Sitting in my bedroom at 2:30 a.m on the morning of our federal election, my vote is already behind me. But millions will vote today, propelled to the polls by a myriad of issues. One of them is a piece of clothing that generated condemnation of it, and condemnation of the condemnation of it, but very little fruitful conversation between those with opposing opinions from what I have seen and heard. My thoughts crash headlong into one of the most unexpectedly divisive issues of this election.
The niqab.
I would never have guessed that our Prime Minister, in an attempt to deflect from his litany of political and moral failings, would make it a central issue in his campaign. Although I didn't see that coming, to a limited degree I am glad that it did. It kicked down a door and revealed a lot about how Canadians really feel. Not how we assume we feel, but how we truly feel. It also created quite a conundrum inside of me, as I found myself on the decidedly “non-progressive” side of the argument. I do not like the niqab. At all. I have no problem saying so. I find it disturbing. I find it creepy. But my opinion is not rooted in racism or faithism, and never has been. It is because of this, my knowledge of my own reasoning, why I found the immediate leap to “If you share the viewpoint of the Tories, you're a racist” to be just as offensive as those who are on the other side found the Tories' viewpoint.
Let's be clear that I abhor the Harper government and DO believe that there are massive amounts of racism within it, as well as sexism and homophobia. This is not the Progressive Conservative party of Joe Clark, but the re-imagined Conservative party, born of the union of the former PC party with the remnants of the Reform-turned-Alliance party. This is the party of Preston Manning and Stockwell Day. This is the party containing members who were once part of the fringe Right, the party led by a man whose reference to "Old Stock Canadians" does not mean the first inhabitants of this land. The thought of the Tories staying in power makes my stomach turn. But it is possible to agree with a government you loathe on a singular issue without the basis for the agreement being the same. It is incredibly frustrating to learn how few people lately seem able to accept or understand that.
In the case of the niqab, it was all but impossible to even have a discussion. If you dared to express the "wrong" opinion, you were a hate-mongering bigot bent on denying people their civil liberties. I am not someone who ever holds back on calling out discrimination of any sort. But I am just as quick to call out when I feel that the calling out is unjustified. Not everyone who disagrees with the prevailing liberal viewpoint is a racist, a sexist or an anti-feminist. Sometimes people are good-hearted folks who for their own reasons don't align with you, and those disagreements can open the door to vigorous and illuminating debate and widened perspective. I ask myself if the leftists would remain as open-minded if niqabs began to proliferate Canadian streets. They might. They might not. I wonder. The truth of how accepting one is of something is found in how one responds to it in greater numbers. There are a lot of whites who are “totally fine” with blacks as long as there are only a couple of them in their neighbourhood. There are many straight people who have “no problem” with homosexuality as an academic discussion but would recoil from seeing it in front of them.
What I have found difficult to wrap my head around is the fact that when we see images of women completely veiled except for their eyes in their own countries, we tend to find it oppressive. Placing exactly the same garb in a North American context somehow changes that perception. That I have not yet been able to understand; I find it far too easy to assume that because a woman is in Canada, that she has chosen to hide herself. The niqab and abaya (the loose black gown covering from head to toe) are a stone's throw away from a burqa, which I personally find one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. (The only difference between the two things is that burqas have a mesh panel over the eyes instead of an opening.) Neither of these articles of clothing is mandated by Islam; the call for modesty is met in most Muslim women by the hijab. Obviously, some women do make the choice to wear the other garments -- do not misconstrue my words to mean I am suggesting that Muslim women are not formidable beings with their own voices. But there are women forced to conceal themselves by husbands and pressured to do it by clerics, and that upsets me to my core. Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am, but I don't believe that every Canadian woman in a niqab is thrilled to be rocking that look, especially those who left an oppressive society to live in Canada, or have parents who made that choice a generation before.
