Lise Ravary, in the Montreal Gazette, weighing in on the hijab thing, reminds us that there are important differences between French and English Canada.

In 2016, a developer wanted to build up to 80 homes on the South Shore of Montreal intended specifically for Muslims. He had even specified that women should dress modestly when outside their home. Pressure from all sides, even the local imam, quickly put an end to that. A separate religious neighbourhood would be heretical to Quebecers.

But in English Canada, it seems, most people don’t … have a problem when public schools close their cafeterias for prayers, with the sexes segregated and girls relegated to the back of the room. I can’t understand why such nonsense is tolerated.

Recall what happened in a British university a few years ago when an Islamic student group set up separate seating areas (women in back, and keep quiet) at an on-campus event. People always seem shocked when it turns out that – as in this latest case in Quebec – the public realm of secular egalitarian cultures actually matters to secular egalitarian people.

…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.

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.”

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.

Quebec has for decades made it clear that, like France, it is seriously secular; and indeed the Superior Court in Montreal just upheld a law giving the “government … the right to restrict the religious symbols worn by public sector employees including teachers, police officers, lawyers and prison guards, while they [are] at work.”

“The law destroyed my career dreams,” said Noor Farhat, a lawyer who wears a head scarf and aspired to be a public prosecutor... [Farhat says she] “can’t believe what’s happening.”

Surprised she’s surprised. Since the 1960s, Quebec has been relentlessly restricting the official civic scope of religion — the Catholic religion, mainly, but other religions as well. No one following the history of Quebec can doubt its radical commitment to the separation of church and state. If your religious belief is such that you cannot take off a head scarf for the duration of your public sector workday, you should probably be in another province.

Naturally, you can try fighting this law; but you are going up against the will of the people: this law and others like it are extremely popular in Quebec. Why not respect the people of the region and let them live – in one public domain – in accordance with the secularity that is just as important to them as your piety is to you?

One hears far too little from women like Amani Ben Ammar, but they are the reason large majorities of Europeans and Canadians favor burqa bans and other public sector secularism legislation. Good on the New York Times for adding her voice to a trend whose coverage typically features only a morally outraged reporter, plus international elites screaming Islamophobia. Such coverage leaves unspoken the reason why 60-80% of many countries’ citizens, when asked whether they support burqa bans, say yes.

Trevor Hodge, professor of ancient technology, seems to have had a good life.

Whoops! Plus I own the company that makes the stuff!

Labrie’s take on this is great: “The one that is the first author has got the responsibility.”

It’s great because, you know, quite a few medical journal papers have like five to twenty authors, with only the first author (maybe – maybe a drug company got the whole thing ghostwritten) actually having any involvement in experimenting and writing and shit like that which you might associate with experimenting and writing…

So put quotations marks, in that last sentence, around each use of the word author and you begin to see Labrie’s point.

Some of those not-first writers, let’s speculate, had little to do with the article; their names were plastered on it like some cheesy face cream because people know who they are, and that adds prestige. Why in hell – since their only involvement is to be informed of when the article comes out and instruct their secretaries to add its title to their list of publications – should they bother listing conflicts of interest?

While experts contacted by Reuters Health say that none of the anti-aging creams available to consumers has been proven to work better than a simple moisturizer, some products still run well over $100.

One way to justify those exorbitant price tags is to tout “clinically proven” …

(Why isn’t Suze Orman talking to women about one hundred dollar moisturizers?)

Journals, concludes one editor, are “the marketing arm of the pharma industry.”

If you insist on swaddling your females from age 0 to 100, that’s your private business; but secular states like France are perfectly free to reject female-swaddling as a mode of self-display in various parts of the public realm.

Which France has now done: No student enrolled in a state school can hide her provocative eight year old curves under the copious folds of the modesty robe.

As with France’s burqa ban ten years ago, this one will generate a spot of outrage (and lots of support) and then disappear as an issue. You can’t fight city hall when city hall represents the will of a very strong secular majority (think also of Quebec).

One can only hope that, liberated to move through her school day without her male-inflaming face and body fully covered, this or that young girl will grow up with the conviction that she represents a free and equal member of a modern society.

Quebec’s bill prohibiting public school teachers from wearing the hijab remains popular. Here, from this time last year, are comments — from immigrants from Muslim countries — on the bill:

“For me the hijab is a symbol of inferiority even if they [the Muslim teachers] say they don’t feel inferior or superior or equal to men. It’s a symbol of inferiority and I insist on that point,” said Ferroudja Mohand, who immigrated to Quebec from Algeria in 2011.

Mohand said she is worried that her daughter will be influenced by a teacher who wears the hijab at her school and decide to take up the practice. 

“Teachers must be neutral because children are impressionable,” Mohand said.

