Yesterday, I found myself in a heated debate with someone. He was having a side conversation with my fiance Petar, saying how in his home country, women wearing niqabs or burkas are required by law to show their faces. They went on to discuss how these head and face coverings are rooted in patriarchal oppression from Islamic extremists, how no woman would ever choose to wear one (eerily sounding like a certain Canadian Prime Minister).
At that point, he turned to me as if I would agree. Of course, I didn’t.
I found myself in almost an hour long, exhausting battle back and forth about women’s rights, freedom of expression, security, and everything in between. Afterwards, Petar told me that he thought at one point we would never speak to each other again.
The problem was not that he had this opinion. He is entitled to the fundamental freedom of “thought, belief, opinion and expression” (Charter of Rights and Freedoms). In fact, public opinion in Canada last year when Harper’s niqab debate rose up was strongly in favour of banning the niqab from citizenship ceremonies (side note: as the article suggests, it shouldn’t be about public opinion, it should be about individual rights and the rule of law).
It was the fact that his opinion was rooted in more troubling indicators that I couldn’t help but try to bring to his attention – with little to no success: Continue reading
Pudding and Cake 