Montreal parks are not places of worship

The Ahuntsic-Cartierville district council gave authorization to a religious group to organize a collective Muslim prayer at Parc des Hirondelles on the occasion of the Eid festival. This is how, completely legally, the park was transformed on Sunday June 16 into an open-air mosque for hundreds of Muslims.

In an interview, Émilie Thuillier, the mayor of this district, says she hears “people who would like us not to have religion in parks” and invites reflection on the subject.

What reflection exactly is she inviting us to make? It is not a question of wanting to “remove religion from the streets and parks”; we have not heard any claims to this effect. In a State that promotes freedom of expression, people have the right to express their religious beliefs in public spaces, whether through posters or words, within the limits of common law. However, a park is not a place of worship. The question that arises is therefore not “why remove religion from parks”, but why transform a park into a sacred space for a religion?

To this end, the borough’s regulations are clear: a religious ceremony does not meet the eligibility criteria for a public event. Is the mayor considering her own regulations after having transgressed them in this way?

Parks are public spaces, paid for and maintained with public money. All local residents should be able to benefit from it and access it at all times. As mentioned in the regulations of most Montreal boroughs, to be eligible, an event must be accessible to the entire population. The district of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve also mentions in its eligibility criteria “the absence of any form of discrimination, particularly at the level of ethnic origin, religious confession or mobility”, and the regulation of the borough of Saint-Léonard specifies that the event must be inclusive and encourage citizen participation.

However, unlike a sporting activity, a festival, a party or a show which are open to all, a religious ceremony such as a Muslim collective prayer is only accessible to followers of this religion. Such a celebration involves the notion of ritual purity, discriminatory by nature. The poster announcing the event at Parc des Hirondelles also asks Muslims to have performed their ablutions in advance. A Muslim who has not performed ablution, a menstruating woman or any non-Muslim is considered impure and excluded de facto prayer space.

Transforming a park into a sacred place of worship is the worst form of citizen exclusion. And that’s without mentioning the sad spectacle of sexual segregation from another age to which we were treated on Sunday in the park: women and girls hidden under covering veils, relegated to a partitioned space, far behind the men.

And besides, why this need to organize prayers in a park or in a street, as took place on June 16, Place du Canada, and June 7, at the corner of Stanley and Sainte-Catherine streets? The question arises when places dedicated to prayer already exist, such as the Al-Salam mosque, although located a stone’s throw from this intersection. Numerous precedents in Europe demonstrate that street prayers are part of an Islamist strategy, theorized by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, to monopolize public space and thus mark it with their presence.

We agree with the mayor of Ahuntsic-Cartierville that the regulation must be applied equally to all religions. You still have to apply it! There is no more reason to authorize Christian masses in the park or religious ceremonies of Hasidic Jews in the streets of Outremont. It is not a question of banning religion in public space, but of not allowing a religion to appropriate public space.

Citizens should not constantly have to file complaints and fight to have their rights respected. Obviously, such religious manifestations flouting equality between women and men are also not eligible for religious accommodation.

It is true that not all districts have the same regulations in this area. While the Saint-Léonard district goes so far as to prohibit processions in parks, stipulating that public activities must be secular and not include any religious activity or religious symbols, other districts such as Outremont do not specify nothing about it.

In view of the events of recent days demonstrating an active desire, on the part of certain religious communities, to test the limits of municipal authorities and to extend the influence of political Islam, there is reason to adopt clear legislation to ensure free access to public space for all citizens.

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