Montreal City Hall reopened in early June after five years of renovations, at a cost of $221 million. The goal was to “refresh” an entrance hall that dated back to 1878, a rather patriarchal, mainly Catholic era, and to present works of art and exhibitions. We were promised, among other things, a museum on the history of Montreal. The Plante administration is presenting “its” update there: a framework for “citizen appropriation.”
Thus, on the welcome sign in the entrance hall, we see on the right an ordinary old man, on the left a young man in an anonymous cap and in the centre a woman, she, veiled in an Islamist hijab. In the name of diversity, we are welcomed by a symbol of the oppression of women.
Symbol from a doctrine that establishes a separation between the righteous and the unbeliever, anti-LGBTQ+2, anti-abortion, which maintains that democracy is contrary to divine teachings, welcome!
This character is anything but ordinary. Very typical, he embodies a force of political affirmation: fundamentalist Islam. Now, why not a kippah, an Inuit woman, a hockey player, a black jazz musician? Or is it the expression of an ideological choice of current municipal political governance? There is an appearance of a vision in line with diverse progressivism, but which goes against the principle of inclusiveness. Provocation? Especially at a time when Quebec is preparing to defend itself against the opponents of Bill 21 on the secularism of the State before the Supreme Court.
Isn’t this suggestive and sensationalist? Because always representing the Muslim woman with a veil is a stereotype. Doesn’t it trivialize the hijab and hide the choice of the majority of Muslim women who do not wear it and the oppression of women that it represents? This strong and deliberate gesture is a lack of respect for all immigrants who come to settle here in the hope of freeing themselves from the religious dictates or dictatorships of their country of origin.
This is a serious trip to the fight against Islamic fundamentalism and a resignation to the work of Quebec feminists to free themselves from misogynistic patriarchy and secular religious obscurantism in Quebec. The City has some serious soul-searching to do, because there is imposture in the affront of wanting to make people believe that among the women who “exhibit” the hijab, all choose to wear it.
Rather, they have integrated the “consent” taught to them by their rigorous authorities, under penalty of reprisals, in favor of a Western vision, which sees it as a right and a freedom.
Islamology has long confirmed this to us: the veil is neither religious nor Koranic; it is the instrument of a dogmatic vision for the benefit of a desire for intrusion to live in the land of Islam everywhere on the globe. And women are its standard-bearers.
When we state on the explanatory posters of the “Montréal religieux” zone (where the crucifix is taken out with one hand, but the veil is put in with the other) on the one hand, we praise the merits of feminism which led to the election of Valérie Plante and of secularism, but, on the other hand, we are offered a model of citizenship which is neither secular nor feminist.
Nadia El-Mabrouk, a Montreal researcher and university professor of Muslim faith, has been stating this on every platform for several years now: “The promotion of cultural diversity must not lead to the normalization, or even the promotion of practices that go against human rights.”
Through this discriminatory practice towards other racialized or religious people, in complete contradiction with its multiculturalism, the Plante administration is drawing us a curious “sustainable mobility corridor”.