Recently in Quebec Category

"I find it sad for the child and the teacher, who may have to redesign her teaching program as a result." Of course. When in Muslim countries, one must abide by Islamic mores. When in non-Muslim countries, one must abide by Islamic mores.

Noting that Islamic law forbids musical instruments and music itself except in some strictly defined circumstances will bring you swift charges of "ignorance" and "Islamophobia." I guess this devout Muslim family is actually made up of ignorant Islamophobes.

Hadith Qudsi 19:5: "The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance." (The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur'an.)

Muhammad also said:

(1) "Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance."

(2) "On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress."

(3) "Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage."

(4) "This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones." Someone asked, "When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?" and he said, "When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful."

(5) "There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ...." -- 'Umdat al-Salik r40.0

"Muslim kindergartener permitted to block out music," from CTV Montreal, December 19 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

MONTREAL — A kindergarten student in Saint-Michel will be allowed to wear a noise-reducing headset in class, because her parents' [sic] say their religious beliefs don't allow the five-year-old girl to listen to music.

Though music is an integral part of the kindergarten program, the principal of Bienville School decided to grant the accommodation request made by a Muslim family and allow their daughter to block out music at school.

"The principal thinks the family is acting in good faith," said Diane de Courcy, president of the Montreal School Commission. "(They) would have otherwise kept the child at home."

Kindergarten is not mandatory, and teachers say if the student is being sent into the program, barring the new immigrant from certain activities isolates her from the rest of the class.

"I find it sad for the child and the teacher, who may have to redesign her teaching program as a result," said Elaine Bertrand of union the Montreal Teachers' Alliance.

The school and school board felt the decision was a fair compromise to build trust with the family and help the child integrate into the school system sooner.

Nonsense. This isn't about integration. It is just the opposite of integration.

"Once she's in grade one, she'll have to follow the same curriculum as everyone else," said de Courcy.

Unlikely. Does de Courcy really think the demands for Muslim accommodation will end then?

Many teachers argue the issue is not strictly about music or religion, but rather the pressure they feel to reasonably accommodate a variety of demands from health-related issues to religion.

Montreal Teachers' Alliance is asking for stricter guidelines for requests.

Education Minister Line Beauchamp said she instead supports the school's individualized approach.

"It would be impossible to develop a framework to address such a wide variety of reasonable accommodation requests," she said.

Indeed.

"Why remove an old, established tradition?" Because it conflicts with modern, politically correct sensibilities. And the removal of the Jewish and Christian symbols from the Town Hall just happens to coincide with the Sharia prohibition on dhimmis making public display of their faith. What a coincidence.

Dhimmitude in Montreal: "Nativity scene removed from Montreal-area town hall," by Christine Bouthillier for QMI Agency, December 5 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

MONTREAL - A posh Montreal suburb has decided to remove a nativity scene and menorah from town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols.

The decision by the Town of Mount Royal upsets a Christian resident who says the town is abandoning an established tradition under pressure from a tiny religious minority.

Town councillors of several different religions unanimously decided to remove the Christian and Jewish items.

They had been displayed in front of the municipal building for the past 15 years.

"We asked ourselves if we were willing to display (symbols of) the five major religions," said Mayor Philippe Roy.

"This is not the role of the city, which is a secular public institution."

The decision comes amid a larger debate about the place of religion in public institutions.

Quebec's highest court has agreed to hear an appeal of a ruling that barred councillors in Saguenay, Que., from praying before their meetings.

Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay has been spearheading a legal, financial and public-relations crusade to support his right to lead the short prayer.

The battle has pitted Tremblay against the province's human rights tribunal as well as the Quebec Secular Movement.

Carla Mariano, a Christian resident of Mount Royal, tells QMI Agency that her town's decision to remove the manger is an affront to Canada's Judeo-Christian heritage.

"Why remove an old, established tradition?" she asked. "Does the council have the right to unilaterally remove it? Shouldn't it be up to citizens?"