Ensaf Haidar, whose husband is the imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, said she is “shocked” when she sees Quebec women dressed in Muslim religious clothing given how they are treated in Saudi Arabia.

“The hijab is not a good image for Quebec,” said Haidar, who fled Saudi Arabia not long before her husband’s arrest in 2012.

Djaafar Bouchilaoun, an Algerian immigrant and father of two, told the court he considered the hijab an affront to his “dignity as a man” because it supposes men are sexual threats to women.

A teacher who wears a hijab, he said, is sending “subtle messages” to children. He called the hijab a “symbol of Islamist proselytizing,” adding: “It is pernicious because of it.”

The parents were called by two pro-secular groups — Mouvement laïque québécois and Pour les droits des femmes du Québec — who have intervenor status in the case. 

As part of their defence of the law, lawyers for Mouvement laïque québécois are arguing that rather than strip minorities of rights, Bill 21 upholds the rights of parents to have their children receive a secular education.

“This is a necessary condition for the freedom of conscience,” Guillaume Rousseau, a lawyer for the Mouvement, said in a recent interview.

This angry pointless diatribe about wearing a hijab does absolutely nothing to push the discussion along. But that’s because you have to acknowledge there’s a discussion to be had. You have to be willing to move away from neurasthenic victimology/finger-pointing and actually debate. You can’t debate when you snivel, and when you mischaracterize your opponent.

You can’t write, for instance, that a doctor described the hijab as an “instrument of oppression” when in fact he wrote that for adult women it is a perfectly acceptable personal choice. The doctor wrote that in several countries in the world the enforced hijab is an instrument of oppression – an obvious truth – and that since three year old girls have no choice at all in the matter it is objectionable when their parents make them wear it, as some do in Canada and various European countries. (Do some parents in the US do this to their children? Probably.)

The fact that you’re pissed off and exhausted because the world makes wearing hijabs and burkinis difficult and unpleasant is not an argument, and people will understandably read it and shrug. When you complain of Trudeau’s “very tepid” response to Quebec’s Bill 21, it only raises a question in your reader’s mind: Why? Why has Trudeau been tepid? Oh, because he’s a racist. He’s part of “an already intolerant country” which includes a “province even less tolerant.”

Well, babe, if Canada is an intolerant country I’d invite you to find a country more tolerant. Go ahead! Find a country more tolerant than a country that routinely lands on the top of World’s Most Tolerant Countries lists.

No, your problem is that you won’t ask even basic questions about escalating worldwide restrictions on various forms of covering. Until you calm down and start thinking rather than reacting you and your cause will really suffer.

An opinion piece writer begins by noting the specific controversy – the act of putting toddlers under hijabs – and then, in response, says only that “donning the hijab is an intimate matter of choice for most Muslim women in the West.”

Even if I grant that this writer is in a position to know that most Muslim women in the West freely choose the hijab, this is irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is whether a three-year-old chooses to wear the hijab.

As UD often says, you are getting absolutely nowhere if you refuse to engage honestly in this issue. Big majorities of populations all over the world, when asked, tend to vote to outlaw burqas and restrict hijabs. That is clearly, empirically, their choice. It is at odds with the choice of many Muslim women. And as for the choice of three-year-old girls, I think it’s just as empirically clear that in this matter they don’t have any. These are the facts with which you must deal.

… covering your girl child – girl infant – from the moment she pops out, in all her blasphemous sexiness – is big business around the world. The burgeoning popularity of female-blanketing means more and more stores in virtually every location are getting in on the trend. UD’s post title anticipates some product line names…

… And children’s songs… If you’re happy and hijabi clap your hands! If you’re…

Now we all know (if we read UD) that Quebec is in all kinds of trouble in the larger, uh, Canadian entity, because that province passed a law restricting public employees from wearing hijabs while on the job. We also know that everyone dumped on the French when their Senate passed a law (it went no further than the Senate) banning hijabs in public settings on people younger than eighteen. Yet when one of Canada’s most prominent pediatric physicians – the director of pediatric surgery at McGill – writes a shocked and angry response to a recent cover image on the Canadian Medical Association Journal, UD thinks it might be worth your while to read what he says.

“As a pediatric surgeon, I admit I would not typically have gravitated toward the excellent article in CMAJ by Drs. Bloch and Rozmovits if it wasn’t for the image that accompanied it — a picture of 2 girls, probably about 3 or 4 years old, reading together. One of them is covered in a hijab.

The image shocked and infuriated many. Yasmine Mohammed, a Vancouver activist who has championed equality for Muslim women, tweeted, “The cover of @CMAJ features a little girl in hijab. How disheartening to see my so-called liberal society condone something that is only happening in the most extremist of religious homes.” Another Muslim woman, a surgical trainee who wishes to remain anonymous, messaged me to express her horror at seeing the image, which triggered painful childhood memories of growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic society, where she was forced to wear the hijab from early childhood and taught that her body was desired by the opposite sex and should be covered. She later shared her perspective in a private conversation with the CMAJ interim editor-in-chief and publisher.