It is always interesting when you realize that yours is an opinion that others deem morally wrong, especially when many of those people are acquaintances and peers. It became clear that my view fell on the wrong side of right in the eyes of many. Below is an email I wrote to a friend earlier this month, after reading dozens of Facebook posts calling anyone who didn't support the wearing of the niqab during the citizenship oath - which included me - Islamophobic and unCanadian.
“I haven't been accused of bigotry personally, but my opinion on the niqab issue is an unpopular one. I loathe Harper and I have no doubt that xenophobia and fear-mongering is behind many of his policies. But I have always maintained, irrespective of religion, that a rule stating that all persons must be clearly visible and identifiable at the moment of taking the citizenship oath is just about the least unreasonable rule I can think of. You are persona non grata though if you dare say that in leftist circles. If this was about the hijab or the turban, I'd be opposing the Tories louder than everyone because neither of those things in any way conceals a person. But the niqab is a totally different thing. You wouldn't be allowed to take the oath in a ski mask; I don't feel that the niqab is any different because it is not mandated by Islam (which is why most Muslim women don't wear it). It is a clothing choice, the same way any other sort of mask would be, and I don't see how the government is overreaching to set a policy about visibility of those taking the oath. However, feeling any of that apparently makes you racist. Or so the billion articles in my feed keep asserting.” - T.T., 3/10/15(I know that some will be likely riled by the ski mask analogy despite my having just explained it.)
In his anti-niqab fervour, Harper focused on the security angle. He tried to push the idea that masked terrorists could enter the country, while never informing the public that every woman who wears a niqab has her identify verified in a room with a female government agent prior to the citizenship ceremony. I was stunned to learn this, and angry at the blatant and clearly deliberate omission. There is no chance of an impostor taking the oath; the government already knows who each veiled woman is. (The security concern with regards to niqabs in general is not entirely without basis, however. The garment was banned in Chad, Africa after men disguised as women in niqabs carried out multiple suicide bombings.) I'm thinking that if you're an Islamic terrorist in Canada, though, your outfit of choice in order to discreetly blend in is not going to be the garb of Muslim fundamentalists. If it is, your idea of “discreetly blend in” needs some serious revisiting.
My primary issue was one of transparency. To me, the moment of taking citizenship is a sacred exchange between oath-taker and country. I found it incredibly audacious that someone would decide to become a citizen and essentially say "I want you to make me officially Canadian and grant me all of the rights and benefits of citizenship, but no, you may not see my face." It seemed extremely uncompromising to refuse to take off a veil for five minutes; I felt that any reasonable person would understand that taking that oath while hiding oneself contravened the very spirit of openness and fraternity that we aspire to.
And so, as the debate swirled, it was an extremely tumultuous time within me. Sharing a viewpoint with a horrible Prime Minister but having a different motivation... realizing that that difference apparently didn't matter... hearing people who were unaware of my perspective call said perspective disgusting and bigoted in my presence because they assumed I held the other position... all the while being very unsure if the supposedly progressive stance was progressive at all, or if the "wrong" stance was actually more so. Thinking back to the incredible conversations I had in New Orleans with V-Day producers from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and knowing what the covering of women means in those contexts... Wondering if I was a more unkind person than I thought.
On Thanksgiving Day of this year, I experienced an incredibly powerful moment on the 54 Lawrence East. Along its route there is a mosque. I've ridden past it in that bus several times, sometimes seeing some of its male worshippers talking outside. Up until last week, though, I had never seen any women. On this day, as I sat with my iPod on paying attention to the music and little else, I happened to glance up as we reached the stop nearest the mosque and saw a woman in a niqab get on. The first woman I'd actually seen wearing one since it became an election issue, she grabbed my attention. As I watched her pay her fare, another woman in a niqab got on behind her. Then another. Then another. Then another. By the time we pulled away from the stop, 11 women in niqabs were on my bus. Eleven. In my ignorance, I didn't even know there were 11 women in Scarborough who wore them.