Amir Khadir complained that it sounded like Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin. And meanwhile, he sounds like Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore. "Quebec motion inspired by bin Laden's death draws just 1 dissenter," by Kevin Dougherty for Postmedia News, May 10 (thanks to Twostellas):

QUEBEC — Quebec solidaire's lone member was the only member of the province's 125-seat national assembly to vote Tuesday against a resolution inspired by the death of Osama bin Laden, saying the motion smacked of "Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin's" rhetoric.

Amir Khadir was the only dissenter to a motion presented by Action democratique du Quebec leader Gerard Deltell, whose Chauveau riding is near Canadian Forces Base Valcartier.

It affirmed that Quebec "has and will continue to be an ally of the whole international community in security issues and more particularly against the menace of terrorism."

The motion's co-sponsors were Louise Beaudoin, of the Parti Quebecois, and two independents.

Deltell called the death of bin Laden "justice," saying the world's best-known terrorist orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on New York's World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people and leading to the United Nations-mandated military operation in Afghanistan, where 27 Quebec soldiers have died.

But Khadir recalled that bin Laden was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to fight a guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, "when Islamic terrorism was acceptable to the military-industrial complex in the United States and largely supported by the monarchist, theocratic, fundamentalist government of Saudi Arabia."

Then, he said, "these religious fundamentalists, who used Islam for terrorist ends, turned against the United States."

In addition to the 9/11 attacks, Khadir noted that bin Laden's al-Qaida has also killed in Africa, Asia and the Arab countries, including in Iraq.

Khadir later explained that his objection was to the "security" aspect of the motion, which he said ignored the causes of terrorism, naming the status of the Palestinian people.

Not the jihad doctrine. Oh, no. Of course not.

He also called the military operation in Afghanistan "a lamentable failure."

Khadir said rather than warfare, Canadian tax dollars would have been better spent rebuilding the Afghan economy.

Khadir said the killing of bin Laden may have been "illegal," but it was not immoral in a context of warfare. He called the death "primary justice," and said he regretted that the "magnificent occasion" of a bin Laden trial had been lost.

I wonder why he thinks it would have been a "magnificent occasion." Bin Laden would have been given a platform to propagandize. Would that have been "magnificent"?

I'll say it again: Syria recently scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'"

That's right: two years for murder. And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

What's more, a manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

That's why these honor killings keep happening -- because they are broadly tolerated, even encouraged, by Islamic teachings and attitudes. Yet no authorities are calling Islamic leaders to account for this.

"Mother stabbed daughter in 'honour crime': Police," by Andrew Chung in the Toronto Star, June 14 (thanks to all who sent this in):

MONTREAL - Favouring her left forearm, on which spots of blood had soaked through the white bandage, the woman stood in the prisoner's box looking crushed, accused of stabbing her own daughter in what police say was an "honour crime."

After her lawyer, Tom Pentefountas, asked to delay the formal laying of charges so his client's psychological fitness for trial could be determined, the woman's husband stood up in the back of the court and shouted to the judge: "Please sir, my wife is innocent!"

He soon began to weep, completing the picture of a family utterly torn asunder by what transpired early Sunday morning.

The 19-year-old daughter remains in hospital with knife wounds to the head, shoulders and arms.

It's believed that the daughter came home late, Pentefountas, a prominent name in the Montreal legal community, indicated to the court.

One source said she is believed to have returned home after 3 a.m. The assault happened just after 8, according to police.

Police based their theory that it was an honour crime on "what we saw at the scene of the crime," said Olivier Lapointe, spokesperson for the Montreal Police Service, and especially on interviews with people inside the house and the victim herself.

It appeared related to the "behavior of the victim," Lapointe said.

The woman, 38-year-old Johra Kaleki, faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon....

The family, which is Afghan in origin, moved to the neighbourhood in Dorval, near Montreal's main airport, about five years ago, according to neighbour Emery Dora.

The family was pleasant, but "mostly kept to themselves," Dora said. For instance, the father and the girls would play together but not with other children in on the street. The father, Ebrahim Ebrahimi, wouldn't let a younger daughter play soccer with other girls in their backyard, Dora added....

