Martin Patriquin: Here come Quebec's secularism enforcers

Some may find comparison with the Saudi mutaween excessive, but fundamentally, what the enforcers will be doing is not so different.

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In Saudi Arabia, there is a group of righteous men whose job is to enforce the country’s strict laws regarding dress and gender segregation. Practically speaking, the mutaween, as these men are known, spend much of their time haranguing people for all sorts of alleged crimes, but mostly women for things like visible hair, uncovered faces, unconcealed skin, and painted fingernails and eyelids. Saudi Arabia’s frankly terrifying obsession with how women dress has long been bureaucratized; the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, for whom the mutaween toil, employs some 6,000 people.

As of Sunday, thanks to a series of last-minute amendments shovelled into the already-onerous “laicity law,” Quebec now has its own version of the mutaween. To be sure, the province’s forthcoming secularism enforcers won’t be patrolling Quebec’s streets, beaches and malls, as their focus will be government workplaces, not the public square. And due to the government’s studied opacity on the issue, we aren’t yet sure who they will be. As it stands under the law, affected government ministers can appoint “a person” to verify whether all is kosher in the proverbial ministerial kitchens. Assuming the process is complaints-based, these may well be very busy people indeed.

Some may find comparison with the Saudi mutaween excessive, but fundamentally, what the enforcers will be doing is not so different: policing what people, mostly women, wear on their bodies, with the imprimatur of the government behind them. The potential consequences of this are alarming. Any government worker with “power of authority” — a category into which the government has shoehorned teachers — who refuses to doff religious items can lose their job. Thanks to a grandfather clause, those already wearing these religious objects will be spared, but only if they remain in the same position. A transfer, demotion or promotion means they can no longer display their religiosity. (Inexplicably, they can get a visible tattoo, shave their heads or grow a long beard in accordance with their religion — all still permissible under the law.)

Apart from being rather brilliant fodder for satire, the law virtually guarantees protracted conflicts between the provincial government and at least two of its school boards, the English Montreal and Lester B. Pearson, which have already refused to enforce it. Ditto several Montreal Island suburban governments, most famously Hampstead. Three union organizations representing teachers have come out against it, with the largest, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, saying the law will foment “prejudice,” “verbal violence” and “physical attacks” against people who wear religious symbols. If this law is an attempt at establishing social peace, as Premier François Legault has suggested, one shudders to think what might happen should he gird for war.

In its own way, the government’s clothing enforcement gambit is the perfect malevolent absurdity to decorate the crowning absurdity that is this law. Consider how it comes into effect during a protracted teacher shortage in the province. Consider how the law was written in relatively homogeneous Quebec City but will, given demographics, affect Montreal almost exclusively. Finally, consider how the law has already spawned a cadre of Facebook vigilantes who in the name of “civic duty” politely ask followers to report sightings of illegal religious accoutrements, anonymity assured. (At least one of them has been removed from Facebook.)

Though it is now enshrined in law, the clothing enforcement is not immune to death by embarrassment. In Saudi Arabia, many citizens tired of the mutaween have taken to filming their oafish interventions. Caught by the camera, these righteous men are suddenly dumbstruck by embarrassment and shame. Often, they back off completely.

Now imagine a similar scenario in Quebec, whereby a teacher in a hijab films as a secularism enforcer insists she take it off, or she loses her job. Over to you, YouTube.


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