Category Archives: Canada

Canada: Conservative MP wants to ban veiled voting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OTTAWA — A Quebec Conservative MP introduced a private member’s bill Friday that would require Canadians to show their faces before they vote, reviving a debate first sparked more than three years ago.

Steven Blaney, who represents the Quebec riding of Levis-Bellechasse, said the bill would fix a “gap” in the electoral system and is not meant to discriminate against religious groups, such as Muslims. “For me it is important that we all share this transparency,” he said.

“We are all proud to live in this country, we are all proud to share (its) basic principles. I think one of these basic principles is transparency through our election and democratic process, so that’s why I’m presenting this bill and it is applying to everybody and treating everybody in the same way.”

Vancouver Sun, 11 February 2011

Canadian salon worker fired for wearing headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mehwish AliPickering, Ontario — A young Markham woman who works as an esthetician claims she was fired for wearing an Islamic headscarf because the salon “promotes hair”.

Mehwish Ali, a 22-year-old esthetician with Trade Secrets in Pickering, was fired Tuesday, a day after she says the co-owner told her the hijab was unacceptable. “I was devastated when I heard that,” Ali told theStar. “I have worn the hijab for more than 10 years and never felt any kind of discrimination.”

But Robert Facchini, co-owner of the franchise near Highway 401 and Brock Rd, categorically denies that. “This is a performance issue, strictly a performance issue,” he said. “Her performance was poor and it’s only based on those comments that the decision to terminate her was made. Nothing else.”

Ali disagrees and has turned to the Human Rights Legal Support Centre for help. “I couldn’t just shrug it off,” she said. “I had to do something about it.”

A graduate of the Marca College hair and esthetics school in Toronto, Ali started working at the Pickering outlet of Trade Secrets, one of Canada’s larger professional beauty retailers, six weeks ago.

She said she wore a headscarf for the interview, which was conducted by the store manager. A week later, Ali was hired and her job entailed doing facials, manicures, pedicures and waxing services. It had nothing to do with hair, she pointed out.

Everything was going well, said Ali. “I liked my work and the people I worked with.” Then, said Ali, Mylene Facchini, Robert’s wife and co-owner, walked into the store on Saturday afternoon and saw the young woman in the hijab for the first time.

On Monday, Ali said, Mylene was at the store when she walked into work at about 3 p.m. “I was wearing a bright red hijab,” said Ali, adding that Mylene told her that since Trade Secrets promoted hair, headwear was unacceptable.

Continue reading →

Toronto: protests against Jewish Defense League solidarity meeting with EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

vigil against jdl edlOn January 11, 2011, the alliance of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the English Defence League (EDL) was challenged by counter-protests from anti-racist and human rights activists.

The JDL and EDL alliance was supposed to be cemented in Toronto at an event held by the JDL in support of Tommy Robinson of the EDL, who addressed the Zionist group about his recent arrest.

In response to this JDL/EDL alliance, two separate counter-protests gathered, but organizers from both publicly expressed their solidarity with the other. One was an explicitly peaceful vigil outside Lawrence Square with candles and music, organized by the CUPE 3903 First Nations Solidarity Working Group and Christian Peacemakers Team and was also attended by several other groups. Another protest, more militant in dress and slogans but still simply a demonstration, was organized mainly by a new incarnation of Anti-Racist Action Toronto.

Continue reading →

Canada: JDL backs EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yaxley Lennon arrestUnder the slogan “Take a stand against the forces of political Islam” the Jewish Defence League of Canada is holding a rally at the Toronto Zionist Centre in support of English Defence League leader “Tommy Robinson” which will feature a live video link with Stephen Lennon himself. It takes place on 11 January, the day before Lennon’s return to court on a charge of assaulting a police officer at an EDL demonstration in November.

Update:  See “Controversial anti-Islamic group plans rally in Toronto”, National Post, 5 January 2010

Secularism treats faiths unequally, Canadian conference told

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill 94 protestSecularism penalizes practitioners of some religions more than others, a conference on a bill to ban the niqab face veil from schools, hospitals and government offices was told yesterday.

“It works best with Protestantism. It’s a little more awkward with Catholicism. It’s quite a poor fit with Judaism and Islam,” Wendy Brown, Heller Professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, said at the meeting at Concordia University. It was organized by the Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires sur la diversite au Quebec, a non-profit research institute.

Secularism is based on the belief that the state should be neutral toward different religions. But in fact, it favours those whose cultural heritage is Christian, she said. “All religions don’t comport equally well with that model. Muslims who might consider themselves secular are not perceived as such simply because of the clothing they wear or the fact that they might pray in public. If a Christian were to do that, we might think of them as a zealot,” Brown added.

She was among academics from the U.S., Belgium, France and local universities at the conference on Bill 94, which will require citizens to uncover their faces when giving or receiving government services, whether in hospitals, schools, day-care centres, universities, social services or government offices.