Why wouldn't they let them play with the kuffar children? "O ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean." -- Qur'an 9:28

So much for a return on investment. Or gratitude. That's generally the problem with jizya. "Canadian on welfare linked to prominent terrorists: Documents," by Andrew McIntosh for QMI, May 10 (thanks to Paul):

MONTREAL - A Montreal man has collected Quebec government welfare cheques for almost 20 years, even as he criss-crossed Europe to meet six other men who've since been either killed, convicted or linked to global terrorism, lawyers for the RCMP and CSIS allege.

In recently filed court documents, government lawyers claim that while Mohamed Omary has been jobless and on the dole in Montreal since he arrived from Morocco.

Yet he still somehow found cash to repeatedly visit Europe between 1993 and 1999.

While overseas and in Montreal in the 1990s, Omary hob-nobbed with six men who've since become a who's who of Islamic terrorists, the federal security agencies claim.

Omary, a father of four, denies any involvement in terrorism and has never been charged, though his brother-in-law has been kicked out of Canada on national security grounds.

Omary's Montreal home was searched by police in 1999 at the request of French law enforcement and his telephone was also tapped for months in 2000, court records show.

Thierry Audin, a spokesman for Quebec's Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, declined comment on Omary's case or status as a welfare recipient.

"This is personal information. We cannot make any comment whatsoever about this subject," Audin told QMI Agency.

Omary visited France, Germany, Holland, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and made several trips to Morocco and Turkey staying abroad a month at a time, including stays in at least one four star hotel, the RCMP and CSIS lawyers say in the court documents.

Omary also joined a shooting club in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil and learned to handle guns. In Bosnia, Omary even learned to fire an AK 47, while purportedly there as a humanitarian worker, the government claims.

Omary's lawyer, Johanne Doyon, did not return telephone messages seeking comment for this story. A second lawyer, Alain Arsenault, referred calls to Doyon.

Last year, Omary sued the Canadian government for $1 million in Quebec Superior Court.

He claims that Canadian security officials tipped Moroccan authorities about a trip he was planning home to Morocco in January 2002 - just months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Omary, a citizen of Canada and Morocco, was arrested and detained by Moroccan authorities at the Casablanca airport. His Canadian passport was confiscated.

Omary also says he was prevented from returning to Montreal for two years as CSIS and Moroccan intelligence agents pressured him to become a confidential informant when he returned to Montreal. CSIS agents he identified as "Claude and Christian" visited him in Morocco, scaring him and contributing to heart troubles, he added.

He wants damages from the Justice Department, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for what he claimed were lost wages as well as loss of liberty, stress, and family separation.

Omary's lawsuit described him as "an IT worker by profession and a self-employed worker in Canada for several years."

In their reply, federal lawyers said neither RCMP nor CSIS officers knew Omary had left Canada for Morocco in January 2002, so they couldn't have tipped off the Moroccan authorities.

They also said he failed to ask consular officials for a replacement Canadian passport for months, a move that could have allowed him to leave Morocco much sooner.

Omary's claim for damages and lost wages is bogus, the federal lawyers said, noting that Omary lost little if anything financially, because he's been on welfare since coming to Canada....

Somebody opposes the niqab ban

Irony. "Bill discriminates against Muslims: protesters," from CBC News, April 18 (thanks to Patrick):

About 60 women, a third donning the Muslim veil, demonstrated Saturday in front of Montreal City Hall and demanded the province scrap legislation that would require anyone receiving public services to show their face.

Bill 94 was proposed last month amid Quebec's public debate over how far governments should go to accommodate religious customs.

Government officials have said the bill is a solution to the need to balance individual freedoms with the values of Quebec society, including the equality between men and women and secular public institutions.

But protesters described the legislation as being discriminatory....

One woman who declined to give her name also wore the niqab as she watched the protest. She said Bill 94 is not fair.

"I personally would never attend university if they tell me to take off my niqab, so, they're making me become illiterate," she said.

No. You are. Nothing is requiring you to live in Quebec. Nothing is requiring to bend to your will.

