Quebec’s Bill 21, which proscribes visible religious symbols in many public-sector jobs — popular with Quebec francophones, unpopular with Quebec and Canadian anglophones — was passed in 2019, but it wasn’t until October that a test case emerged in the public school system. In an act of civil disobedience abetted by Bill 21-dissenting school administrators, substitute teacher Fatemeh Anvari, who wears the hijab, was assigned to a homeroom Grade 3 class at Chelsea Elementary School.
When Anvari was duly removed from the classroom (and assigned elsewhere, not fired), it seemed to come as a great shock to many anglo commentators that the government had actually enforced its own law. So the incident sparked yet another round of condemnation of the law as “discriminatory,” which is objectively true, and “Islamophobic,” which it is not, since the law discriminates against all visible religious symbols. Objectively, one can only say that the law discriminates in favour of strict secularism and against all religious messaging from anyone in a “position of authority.”
Anvari is relying on her freedom-of-religion right for public sympathy. But she complicated matters by admitting that she does not wear her hijab as a “positive Islamic duty,” but rather on “identity” grounds, for “reasons of resistance.” The hijab is for Anvari, then, a political statement, something comparable to the keffiyeh, a form of sartorial lamination, which has become for Palestinian activists and their political allies a de rigueur statement of resistance to Israel’s presence in the Middle East.
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