Re­mind­ing the world of the by­gone era when Kings used to is­sue dik­tats re­gard­ing dress to be worn, words to be spo­ken, prayers to be said and re­li­gions to be fol­lowed, Mem­bers of the Na­tional As­sem­bly of Que­bec have put a ban on women wear­ing Niqab in a clear di­rec­tion to Mus­lim women re­gard­ing their pub­lic wear which has been protested by civil rights groups and con­demned by var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

In 1995, po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Que­bec were fight­ing for their free­dom, want­ing to lib­er­ate from Canada and de­sirous of mak­ing Que­bec a sep­a­rate coun­try. The elec­tions were nar­rowly lost in a 51%-49% photo-fin­ish, as a sec­tion of the mi­grants who were nearly less than 2 or 3 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion voted for na­tion­al­ists as against the Le Que­be­cois sov­er­eignists.  Is Que­bec tak­ing it out against them or the French-speak­ing Gal­lic Cana­di­ans do not share the in­clu­sive char­ac­ter of fed­eral Canada?  

The Na­tional As­sem­bly of Que­bec has passed the Bill 62 with a 66-51 sup­port of the mem­bers of the Lib­eral gov­ern­ment, ban­ning Mus­lim women from cov­er­ing their faces for pub­lic work. Some­thing is amiss here. On the one hand the peo­ple of Que­bec cel­e­brate the right to sov­er­eignty and on the other they deny ba­sic hu­man rights to its cit­i­zenry.  It is re­ally odd.  The Que­bec politi­cians have had huge eco­nomic ben­e­fits from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and their con­sti­tu­tional strug­gle is nick-named “nev­eren­dum ref­er­en­dum”. 

The stand of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment seems a lit­tle weak with the Her­itage Min­is­ter  Mélanie Joly say­ing, “We do not be­lieve that the gov­ern­ment should be telling peo­ple what they can and can­not wear,” As re­gards the leg­is­la­tion in ques­tion, it is a mat­ter for the Que­bec na­tional as­sem­bly where it has been de­bated at length and we will not in­ter­fere.”

How­ever, Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau was more forth­right when he said his gov­ern­ment was look­ing into the leg­is­la­tion. “I don’t think it’s the gov­ern­men­t’s busi­ness to tell a woman what she should or should­n’t be wear­ing,” the prime min­is­ter told re­porters. “As a fed­eral gov­ern­ment, we are go­ing to take our re­spon­si­bil­ity se­ri­ously and look care­fully at what the im­pli­ca­tions are.”

Al­berta Pre­mier Rachel Not­ley has re­acted sharply to Que­bec’s pas­sage of bill 62 and said “it smacks of Is­lam­o­pho­bia.”

The World Sikh Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Canada is dis­ap­pointed by the pass­ing of Bill 62 in Que­bec’s Na­tional As­sem­bly which forces Mus­lim women who wear the niqab to un­cover their faces to de­liver or use pub­lic ser­vices.  The ban ap­plies to pub­lic ser­vices such as doc­tors, tran­sit ser­vices and schools. 

Bill 62 is the third at­tempt to ban the wear­ing of the niqab while re­ceiv­ing pub­lic ser­vices in Que­bec.  It was pro­ceeded by Bill 94 in 2010 and the Que­bec Char­ter of Val­ues in 2013, both of which failed to pass.  

WSO Pres­i­dent Mukhbir Singh lamented,  “we are dis­ap­pointed by the pass­ing of Que­bec’s so-called re­li­gious neu­tral­ity bill.  While the Sikh faith for­bids the prac­tice of veil­ing, we be­lieve Mus­lim women have a right to wear the niqab.  Cana­dian law is clear that in­di­vid­ual re­li­gious prac­tices, as long as they are not harm­ful to oth­ers, must be ac­com­mo­dated to the point of un­due hard­ship.  Sim­ply feel­ing un­com­fort­able about or not agree­ing with a re­li­gious prac­tice is not rea­son enough to re­strict it.  The wear­ing of the niqab should be treated no dif­fer­ently than any other re­li­gious ob­ser­vance.  Where ac­com­mo­da­tion is re­quested, un­less an un­due hard­ship can be es­tab­lished, the niqab must be ac­com­mo­dated.  We ex­pect that the pass­ing of Bill 62 will be suc­cess­fully chal­lenged in courts and over­turned.”

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Ben­jamin Brunot, a pro­tester, who wore a mask in the shape of a black dog’s face is re­ported to have told glob­al­news.ca, “I just hope that we stop mar­gin­al­iz­ing mi­nori­ties and I think that such a law just pro­motes hate and in­tol­er­ance. If we start with Mus­lim women to­day, to­mor­row it will be an­other group so let’s just stop it now.