Immigration Minister Yolande James said the government is promoting secularism.

"What we do say is services are being rendered and to participate, that your face is to be uncovered," she told CBC News....

Some years ago those in the Province of Quebec, wanting to in part allay the fears that many in Quebec (and not only members of the Parti Québecois) had about the survival of French in an Anglophone sea, and wanting to ensure more immigrants who spoke French and would continue to speak it, decided to favor French-speakers in its immigration policy. It had been noticed, for example, that immigrants from Greece and Italy tended to want to have their children enrolled in English-language schools. They showed a dangerous preference for choosing English-language schools for their children, possibly for economic reasons (English as the "international language of business" etc.), and therefore they were deemed dangerous to French Canadians, to the Parti Québecois, and to all those who, understandably, wished to preserve French in the only Canadian province where it still prevailed.

The policy adopted was to favor those from "Francophone" countries. The definition of Francophone countries obviously gave pride of place to France, but also included all those places that had once been French colonies. In the Western hemisphere that meant the Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique), French Guiana, and Haiti. In Africa it meant Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa - Gabon, Togo, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (or is it the People's Republic of Congo? I forget which) -- in short, all of the states hacked out of what was formerly French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa.

Language trumped all other considerations. But in the end, what happened is not that Montreal was flooded with French people who had decided to seek their fortune in the New World, but by French people who were unhappy with France. And the main reason French people right now are unhappy with France is the Muslim population, and how it has changed French well-being, French schools and the elaborate system of preparations and competitions needed to get into them at all levels, French employment practices, French everything.

And not too many people had the money, even, to show up from far-away Gabon or the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Chad.

So who did show up? It was maghrébins, in the main, from Morocco, from Tunisia, from Algeria, but also people from Lebanon and Syria. Now those from Lebanon, which had once been part of a French mandate, consisted of both Muslims and non-Muslims, chiefly Maronites. The Maronites leave Lebanon for North America for the same reason that some - not many as yet, but some - French leave France: they leave because of what resurgent Islam, and the burgeoning Muslim presence, has done to Lebanon. It is hard to believe that just a half-century ago, Charles Malik was Lebanon's most eminent representative, and that he could wish assurance walk the corridors of power in Beirut as he did those of the U.N. in New York, where he was one of the careful formulators of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Muslims find so objectionable. The Maronites and other Christians have seen a steady decline in their power, and the Maronites - speaking the best French of any Lebanese, for the Muslims tend not to study or care about it in the same way - have arrived in French-speaking Quebec only to be horrified by the influx of Muslims, the very people they were fleeing. They left Lebanon just as other Maronites, late in the 19th and early in the 20th centuries, left it because of the Muslim threat, the harbinger of which was the pogrom by Muslims against Maronites in Damascus in 1860.

Aside from the problems posed by covering one's face in an intensive language class, the very nature of the niqab rather defeats the purpose of the program offering the course: integration. An update on this story. "Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled," from CBC News, April 12 (thanks to Michael):

For the second time in the space of a few months, a Quebec woman has been thrown out of a French-language course after she refused to remove her Muslim veil.

The woman, who wants media to refer to her only as Aisha, is a 25-year-old permanent resident from India. She was enrolled at the Centre d'intégration multi-services de l'Ouest de l'Île in the Montreal suburb of Pointe-Claire, which works with the province to integrate new immigrants.

She says it has been about a month since officials from the provincial Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities approached her one Friday morning and told her to make a decision: agree to stop wearing the niqab in class or stop attending the class.

The niqab, worn by some Muslim women, is a veil that leaves only the eyes exposed.

Aisha says the government should have been fully aware she was wearing the niqab before she started the intensive language course.

"If they had such a problem with it, they would not have given me admission," she says.

Course organizers had little warning about meeting

Centre co-ordinator Joannie Lavoie says Immigration Ministry officials only informed the centre they intended to meet with Aisha on the same morning that they met with her.

Lavoie says they told the student she could either take her niqab off or leave.

Aisha was completing the fifth week of the course when she was called into what she describes as an emotionally difficult and "ridiculous" meeting with two government officials.

