Quebec has passed a law banning public service workers, and also those who receive services, from wearing face coverings. This means that everyone who uses public transit and government services must now unveil.

Quebec’s Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée stated that “having your face uncovered is a legitimate question of communication, identification and security”; but the Quebec National Assembly’s adoption of Bill 62 to ban the burqa is not sitting well with everyone. Some insist that it is a violation of human rights.

For example:

Nicole Filion, coordinator of the Ligue des droits et libertés, a human-rights defence group, warned that the law will “have a discriminatory effect on religious groups who are targeted, in particular women

Meanwhile, newly elected Federal NDP (New Democratic Party) leader Jagmeet Singh took a “stronger stance against the law than the Liberal government, which has so far been reluctant to condemn it outright.”

Singh also called the ban a violation of human rights. Singh needs to stop his shameful politicking and pretending to care about human rights. He and Nicole Filion should research enough to know that women are treated as inferiors in countries where the burqa is mandated, and that according to the sharia, women are deemed to be inferior to men. In the words of the well-known women’s rights advocate Aayan Hirsi Ali, who has personally suffered under the strictures of the sharia:

Burkas ought to be banned for security reasons. But for me the issue is not security alone. It is the equality of women. Expecting half of humanity to go around covered in black sacks is just evil sexism. We should no more want to see it imported into Australia than we should want to see wife-beating legalised.

I will repeat a sad story I was personally told by a blood lab technician. She told me she witnessed many women wearing full burqas come to the blood clinic for tests and have their husbands answer their medical questions. When they finally roll up their sleeves for the test, clinic workers saw bruises and burns, but did not report them for fear of being branded racists and “Islamophobes.” These women also suffer from vitamin D deficiencies, not to mention the torture of having to wear full coverings in scorching temperatures. If the burqa and all it represents is being advocated by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Canadians beware.

Other countries that have implemented full or partial burqa bans are France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, Turkey, and Switzerland.

“Quebec passes bill banning niqab, burka while receiving public services”, by Graeme Hamilton, National Post, October 18, 2017: