It’s almost as if there are parallel universes in Canada right now. The politicians and opinion leaders defending the wearing of the niqab during citizenship oath ceremonies are unaware of — or are ignoring — some of the most damning arguments against this extremist garb.

They’re afflicted with the niqab delusion. Don’t let them get away with it. It’s time for a little truth telling.

The oddest argument is that “this is playing the race card,” as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair told me in an interview Thursday. Islam is not a race. It’s a religion.

There are large populations of Muslims from various races. It’s the person making such an accusation who’s playing the race card, not the critic of the niqab.

Or they argue this is about that increasingly popular bogeyman “Islamophobia.” But that too makes little sense. The niqab is not a pan-Islamic garment.

Shiites don’t tend to wear it. Ismailis and Ahmadiyyas don’t (in fact they even support the government's ban). Generally, only Sunnis wear it. And only the more hardline ones at that.

Why are so many members of polite society vilifying our PM, denigrating the sanctity of a key civil ceremony and mocking the views of a majority of the electorate, all so they can rush to the defence of Salafism and Wahabbism – the most intolerant, supremacist and anti-Western strains within Islam?

Well they have an answer for that, for sure. A very problematic one.

While Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi called the Conservatives’ position “dangerous,” it’s actually this next common defence of the niqab that’s truly dangerous for Canada.

It’s a right to wear the niqab, they say. One enforced by the Charter.

(The actual federal court ruling against the ban is more technical than that, but has its roots in this notion.)

But these rights are far from absolute. Canadian Heritage’s guidebook to the Charter makes this clear: “The rights and freedoms in the Charter are not absolute. They can be limited in order to protect other rights or important national values.”

So why, in this case, is it OK to restrict religious observance?

Skin colour. Gender. Age. Height. These are facets of the human experience we don’t choose.

Yet religion is a choice. It’s a buffet. Many adherents pick and choose which rules they want to follow.

Plus religions change over the years. Should Canadian law be held hostage by religion, forever in a state of flux, based on whatever odd religious edict is trendy that decade?

If we are to survive as a pluralistic society we have to be willing to put our foot down when a religious sect claims its edicts must be held as superior to civic duties.

Otherwise religions will want to push further the limits of Canadian society’s perverse interpretation of accommodation – that we must do everything to accommodate them and they should be expected to do nothing to accommodate us.

Things unfolded quite properly in the case of United States county clerk Kim Davis.

She refused to issue same-sex marriage licences in the name of religious freedom, even though it was part of her job.

So, after ignoring a court order to do her job, she was tossed in jail for contempt of court.

If your religion gets in the way of you functioning in the public sphere, that’s your problem. You have to bend. Not everyone else.

I can think of no situation more indicative of how blind Canadian generosity is harming us from the inside than this case of people falling over themselves defending a non-citizen who takes our country to court because she’s not receiving citizenship in our great country on her own terms.

Only if and when the PM starts proposing dress codes for the private sphere would the misguided rhetoric on this issue make sense.

Until then, many people need to wake up from their niqab delusion.