It has become “liberal” to see the hijab as a symbol of equity, diversity and inclusion. Out of the best intentions, the CMAJ editors probably chose this picture to accompany an article on the application of such principles in medical care.

I work in an urban tertiary academic children’s hospital embedded in an extremely multicultural environment. Many of my trainees, colleagues and patients’ parents (and some adolescent patients) wear the hijab. I respect each woman I interact with, as well as any woman’s choice to express her identity as she desires. Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong.

But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice. We are currently being reminded of this daily, as we see the tragic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its effect on the subjugation of women and girls. Girls as old as those in the picture are being sold into marriage to old men — institutionalized child rape. The mentality that allows this to happen shares much with the one that leads to covering up a toddler. But even in so-called moderate Islamic countries, such as the one I grew up in, societal pressures heavily marginalize women who choose not to wear the hijab. In addition, women in these countries who are not Muslim and do not wear the hijab are often subject to intense harassment and discrimination. I know that, because some of these women are in my family. I respect the women who see the hijab as liberating. But we must also remember the women and girls who find it oppressive and misogynistic.

Ironically, the article explores evaluating interventions to address social risks to health. A young girl such as the one depicted in the image is typically also banned from riding a bike, swimming or participating in other activities that characterize a healthy childhood. She is taught, directly or indirectly, from an early age that she is a sexual object, and it is her responsibility to hide her features from the opposite sex, lest she attract them. A heavy burden for modesty is placed squarely on her shoulders. So many women have been traumatized by such an upbringing, which, I believe, frankly borders on child abuse. Is that not a social risk to health? Are these children not a vulnerable population?”

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What will it take for you, and many other well-meaning people, acting “out of the best intentions,” to see what some subcultures are doing to their girls? Do you think that legitimizing bordering-on-child-abuse by featuring it on the covers of medical journals is a good idea?

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UPDATE: After complaints, the letter has been retracted, with cringing apologies from the editor, along with her pledge never again to trespass onto the truth. A commenter at Retraction Watch gets it said:

‘Could someone explain exactly what is so terrible about the author’s claim: “Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong. But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice.”

Is that such a fundamentally unreasonable statement? Is the author incorrect that the hijab, niqab, and burka have—for many girls and women—associations with oppression? I expect that for many people the hijab is a harmless symbol, or even a mere fashion statement—but can’t the same be said of the Confederate battle flag, which is certainly a symbol of oppression to many people?

To be clear, the author did not argue that women shouldn’t wear hijabs. In fact, he explicitly said women should be able to dress however they please without being subjected to discrimination or harassment. What the author argued is that showing a toddler in a hijab isn’t a good way to represent cultural diversity. Perhaps the author is wrong about that—but if he is, then isn’t the appropriate course of action to present a counterargument pointing out the flaws in the author’s statements? Instead we get a retraction and a generic, uninformative statement from the editor apologizing for hurt feelings.’

… shushes the holier than thou hysteria in Canada by reminding the opponents of Quebec’s secularity bill that if they want to defend hijabis there are better and worse ways to do this.

Ben Woodfinden points out that the likeliest prospect for Bill 21’s demise lies in gradual changes in the government:

Bill 21 enjoys widespread support in Quebec, especially among francophones. But it is not universally supported in the province and there has been plenty of opposition to it since it was proposed. Both the Quebec Liberals and Québec solidaire oppose the law. Combined they got more votes than the governing Coalition Avenir Québec in the past provincial election.

Bill 21 passed in the National Assembly with a vote of 73-35, with the Parti Québécois joining the [Coalition Avenir Quebec] to support the legislation. If current polls are to be believed, the CAQ is on track to win a big majority next year, and the storied Parti Québécois is on the verge of electoral oblivion. This matters because the PQ doesn’t think Bill 21 goes far enough and wants to expand it further. The CAQ will likely win again, but it will not govern forever, and a successor government is the most likely way Bill 21 will ever be changed. Given that the law has to be renewed every five years because of the use of the notwithstanding clause, the debate over Bill 21 in Quebec is not a dead one regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.

Woodfinden doubts any legal challenge will work; further, he points out that all the rageful disdain from non-Quebec Canada about that province’s passage of the bill

… play[s] right into the hands of those in Quebec who would seek to turn this into a debate not so much about Bill 21 but about a divide between English and French Canada. As André Pratte wrote in these pages , “All this noise now allows the distinct society’s nationalists to claim that the province is again subject to ‘Québec bashing’ … Bill 21 will become even more entrenched into Québécois identity.”

In short, if you want the (very limited) restrictions on the hijab in Quebec to disappear, cool it. Let the political process play out.

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.