Brown added that it is a mistake to equate secularism and women’s equality. In a presentation yesterday, she contrasted fashion photographs of four-inch heels with images of modestly clad Muslim women to cast doubt on the assumption that western women enjoy greater freedom from male influence. “Much of the debate about burqa and hijab casts us as free, equal, and emancipated and them as un-free, unequal, and living by the rule of religion, and that’s nonsense,” Brown said.

Montreal Gazette, 20 November 2010

Bill 94 scapegoats Muslims, Canadian parliamentary committee told

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No Bill 94A bill restricting the wearing of the niqab is unconstitutional because it would limit personal choice and freedom of religion, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada told a National Assembly committee on Bill 94 yesterday.

Audrey Brousseau, a lawyer for the Islamic association, told MNAs that although Bill 94 is framed in general terms, “It clearly targets women who wear the niqab.” Brousseau said Bill 94 would discourage niqab-wearing women from seeking public services and working in the public service.

Julia Williams, the Ottawabased association’s human rights and civil liberties officer, who wore a hijab Islamic head covering, leaving her face uncovered, questioned whether banning the niqab was a neutral gesture.

“Muslim women are being scapegoated by this legislation'” Williams said. “How does barring women from essential services promote their integration?” she asked, recalling the case last spring of a woman wearing a niqab who was expelled from a French class for immigrants.

Bill 94 would require people receiving or offering health care, education or government services to do so with their face uncovered.

Montreal Gazette, 16 November 2010

Geller has nothing against halal food (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Campbell Soup Co., the Camden, N.J., food giant, has been fighting a grass-roots boycott of its products after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as halal, meaning they’re prepared according to Islamic dietary laws.

Campbell Co. of Canada introduced the soups in a few Canadian markets in January, although American bloggers didn’t catch up to the news until earlier this month. That’s when the tempest in a tomato-soup can started.

Blogger Pamela Geller began calling for a boycott earlier this month via her widely read site, Atlas Shrugs. Other bloggers soon joined in.

The halal soups, designated with a special label, are available only in Canada. The company has no plans to offer a similar line in the United States, said John Faulkner, a company spokesman.

In an interview, Geller, who was instrumental in whipping up opposition to an Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, said she has no objection to the halal certification itself. Rather, she said, she opposes Campbell’s decision to have its Canadian products certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that government prosecutors alleged had ties to the terrorist group Hamas in a 2007 conspiracy case.

“No one is suggesting they refrain from this line,” Geller said. “No one is suggesting they not have halal food. I’m not against halal food any more than I’m against kosher food. My issue is who’s doing the certifying.”

Washington Post, 18 October 2010

Yup, that’s the same Pamela Geller whose response to the Mail‘s recent scaremongering about halal meat in the UK was to complain about non-Muslims having to consume “meat slaughtered in a barbaric, torturous and inhuman method, Islamic slaughter. Ugh.”

Ontario appeal court rules that Muslim women may be forced to remove veil in criminal trials

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The right of a Muslim woman to wear a niqab while testifying in a criminal trial may be determined by judges on a “case-by-case assessment”, Ontario’s highest court has ruled. The court also set up a framework for lower courts to apply in balancing a defendant’s rights with a veiled woman’s religious freedoms.

A lower court had ordered a woman to remove her veil, prompting the appeal. The case involved a 32-year-old Muslim woman who alleged that her cousin and uncle had repeatedly sexually abused her when she was a child. A lower court judge ordered the woman to remove her veil during a preliminary inquiry, sparking controversy in the Canadian Muslim community. The Superior Court then quashed that decision following an appeal.

The Ontario Court of Appeal said on Wednesday that Muslim witnesses should have the chance to explain their religious convictions and demonstrate why removing the niqab would offend those beliefs. But they must remove the traditional head covering to testify if the court decides that the veil jeopardises a fair trial.

“If, in the specific circumstances, the accused’s fair trial right can be honoured only by requiring the witness to remove the niqab, the niqab must be removed if the witness is to testify,” the court said.

BBC News, 14 October 2010

Imam Zijad Delic’s speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CIC logoZijad Delic, national executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, was to deliver a speech earlier this week at a National Defence headquarters event marking Islamic History Month. But his invitation was withdrawn by Defence Minister Peter MacKay who accused the CIC of inciting hatred and said that Imam Delic had no place at an event honouring Muslim contributions to Canada.

The CIC has now posted the text of the speech that Delic would have made at the Islamic History Month event on their website, so the public can make up their own minds about the accuracy of MacKay’s charge that Delic and the CIC are guilty of promoting “extremist views”.

The campaign that resulted in the ban on Imam Delic appears to have been led by right-wing bloggers, but MacKay’s decision to cancel the speech was also warmly welcomed by an outfit calling itself the Muslim Canadian Congress.