In Defence Of The Secular State

The Quebec Government is to be commended for showing leadership and courage in enacting legislation to outlaw the exhibition of religious symbols by public employees while at work in the public service.

Ever since the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, social scientists have consistently warned that the Charter is deeply flawed.

What we needed was a Charter of Rights and Duties. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, the philosopher of liberalism, correctly pointed out that in society the rights of each individual end where the rights of other individuals begin. As the political leaders who insisted on the inclusion of the Notwithstanding Clause in the Charter understood, without such inclusion in the Charter that would allow governments to restrain unbridled individual freedoms through legislation, the Charter could lead to the slow-motion dissolution of Canadian society by its sole preoccupation with protection of individual rights and complete disregard of communal rights.

Ever since the Quiet Revolution of 1960, when Quebec society began to free itself from the oppressive grip of the Catholic Church, a succession of secular Quebec governments have shown that they understood that the protection of the community is essential for the protection of all and survival of the society.

In a modern secular state religion is a private matter. The individual is free to adhere to any religious beliefs. But the same believers cannot visually impose their beliefs on others when at work in positions of authority.

With the judicial review of the Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter currently before the Supreme Court of Canada and the claims of religious persecution by certain Muslim women, it is important to emphasize that there is no specific mandate in Islam’s Holy Book, the Qur’an, which requires women to wear hijabs. The closest requirement could be found in Chapter 24, Verse 32:

“And say to the believing women that they restrain their eyes and guard their private parts, and that they disclose not their natural and artificial beauty except that which is apparent thereof, and that they draw their head-coverings over their bosoms, and that they disclose not their beauty save to their husbands, or to their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands or their sons or the sons of their husbands or their brothers, or the sons of their brothers, or the sons of their sisters…”

We are thus compelled to assume that the strict interpretation of this Verse was provided by some old mullahs who were determined to keep women out of sight and subservient. There is nothing more oppressive than seeing an all-black column walking down the street with only a narrow slit open for the eyes.

Furthermore, all religious books, the Qur’an, the Old and New Testaments, and the Avesta, the ancient Persian religious book, attempt to regulate the details of the daily lives of their believers through thousands of minutiae instructions. For example, the Qur’an instructs men to strike wives who are not fully obedient. Chapter 4, Verse 34 reads:

“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, as Allah has given some of them an advantage over others, and because they spend out of their wealth. The good women are obedient, guarding what Allah would have them guard. As for those from whom you fear disloyalty, admonish them, and abandon them in their beds, then strike them. [Emphasis added] But if they obey you, seek no way against them. Allah is Sublime, Great.”

Men are not any less of believers if they do not “strike their wives” in the 21st Century. Nor are women any less of believers if they do not wear a hijab. The insistence on wearing the hijab in Canada by some Muslim women is merely a manifestation of the parasitic politics of identity which has infected the West, whereas in countries such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, where women are forced to wear hijab, younger women in particular are willing to risk imprisonment by discarding their hijab in public.

Those who speak of religious persecution based on Quebec’s secularism law should read Rafael Sabatini’s book, Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History, which is available online free of charge, to see what religious persecution really is. Jewish people who had converted to Christianity were tortured and burned alive at the stake by the thousands at Auto da-fe ceremonies supervised by the Catholic Church, often merely based on the report of a housemaid to the effect that they had relapsed to Judaism at home.

We trust the Supreme Court justices in their wisdom will uphold the validity of the Notwithstanding Clause; otherwise there would be legal confusion and the risk of the gradual disintegration of Canadian society without the instrument of the Notwithstanding Clause that would enable the Parliament and the provincial legislatures to restrain unbridled individual freedoms granted by the Charter.