The position held by Amira Elghawaby seems to me to be a direct creation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ideological phantasmagoria. This ill-timed political invention of a “federal government representative for the fight against Islamophobia” does not seem immediately relevant or legitimate. No one, apart from perhaps certain Muslim lobbies, has demanded this disconcerting “Trudeauiform” hat trick. The very concept of Islamophobia is contested, to the extent that no one agrees on its meaning, any more than on its signified.
Why should we, in Canada, need a government body dedicated to combating such a conceptual windmill? A fortiori, why should Islam have to be protected more than other religions of salvation? Are not national laws and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982 also sufficient and fair for followers of the Koran established in Canada?
Should we remind those concerned that this country is a state governed by the rule of law in which the separation of Church and State necessarily includes the Islamic religion? By what criterion would Islam have more rights?
All the more reason for Amira Elghawaby, this representative of a “certain political Islam”, to have no justification or recognized competence to interfere in questions relating to the organization of CEGEPs and universities. Even less so with regard to the hiring and management of their various personnel.
The indigestible idea of choosing teachers based on religious criteria would plunge us back into the bitter age of political and religious totalitarianism, the very ones we have fought since the Age of Enlightenment. And in Quebec, more specifically, since the Quiet Revolution.
As for the so-called pro-Palestinian demonstrations held on campuses, it is up to the dean’s offices, deans’ offices and boards of directors of universities to ensure their legitimacy and respect for the laws and rights of students and staff members. And if some demonstrators turn into rioters, squatters and extremists – licensed or not – this is another situation that the university and civil authorities have the responsibility to judge and resolve for themselves, and not through a person arbitrarily appointed by a prime minister contested by a large section of the population.
How come M has to be remindedme Elghawaby and his mentor, who is suspected of being susceptible to the manipulation of pressure groups supported by oil monarchies, that the Canadian school must exercise its general mandate, consisting of transmitting scientific or disciplinary knowledge and skills, independently of the ideologies, religions and morals of the day?
Just as students cannot be chosen based on their faith or their ethnic, social, sexual or economic identity, no one is required to engage in questionable “positive discrimination.” intended to ensure that teachers are appointed on the basis of these same criteria.
Elghawaby’s wacky suggestion of creating “anti-Islamophobia and anti-racism advisors” would amount, in 2024, to reintroducing the old wolf of moral rectitude in a cassock into the national school fold.
Ultimately, Mme Elghawaby would benefit from understanding that an immigration that challenges and rejects the customs of its host country, while constantly asking for religious and cultural accommodations, does not adopt a posture likely to be perceived positively by the inhabitants of this new country. Yet, many of them talk about a new life and a new start!