Islamic Assimilation Remains a Major Challenge in Québec

Québec continues to face cultural clashes stemming from the religious and cultural assertiveness of many members of its growing Muslim minority, and the expectations of the Québecois majority that they adopt the values of the wider society. The latest flashpoint came when it was discovered that at least two Montréal schools had permitted Muslim students to gather in prayer rooms for group worship.

The education minister of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) ruling party, Bernard Drainville, issued a response, saying that schools could not reserve a prayer room for a single religion and had to ensure such rooms respected the equality of the sexes (Muslim prayer is sex-segregated).  Pascal Berubé, member for Matane-matapédia for the hard-Right separatist Parti Québecois (PQ), reported that a third school in Vaudreuil, west of Montréal, had opened a prayer room.

The PQ introduced a motion in the legislature, which passed unanimously, declaring that school prayer rooms are incompatible with laïcité – state secularism. The CAQ hardened its course, with Drainville issuing a directive to school service centres forbidding prayer rooms entirely as such rooms are incompatible with Québec’s policy of laïcité. He explained that he was not banning prayer completely, as students could still “pray silently” as individuals rather than as a group in a classroom.

Islamic associations condemned the measures undertaken by the Québec government, claiming that they were offended that the decision took place during the month of Ramadan, and that the CAQ should have met with Muslim leaders to find a solution “without disrupting either the youth or the institutions of the education sector”. It is unclear what solution they envisioned, as the principle of laïcité is a popular principle in the province, adhered to by politicians across the political spectrum – demonstrated by the unanimous motion against prayer rooms.

More controversy over Islamic assimilation emerged when allegations emerged that Québec’s youth protection services failed to take action on a suspected case of female genital mutilation (FGM). The report first emerged in La Tribune, a weekly newspaper. Evidence of FGM, classified as aggravated assault in Canada since 1997, was discovered by a daycare worker in Québec city while changing a two-year old girl’s diaper.  Christine Labrie, of the Left-wing Quebec Solidaire party, claimed that youth protection services dismissed the case on the very same day that the worker and her supervisor reported it, “even though it would have taken at least a medical examination to verify if the educators’ concerns were founded”. Québec’s human rights commission opened a probe on its own initiative, investigating the situation.

Québec’s approach to the issue of identity is fundamentally different than that of Anglo Canada. Since the imposition of official multiculturalism in 1971 by Pierre Trudeau, the policy of the federal government has been to transform the nature of Canada.  Formerly a distinctive Confederation, home to the historic Anglo, Québecois, Métis and Acadian nations, and aboriginal peoples, it has been steadily recast as a neutral geographic zone in which a large number of ethnocultural groups, fed by continual large-scale immigration, pursue their identity parallel to one another.

Québec has never formally accepted multiculturalism, instead following a model of “interculturalism”, which emphasizes the need for immigrants to assimilate into a common public culture, with particular emphasis on learning the French language. Québec’s rejection of multiculturalism has resulted in measures such as Bill 21, which prohibits the wearing of religious symbols, including hijabs, by public servants. Concern over the decline of the French language, due to large numbers of anglophone and allophone immigrants, led to the passing of Bill 96 – Québec’s strictest French language law yet.

As Anglo Canada continues on its road towards Justin Trudeau’s vision of a “post-national state with no core identity”, Québec is charting a very different path. Its unique place as the only French nation in North America has established a firm narrative of survival against all odds. This spirit is being reawakened by the growth of Islam in the province, known throughout the West for the tendency of significant numbers of its adherents to defy the majority culture in which they find themselves. This clash of civilizations will inevitably have an important impact on the national discussion over identity and immigration, with the possible result that Anglo Canadians  re-evaluate their continued adherence to Trudeau’s post-national ideology.