The total prohibition of cellular cellular at school, it went without saying. About everyone applauded the announcement of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, with reason. Finally, we decide to burst the bubble in which these devices isolate our children.
Posted at 8:05 p.m.
That said, another total prohibition at the school announced by the Minister is a lot less consensus: that of wearing religious signs by all school staff.
Three former deputies, from three different parties, united their voices to denounce the minister’s desire to widen the scope of the State law lawwhich prohibits the wearing of religious signs to teachers.
If Bill 94 is adopted, the prohibition will apply to all those who give students, speech therapists to cooks, including educators in childcare.
Françoise David (Québec Solidaire), Louise Harel (Parti Québécois) and Christine St-Pierre (Liberal Party) see in this bill “an escalation which discriminates women”. They believe that the government is taking advantage of a real scandal, that of the Bedford school, to bring back “the debates that we would have gone well”.
Painful debates, which divide us and have been tearing us away since the reasonable accommodation crisis, almost 20 years ago.
And it left for a tour. Does Quebec really need to grip, once again, about the hijab?
There was a real problem in Bedford, but the veil was not in question. In this school in Côte-des-Neiges, the teachers who refused to teach certain subjects and recognize the needs of students in difficulty were … men.
In the 17 schools inspected thereafter, “no proselytizing problem linked to the wearing of a religious sign was brought to the attention of the Minister”, recall the three ex-deputy. Not a single one.
No problem, we give a new trip, decided Bernard Drainville. We leave the chicane.
Force a woman to remove her veil to brew sauces at the school cafeteria? No one will make me believe that you have to legislate for that, that it is good for our children.
This bill only announces “a return to heated debates for ideological reasons and without serious reason”, as the three former deputies rightly point out.
We must expect the speech around the veil to harden again. Already, some commentators present it as a “flag that radical Islam uses to mark its territorial advances”. Nothing less.
Ah, but above all should not be questioned this speech without nuances. We should not criticize the bill of the Minister of Education, at the risk of being treated, like the three ex-elegues, of poor naive people too busy by their crusade to listen to those who warn us against the rampant Islamization of Quebec and who know what they are talking about …
-It is a constant, in this debate. We say we speak on behalf of Muslim women, veiled or not, without worrying too much about what we are talking about, exactly. The facts? Bof. Only ideological convictions count. And they are unwavering.
I discussed it with French sociologist Daniel Verba, emeritus researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on social issues and specialist in secularism at Sorbonne Paris Nord University.
Daniel Verba has been interested in the veil in France for years for years. He led a multitude of interviews with veiled French women to understand their motivations. He has published learned studies on this subject.
In short, this is one who knows what he is talking about.
“Far be it from me to defend the veil,” he said right away. I am not a promoter of the Islamic veil. Professor Verba does not speak on behalf of veiled Muslim. Only he reports their word. To ideology, it responds with empirical exploration.
“Among all the French women I interviewed,” he said, “none told me to wear the veil because someone, or a group,” forced him to do so. When women express their freedom to wear the veil, they do it independently. »»
Obviously, Daniel Verba does not exclude having “been able to miss women subject to a phallocratic domination which forced them to wear a headgear in public space”. By definition, these women are more difficult to access. But, in France, they are certainly very minority, estimates the sociologist.
His investigations, like those of his colleagues, show that the vast majority of French Muslim women who carry the Islamic scarf do so independently. For religious reasons, of course, but also as a means, for adolescent girls, to distinguish themselves, even to rebel against their atheist parents.
Daniel Verba also noted a kind of “sorority” in the port of the hijab. “It is often a woman to a woman that we decide to wear the veil or keep it. »»
We are far from the symbol of the submissive woman, even further from the standard supposed to mark the territorial advances of radical Islam …
Daniel Verba sees, in this caricatured way to present things, a “social, political, ideological construction, carried by reactionary currents”. We try to make a continuum believe: first, the wearing of the veil, then, the withdrawal identity, then, the rejection of the values of the host society and, finally, the violent radicalization. “However, this mechanics do not exist,” he says. These correlations seem to me to be illegitimate. »»
You will tell me that the veil is not a piece of fabric like the others. May Iranian women die for daring to walk in the street in the wind.
It’s true, but we cannot ignore the context. In Iran, a theocratic regime imposes on women rituals that most of them have not chosen. In France, as in Quebec, some women choose to wear the hijab, because they live in a democracy that respects freedom of religious conviction.
“We change political context and the veil changes meaning,” emphasizes Daniel Verba. In Iran, getting rid of it is a sign of emancipation, in France, wearing it is a sign of freedom. »»
In Quebec, as in France, Muslim women exercise their freedom to wear the veil, for all kinds of reasons – and, until proven otherwise, endoctrine children is not part. This is the reality on the ground, whatever those who are stretching the scarecrow of radical Islam saying by pretending to know what they are talking about.
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