Stephen Harper’s Twisted Logic on Muslim Women’s Rights

[Panich52]

Care2 Causes

Written by Alison Brewin

Fear-mongering about the alleged threats of the Muslim faith took a decidedly Canadian turn last month when Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared in Parliament that covering one’s face with a niqab (a headscarf that covers every part of a woman’s face but her eyes) is “rooted in a culture that is anti-women.”

Using pro-equality rhetoric to justify reactionary policies is a well-developed tool in the neo-conservative language of Canada’s right wing. It goes to the center of why Harper continues to be re-elected, despite Canada’s tendency to walk slightly left of center in its 148-year history. Sadly, polls suggest that most Canadians agree with his twisted logic.

Harper called the Muslim faith anti-woman in Parliament to justify the government’s decision to appeal a court ruling overturning a policy requiring women to remove the niqab during their citizenship ceremony. In Canada, all constitutional rights—like freedom of religion and women’s right to equality—are expressly balanced against the government’s obligation to consider the public interest. The government is allowed to infringe citizens’ rights if they can justify the infringement on the basis of a different public interest good. But where religious freedom and women’s equality intersect, the courts can be unpredictable.

Fighting for the right to wear a niqab is hardly a feminist cause in and of itself, but it becomes one when the critique of it becomes an essentialist and simplistic argument against an entire faith group. The niqab may be a symbol of women’s lack of freedom, no matter if individual women have made personal choice to wear it or not. But it can only be racism that is behind an unnecessary policy (the Muslim tenet that proscribes the niqab also allows women to remove it in front of female officials for the purposes of legal identification) and the defense of it by claiming the entire Muslim faith is anti-woman.

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One would be very hard-pressed to name a major religion that wasn't anti-woman. But Harper's decision does sound more anti-rights than pro-woman.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. I believe in the right to be anti-women.

Wearing a full-face veil is, indeed, rooted in a culture that reasonably could - if one were looking for an inflammatory shorthand - be summarised as "anti-women" (although, of course, being rooted in a culture that is anti-women is not the same thing as being anti-women).

And while I agree with the OP that "One would be very hard-pressed to name a major religion that wasn't anti-woman.", I think it's worth noting that Islam is much more so than any other widely practiced one.

But for freedom of speech to mean anything, it has to mean the right to be wrong, including being anti-women (let alone being rooted in a culture/religion with anti-women aspects, without actually being anti-women oneself).

I won't bother quoting Voltaire here...

I wish women would choose not to practice Islam and veil their faces. But, except in relevant circumstances, that should be their choice, not mine, and not Stephen Harper's.

[MisterP]

2. the PeQuistes tried this with their little Charter: now they have a fifth of the seats in Quebec

hopefully the Neotories will end up the same way in Deadmonton soon