It has been 10 years since Quebec’s Bouchard – Taylor Commission recommended that all public officials who embody the authority and the neutrality of the state and its institutions, such as judges, Crown prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and the president and vice-president of the National Assembly of Québec be prohibited from wearing any visible religious symbols such as the hijab, turbans, yarmulkes and the crucifix.
Four consecutive governments have attempted to implement a law on separation of church and state, but have failed. This time the likelihood of success is certain.
The fact is that while the Sikh turban, Jewish yarmulkes and the Catholic crucifix are definitely religious symbols, the hijab is not. Rather it is a political symbol that until the late 1970s was unheard of in Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Somalia and Nigeria. It was the uniform of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world.
Let’s hear from the world’s most prominent exponent of the hijab, newly-elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Somalia-born hijabi Ilhan Omar. Speaking to Vogue, Ms. Omar said: “To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty, and resistance.”
She admitted that “wearing her hijab allows her to be a walking billboard.” For Ilhan Omar the hijab is an Islamist flag just as Che Guevara’s beret was to wannabe revolutionaries or the KKK conehead is to White Supremacist ideology. [New Delhi Times] Read more
