Québec premier denounces multicult, hijabs and too much "accommodation"

Pauline Marois, the first female premier of Québec, has spoken out strongly against bending over backwards to accommodate the beliefs and practices of immigrants who refuse to assimilate into the culture of their adopted countries. In an interview with Le Devoir, she called out multiculturalism for violence and "bomb-throwing" in the UK. That kind of thing, she said, is reason enough to push ahead with her government's planned "Charte des valeurs québécoises" ("Charter of Quebec Values").

Mme Marois told the Montréal newspaper that secularism measures contemplated by the Charter will be phased in over a few years. The measures include a ban on the wearing of religious costumes or symbols -- such as yarmulkes, hijabs or large crosses -- by staff working in any "public workplace". That would include government offices, schools and hospitals. The usual suspects are of course outraged by enforced secularism, which they call racist, discriminatory, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, yada yada yada.

The premier conceded that the French model of secularism "isn’t perfect", Le Devoir reported, but she said that "in England, they’re knocking each other over the head and throwing bombs because of multiculturalism and nobody knowing any more who they are in that society."

Poor Len Canayen says... Wow! Someone noticed!

Mme Marois also said that wearing a hijab can be seen as a "form of submission", and that she feared daycare workers, teachers, and others in positions of authority could (by wearing religious attire) incite impressionable children to practise religion.

Len thinks this would be offensive to Catholics if there were any religious teaching in "Catholic" schools, but that seems not to be the case any more. No, not even in Québec. There are (practically) no more religious sisters and brothers. The dire dearth of vocations is one of the poisoned fruits of Vatican II.

However, in the so-called "public" schools there are lots of religious... religious Muslims, that is. Perhaps it is the Muslims and Jews -- not Christians -- who are the real targets of the Charter. We shall have to study the wording very carefully when it is published later this month.

A draft version leaked in the media reportedly proposed a ban on religious clothing for public servants. Polls suggest the idea of restricting religious garb is quite popular in Quebec, and the second-place PQ has seen a bump in the latest polling.