Ethics, Technology, and Society

When it comes to religion, it is unfortunate how unreflexive our public policy wonks seem to be. Nineteen years after the first RCMP cadet was permitted to wear a turban the issue of wearing religious headdresses in public institutions–this time in the Quebec public service–is in the news again. Recently it was the French government that made headlines, banning girls from wearing any religious (Muslim in their case) headdresses in public schools. Now, the Quebec advisory council on the status of women has echoed that recommendation, suggesting that headdresses should be banned in the Quebec public service.

The recommendation is based on two arguments. One, that banning religious dress in public institutions strengthens the secularity of those institutions, in keeping with the separation of church and state. Two, that hijab dress is a symbol of female oppression and so ought to be banned in the name of equality.

There are serious problems with both of these arguments.

First, and this speaks to the reflexivity of public policy, banning religious clothing in pubic institutions creates deep inequalities between those whose religions are silent on the issue of religious garb, and those whose religions are more prescriptive in that respect. To demand that individuals leave their religious dress at home is to demand they make a sacrifice. If public institutions make that demand a condition of employment, then anyone who happens to be a member of a religion that is prescriptive on the wearing of religious garb is going to have to make a sacrifice in order to gain (or continue) employment at those institutions.

Of course, the non-Muslim, non-Sikh (the list goes on), majority is never asked to make the selfsame sacrifice. And this is no coincidence.

We non-Muslims, non-Sikhs (the list goes on) confuse the absence of religious clothing prescriptions with secularity. This is ridiculous, especially when set in a multicultural nation-state. Clothing that is not particularly prescribed by religion is not devoid of religious undertones. Those among us who do not wear turbans are as clearly expressing their non-turban-wearing religious beliefs as the turban wearers among us are expressing their turban-wearing religious beliefs. In other words, there is nothing essentially secular about the decision not to wear a turban.

Our public policy wonks are similarly fooled into believing that by asking people to remove their religious garb they are adopting a secular policy. In reality, all they are doing is creating novel obstacles to employment for minority religious groups along explicitly religious dimensions. They are forcing members of particular minority religions to make sacrifices that members of the majority religions will never have to make. And that is clearly discriminatory. Expressed another way, the rules created regarding ‘proper secularism’ tend (historically) to be created by individuals who have never thought about the religious suggestions of jeans and t-shirts in a multicultural setting. Against the backdrop of religious prescriptions on clothing, so-called ’secular’ clothing takes on uniquely religious undertones.

The argument from women’s equality is also untenable. It is particularly problematic because of its paternalistic and essentializing qualities. To ban hijab dress on the grounds that hijab dress is a symbol of male domination over women is to suggest that hijab dress is primarily (or mostly) a symbol of male domination over women. It is not at all clear that this is the case. Western Muslim women regularly dispute this (here’s an example, and another, and another…).

With Muslim women directly addressing the charge of sexual oppression, and denying that Hijab dress is representative of it, it seems incredulous to reduce hijab dress to the kind of essential meaning–sexual discrimination–so clearly favoured by crafters of the proposed policy. To deny Muslim women their own interpretation of the very dress in question reeks of religious paternalism.

These thoughts are not new. But they seem to fall on deaf ears too often. Jean Charest would do well to ignore the ridiculous advice of the advisory council, of the equally problematic ramblings of the ADQ, and of any others who echo their rhetoric. We would be better off as a country that recognizes and eliminates its biases, rather than basing problematic new public policy on them.

(+4 rating, 4 votes)

 Loading ...