"Everything was going smoothly in the school," she told CBC News. "Everyone has been very good to me. It was a really heartbreaking experience for me because I really loved my school, and I think it's my civil right to go there, to learn."

Aisha's case is similar to that of another woman, Naima Atef Amed, who was expelled twice -- in November 2009 and then again last month -- from government-sponsored French-language courses in Montreal for refusing to remove her religious face covering.

Amed, who is of Egyptian origin, has since launched a human rights complaint against the province.

Both Aisha and the centre's director, Mustapha Kachani, say the ministry told them the veil is an obstacle to learning a language.

The provincial government currently has a bill in the works that would require anyone who wears face coverings in Quebec to remove them if they want to work in the public sector, do business with government officials or receive government services.

Aisha says she's aware of the legislation and hopes Bill 94 never passes, "because it's going way too far."

The bill will go through commission hearings and could be adopted by the end of the spring.

All I have to say about this is the same thing I had to say here: This will cause an international uproar, with mountains of blather about intolerance. Few, if any, in the mainstream media will note how severely the rights of non-Muslims are restricted in Saudi Arabia and in Sharia states in general, and few, if any, will even entertain the notion that France has a right to stand up for its cultural integrity and set some standards accordingly.

"Niqab for Muslim women banned in Canadian province," from IANS, March 25 (thanks to Block Ness):

TORONTO: After France, Muslim women have been banned from wearing niqab in Canada's French-speaking Quebec province.

A bill tabled Wednesday will not allow government services to women wearing the niqab.

The bill comes after protests triggered by an Egyptian immigrant's refusal to remove her niqab in her French languages classes in Montreal, forcing the school and the provincial government to throw her out.

The college says the Muslim woman was given the front seat in the class so that all male students sat behind her. She was even allowed to make presentations from the rear of the classroom with her back to the class which had three male and 17 female students.

However, students and the college authorities were shocked when one day the woman asked male students to move away from her and refused to sit with them around a U-table to converse and learn French pronunciation....

The government last week ordered that every niqab-clad woman must uncover her face to confirm her identity when applying for her medicare card. Wednesday's bill will be the first such step in North America to curtail any religious dress.

According to the bill, women seeking medical and auto insurance services will have to remove their veil, adding that face coverings will not be tolerated in people's dealings with government officials.

Speaking to the media, Quebec premier (equal to chief minister in India) Jean Charest said the step was needed for maintaining gender equality and secular character of public institutions.

"This (bill) is a symbol of affirmation and respect - first of all, for ourselves, and also for those to whom we open our arms. This is not about making our home less welcoming, but about stressing the values that unite us.

"An accommodation cannot be granted unless it respects the principle of equality between men and women, and the religious neutrality of the state,'' the premier said....

But the protests, the cries of racism and "Islamophobia," are sure to come -- and then Quebec authorities are likely to cave. "Muslims seeking female clerk can 'line up again,'" by Graeme Hamilton for the National Post, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

MONTREAL -- In recent years, the few fully veiled Muslim women who had dealings with Quebec's health-insurance board could choose to be served by a woman to avoid exposing their faces to a man outside their family.

But in the latest example of the province's growing resistance to the accommodation of minority religious practices, the insurance board on Tuesday announced the end of the policy after the provincial human rights commission said it has no duty to acquiesce.

"From now on, for a woman who is veiled with a niqab or a burka and comes to our office asking to be photographed by a woman, the answer is no," said Marc Lortie, spokesman for the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec. "Line up again, or come back another day." [...]

"If you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values," Immigration Minister Yolande James told reporters last week. "We want to see your face." Ms. Ahmed has filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission. [...]

"Generally speaking, staff at Ontario service centres are very aware of cultural requirements and diversity and we do our best to accommodate individual situations," said Alan Cairns, a spokesman for the Ministry of Government Services.

The furor over the still rarely seen niqab is a clear sign that Quebec's debate over the "reasonable accommodation" of religious and ethnic minorities has returned with full force....

Yep. And it's going to keep on returning.