“The lunacy which has dominated the discourse coming out of Quebec over the last year has finally been countered with a dose of sanity. In a historic vote this Monday, the ruling Parti Québécois (PQ) suffered a major defeat after just 19 months of taking office. Premier Pauline Marois organized an ugly campaign which centered on identity politics and secession from Canada. Her gross miscalculations resulted in a humiliating loss and allowed the federalist Liberal party to form a majority government in the Francophone province.
“The madness which characterized PQ’s odious agenda is best exemplified with their proposed secular ‘Charter of Values’. The notorious document, an affront to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, proposed banning all public employees from wearing religious symbols: hijabs, turban, skullcaps – anything ‘conspicuous’. This Charter paved way to a discourse which was perhaps the most jaw dropping display of xenophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric in recent history.”
Waleed Ahmed reports.
“Arun Kundnani’s book, vastly more intelligent than the usual ‘war on terror’ verbiage, focuses on the war’s domestic edge in Britain and America. His starting point is this: ‘Terrorism is not the product of radical politics but a symptom of political impotence.’ The antidote therefore seems self-evident: ‘A strong, active and confident Muslim community enjoying its civic rights to the full.’ Yet policy on both sides of the Atlantic has ended by criminalising Muslim opinion, silencing speech and increasing social division. These results may make political violence more, not less, likely.”
Hundreds of people marched in the streets of Montreal Friday evening to mark the International day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and denounce the Parti Québécois’s proposed secular charter.
Over a year after a possible listening device was found in the Graham Center’s Serenity Room in 343, the Muslim Student Association is still waiting for someone to claim the bug students say was discovered burrowed in the carpet under a prayer mat on February 9, 2013.