As someone who spent several years of my life working in the area of violence against women, and whose activism on that front will continue until my last breath, I have a primal reaction to the niqab, especially when worn with the abaya. I know that a woman is far more than her clothes, but I find it erasing - and negating - and when I see one something literally happens inside of my body. It robs some air from my lungs; I want to simultaneously scream and cry. If that gets people's backs up - sorry - that is the how I feel. While there are women who choose to wear the niqab and abaya, many are forced to do so, including under threat of severe punishment. The Taliban imposes the burqa. With regards to the niqab, it is worn most in Saudi Arabia -- a country which subjugates women more than just about any other on the planet. (Mr. Harper, please shut up with the bold-faced lies about not espousing cultures that mistreat women. That comment is extremely fascinating, considering the $15 billion deal you just made to sell war machines to the Saudis.)
The 11 women and their children filed past me and walked toward the rear of the bus, which was fairly empty. As we reached every subsequent stop, you could see each person who boarded stop cold for a moment as he or she looked towards the back and saw a sea of black and 22 eyes. I sat there, not knowing what I felt at first, until I realized that I'd been enveloped by sadness. It's not that the women were sad -- they were talking amongst themselves and to their kids. The sadness was that hiding everything but their eyes seemed so normal to them. I glanced back, gripped by the randomness of there actually being 11 women in niqabs and abayas on the 54 Lawrence bus, and was struck by the fact that I would never be able to identify any of them. That felt so, so strange. I tried to imagine living a life in which every time I went out, I felt obligated to conceal myself in that way. Then I wondered if all 11 of them were in those clothes by choice. Half of me hoped they were. They other half secretly hoped they weren't.
I think back to the moment that almost made me cry in my seat -- the moment when I heard a laugh come from their direction and looked back. The smiles that I knew lived on some of those faces were inaccessible. All I could think to myself was that there is something innately askew when one believes that her god would ever want her to hide her smile. As painful as the thought was of having this imposed on them, the idea that these vibrant women were shrouding themselves of their own volition brought pain too. Perhaps it was none of my business. Actually, forget the perhaps. It wasn't. Still, I felt it in my bones.
These women have come rushing to my mind at least once a day since then. I have tried to use the only reference point I can, my own life, to bridge the gap between their reality as Canadian women and mine. It is hard. I cannot comprehend how women -- women of colour in particular -- could remove themselves even more from a society in which their personhood is already devalued. While I want each one of them to yell "I AM HERE", their clothing instead whispers "I am not."
What I am not is a federal court. If the right to wear the niqab has already been declared constitutional, and our charter calls for "reasonable accommodation" to be made for people in matters of religion, that must stand. There will never be societal consensus on everything. This is much bigger than the question of who is uneasy and who is not. I will never like the garment, and I make no apology for that. I am truly sorry if any of my friends are hurt by that, but lying is not my thing. We are not obligated to find all symbols associated with others' cultures or religions awesome. It does not take away from my genuine respect for Islam.
But it's not about what is to my liking, or to anyone else's. My visceral reaction, or some guy's intellectual argument, or Prime Minister Harper's fear-mongering, or the general vitriol of racists, can not simply be permitted to step in and overturn those decisions which are not their personal preferences. A democracy of convenience is no democracy at all. And so, after sitting with this for the last couple of weeks and riding a tidal wave of feelings, my views have shifted.
I have changed my mind about the oath.
We must not -- WE CANNOT -- support the repealing of rights already granted.
It is 3:21 a.m. on October 19th. The majority of the country goes to the polls today. People will vote with their hearts, with their wallets, with their prejudices, with their fingers crossed. It pains me to know that some will vote with hatred for anyone other than Harper as their fuel. (I can think of 11 women who will not be voting for him.) I am not a proponent of the niqab, but I am a proponent of living in a country that is. Perhaps one day I will proudly declare "My Canada includes the niqab!" I am not there now. I have not yet converted the period to an exclamation point. On this matter, my Canada is ahead of me, more open and benevolent than I am. I know that. I admit that.
I hope one day to catch up.
In the meantime, I close my eyes and try to picture them smiling.
- T.T.
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