Here are all the articles that Bambi was able to find on the topic:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/global-extremes/there-difference-between-niqab-and-face-mask/
The bottom line of all these articles is to criticize, another time, the province of Québec for its secular law… Instead of accepting: (1) Bill 21, which is a law now; (2) that there are different historico-cultural approaches to conceiving secularism; and (3) that Québec spent 10 years debating reasonable accommodations to reach this consensus. Yes, Québec chose massively to vote its current government, which succeeded in passing the law on secularism (which is even more moderate than the secularism approach of France).
As a reminder, the bill states that no public servant in a position of authority can wear a religious symbol (e.g., the President and Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly, administrative justices of the peace, special clerks, clerks, deputy clerks, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, clerks and deputy clerks respecting municipal courts, and bankruptcy registrars, , the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, and persons who exercise the function of lawyer, notary or criminal and penal prosecuting attorney and who are under the authority of a government department, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, the National Assembly, principals, vice principals and teachers of educational institutions under the jurisdiction of a school board, etc..). In addition, for security reasons, Bill 21 also applies to “persons who present themselves to receive a service from a staff member of a public body must have their face uncovered where doing so.”
Bambi has posted extensively on Bill 21 (please see below if you are interested).
Of note, the Toronto Star article cited above reports comments by Dr. Jeffrey Reitz, director of the ethnic, immigration and pluralism studies program at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. According to Dr. Reitz, “The comparison between Quebec’s secularism law and the COVID-19 mask directives is clear… But people have largely avoided connecting the two issues because while medical masks and religious face coverings may be similar in practice, they symbolize different things.”
As per this article, Dr. Reitz added that COVID-19 masks make citizens feel secure… “they’re being protected from possible disease… there are very strong stereotypes that people have of Muslim women wearing traditional clothing…”. The latter sentence is completed by the author of the article, Ms. Jillian Kestler-D’Amours (a woman!) with the following words “such as face coverings”.
Mr. Reitz is cited saying the following as well: “That mainstream perception is actually based on no facts at all, but just on these fears and stereotypes”.
To score her point further, Ms. Kestler D’Amours also interviewed a woman who used to wear a burqa (removing it to find a job, it seems).
Bambi does not know if she should laugh or cry at the absurdity of this piece of so-called article and the comments of the interviewees.
Note that the picture chosen to illustrate the topic is a woman wearing a burqa! Yes, a burqa like the one shown herein:
The burqa is an extreme version of a head cover. In MANY Muslim countries, this outfit is imposed on women and even on teenage girls (when they reach puberty) and sometimes on even much younger kids, as we can observe around us in Canada.
Some women (18+) wearing the burqa could have escaped their countries of birth to come to a more secular society like Québec.
Tragically but luckily not too many of these women may be killed, in the name of “honour killing”, if they deviate from rigorously conservative social traditions.
Indeed, does anyone remember the tragedy of the Shafia family? Bambi has read the book describing this family’s sad story (https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-no-mercy-for-honour-killings)?
Luckily, a recent article has been published in reaction to the above papers, namely by Mr. Mathieu-Bock (Journal de Montréal) who knows both the French and French-Canadian cultures well:
In the title of his article, Mr. Bock-Côté reminded us that “a mask is not a niqab”.
To all those so-called progressive journalists (academicians and even politicians, wearing a headscarf in their kind messages of Ramadan wishes, as you can see below), Bambi would like to say the following:
Extremists, namely Islamists who are not the vast majority of Muslims luckily, use our Canadian kindness/tolerance (i.e., multicultural approach) to push their radical agenda further. This may be facilitated by the fact that their religion, and surely its interpretation, does not differentiate between the private and public spheres.
So, surely without wanting to, these intellectuals (or social justice warriors or so-called progressive advocates, etc.) may be, in the short and especially long term, serving Islamists, rather than women whom they think they are advocating for.
If you do not believe Bambi about such risk, look to what happened in the Iranian revolution between those well-meaning intellectuals (likely on the left side too, like our society). Well, the Islamists pushed them aside and took over. Look at a recent example of how Iran is treating a female researcher, with double citizenship from Iran and France. She has been thrown in jail for 5 years ☹:
To conclude this post, our Canadian “feminists” seem to forget, once again, that there is no single type of woman (or man, by the way). Period. Same for Muslim women who are diverse as well. Their implicit alliance with Islamists can backfire one day on some of these women… and who knows, perhaps even on all of us in several years from now, especially if there is no public debate on reasonable accommodations like in Québec.
Earlier posts by Bambi on Bill 21
Two earlier posts by Bambi on sycophantic politicians, one a current federal Minister (Liberal) and the other a former provincial PM (NDP in Alberta):
Last but nor least, one earlier post by Bambi on our federal banks that are promoting head scarfs in young girls now… in the name of diversity. Mind you, since this post, Bambi has seen the same picture (taken in Moncton, NB) at another CIBC branch in Amherst, NS (of course before the closure of borders between NB and NS!):
