschool…

The family went on to lie about another close, infected, relative having been in South Africa; they also refused to answer their phone and participate in epidemiological tracking.

Countries that allow large numbers of their citizens to remain ignorant and anti-social pay a very large price indeed.

The New Democratic Party leader in Canada is refreshingly honest about his view of federal/provincial powers. By an impressive 65% majority, Quebec’s citizens favor a recently enacted secularism bill which enforces religious neutrality on some categories of public employees for the daily duration of their public duties. As in: For the hours during which you are teaching, or presiding over a courtroom, you must remove your hijab or other form of religious garb.

As Boucar Diouf notes:

“How would an immigrant of Palestinian origin, contesting a conviction, feel in front of a judge wearing a kippah? Inversely, how would a young driver wearing a kippah feel faced with a policewoman wearing a hijab who just gave him a ticket?”

A minority of Quebecers disagree with this approach, and the NDP guy thinks federal Canada should just go ahead and align itself with them. Screw the strong majority of people in that province who think some secular workplace rules are reasonable.

What do you think are the chances federal Canada will prevail? For background, recall what’s going on elsewhere.

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Justin Trudeau will not intervene; and asked whether “he thinks Bill 21 fosters ‘hatred’ and ‘discrimination’ against minorities, Mr. Trudeau answered straightforwardly: “No.”

But Elizabeth Kimmel, whose endless criminal prevarication has ruined her life and the lives of her children, merits it. The latest Varsity Blues parent to go to jail, Kimmel knew no bounds when it came to rigging bogus admission to hot schools for her dumb rich kids.

Or are they dumb? Her insane machinations condemn them to this judgment; and yet in the case of her daughter at least, a letter has surfaced that suggests otherwise. Kimmel’s lawyers of course described her throughout as motivated by pure philanthropy as she handed hundreds of thousands of dollars to corrupt, now also imprisoned, college coaches; but prosecutors had other ideas about her character.

‘In their pre-sentence memo, federal prosecutors disputed the Kimmel camp’s sunny view of the wealthy La Jollan’s charitable disposition, citing an e-mail authored by an unnamed Bishop’s faculty member. [Bishop is the high school the daughter attended.]

Days after [Kimmel’s] arrest in this case, a teacher at her children’s high school, unprompted, sent [Kimmel] the following e-mail:

“Attached is the college letter of recommendation I wrote for [your daughter] six years ago.

“‘Without a single reservation, I believed in her qualifications— her powerful intellect, her uncompromising sportsmanship, her sterling character — when you did not.

“‘Many of the faculty at Bishop’s — I could list ten off the top of my head — remember you as boorish, your treatment of us demeaning, insulting, unprincipled.

“‘But we loved your children and, in spite of their parents, always had their best interests at heart.

“’To that end, please forward my letter to [your daughter].”‘

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And, sad as it is to say this, given that letter about her, UD will add that Georgetown should rescind her degree.

… South Carolina State University continues to boast of its association with Phillip Adams, severe CTE-sufferer and mass murderer. The school wants everyone to know that he got his first pummelings on their campus – pummelings that would, in the fullness of time, turn Adams into a psychotic killer. Awwww.

But university football does so much more than shred young brains. It typically generates endless fulminating corruption/lawsuits, and just as typically eats up much of a university’s revenue. At the University of Miami, which, to be fair, is a sewer of both football and non-football corruption, they’ve just impoverished the faculty to give an eighty million dollar contract to a football coach.

If you’re going to be a professional specializing in inclusion, you need to know something about exclusion, yes?

Fatemeh Anvari, a third-grade teacher removed from the classroom for refusing to take off her hijab while teaching, was asked to respond (see my headline) to the fact that 65% of Quebecois support Bill 21 – which says that no religious symbols may be worn by people during the time in which they are engaged in high-profile public positions (teacher, judge).

Her answer? No answer. She totally whiffed it (“I can’t speak for those who agree with it.”). Her new job at the same school involves finding strategies of inclusion for students; yet she is not even able to take on her opponents. She says nothing about the very significant – overwhelming majority – challenge of her fellow citizens who clearly do not believe in all forms of inclusion.

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Her interviewer might have mentioned that “In Quebec, among the most vocal supporters of Bill 21 are Muslim women.” Mixes it up a bit, doesn’t it?

Her interviewer might have quoted Boucar Diouf:

“How would an immigrant of Palestinian origin, contesting a conviction, feel in front of a judge wearing a kippah? Inversely, how would a young driver wearing a kippah feel faced with a policewoman wearing a hijab who just gave him a ticket?”

As with the mention of majority support, this is what’s known as a challenge – most appropriate, given the big ol’ controversy at play here.

As UD has so often pointed out, in a world of escalating niqab/burqa/hijab restrictions, your worst possible move is failing to engage, dismissing huge chunks of populations as bigoted, etc., etc. Engage. Try to figure out why reasonable people might want some restrictions on religious garb. If you’re not willing to go there, to try to change minds, you’re going to see more and more of these legal moves across the world.

… here are UD‘s Jussie Smollett posts from 2019, when the story broke. A most contemptible man.

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It was too hard to believe that any of this could be made up, because what kind of person would do something like this?

A former supporter of Smollett’s gets to the heart of so many hoaxes – from people (many of them academics) pretending to be minorities, to people pretending to have been physically attacked because of their minority status. You have to be one sick fuck to conceive of this behavior, let alone pull it off, and then sustain the hoax into the indefinite future. What kind of person…?

But our job is not to stand around being incredulous. After all of the destructive hoaxers we’ve encountered over the last few years, and in anticipation of others, we owe it to our social world to educate ourselves in the ways of our Smolletts and Bourassas. We have to try to see them coming. As UD has often said (having covered such hoaxers on this blog for a long time), one common tip-off is trying too hard. These people lay it on too thick: They claim large and proliferating minority memberships (tribal, ethnic, etc.); they claim the people who beat them up did this and did that and oh yeah I just remembered they did that too… Look into almost any recent high-profile hoax and you see this characteristic of overdoing, overkill, as if the hoaxer fears insufficient minoritization/torment will fail to convince. Or – just as likely – their motive isn’t really a motive at all, but rather an uncontrolled manifestation of their madness. Nuts don’t act in measured ways.

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Update: A Smollett juror illustrates the peril of overdoing.

… and he can’t remember when he puts a loaded gun in his work bag. But the US House of Representatives has been relying on Jeffrey Allsbrooks to be its Logistics Manager. Your tax dollars at work, mes petites.

The tragic toll of a life of crime.

Pew found that about 44% of nonparents ages 18 to 49 deem it “not too likely” or “not at all likely” they’ll have kids, compared to 37% who said the same in 2018.

Wowsa.

… continues to deface images of women in the public square. Under increasingly serious court pressure, the city of Jerusalem has announced it will hire workers dedicated to responding to such incidents. Yet even with years of similar court pressure about forced gender segregation on public transportation and posted female modesty rules in several neighborhoods, things don’t change much in that rapidly theocratizing country.

Yeah, I know a new more secular government was recently voted in. So what.