Should the Burqa be Banned in Canada?

Should the burqa be banned in Canada? At the moment, only 54% say "yes." Ezra Levant has a column in the Sun on the issue, "Will Your Daughter Play with the Burqa Barbie?" and he points out that religious freedom is in conflict with the equality of women and men on this issue.

So let's be honest here: the problem is not that extreme right-wingers are being intolerant; rather, it is that we are struggling to figure out how to respect the religious beliefs of Muslims without enabling the oppression of women, which is a legitimate and serious problem with which to grapple as a liberal democratic society. As a conservative, I am willing to admit that religious freedom is not unlimited. When a religion goes against the law of the land, it is no longer tolerated; this is a well-established principle in law and many Christian beliefs are not reflected in Western law. Islam does not have unlimited freedom to remake Western society in its image. Liberals who are busy trying to eradicate all Christian influence from our legal and educational system should have no problem admitting that principle with regard to Islam.

Yet we find that so-called "liberals" are increasingly finding themselves aligned with Islamic male oppression of women - treating women as property, obsessing about obedience and sanctioning "honor killing" - instead of being on the side of the individual as liberals used to be. Levant takes it to the feminists:

Canada’s misguided experiment with multiculturalism pretends that all cultural ideas are equal, and Canadian values, such as the equality of men and women, are no better than foreign values like the subjugation of women.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982 when our Muslim population was tiny, is contradictory.

Section 27 of the Charter calls for “the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”

But Section 28 says that rights “are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.”

Well, which is it? “Enhancing” Saudi values? Or guaranteeing women’s equality?

Because you can’t have both.

Margaret Atwood published her sci-fi novel The Handmaid’s Tale, about America being taken over by a Christian theocracy that treats women as sexual property, 25 years ago.

It has become trite to watch cultural liberals like Atwood bravely attack imaginary discrimination, while staying silent on real discrimination.

The Handmaid’s Tale won Atwood the Governor General’s Award for fiction. A book about the subjugation of women in radical Islam would win Atwood a death threat.

Atwood loves posing as a feminist at champagne receptions in her honour. But she’ll leave the heavy lifting to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

She’s the Somali refugee who wrote and narrated a movie called Submission, about the place of women in radical Islam.

The film’s producer, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered for it, but a note pinned with a knife into his body referred primarily to Hirsi Ali, who has had to live under around-the-clock security ever since.

That’s all a bit too real for Atwood, and is the reason why other feminists like the once-noisy Judy Rebick are so meek and gentle with the real butchers of women’s rights.

Levant mentions Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has emerged as a spokeswoman for women who are being oppressed by a religious-political system that is brutal, unjust and violent toward women. To give you an idea of how pernicious and craven the Left has become and how dangerous postmodern moral and cultural relativism actually is to those under oppression, have a look at this interview of Hirsi Ali by the anti-American, ultra-Leftist Avi Lewis on the CBC show "On the Map."



It is pretty amazing to watch this doctrinaire Leftist try to tell Hirsi Ali, who herself is a victim of female genital mutilation, that a lot of Muslims are content with their religion and that there is actually no real difference between religions. The idea that all religions are the same is an article of faith with Leftists. Otherwise, it would be meaningful to discuss the question of which is better and which is worse and that is a debate the Left wants to stifle because it would result in Christianity being preferred as a superior religion in the sense of being more compatible with liberal democratic values. Since liberal democracy emerged in the context of a Christian civilization, this is hardly surprising. But the Left wishes to conceal this truth because it does not fit its narrative of how Christianity (and religion in general) is the source of all evil in the world while secular statism is the source of all good.

It is entertaining watching Hirsi Ali take this guy apart; it is like watching an adult school an adolescent. My favorite part is near the end when he claims that democracy is "broken" in America and refers to "stolen elections." Then he laughs at her for saying that anyone can come to America and get wealthy and stand for public office. In response to his mocking, she says:

I read Alexis de Tocqueville and I heard about democracy and I lived in countries that have no democracy . . . so I don't find myself in some lecture as you do. You grew up in freedom and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom. I haven't. I know that there are many things wrong with America but I still believe it is the best nation in the world.

The interviewer comes off looking like a smiling apologist for tyranny, which of course is what he is as a Leftist subversive. Usually, however, that fact is disguised whereas in this interviewer the Leftist sympathy for a totalitarian regime is unveiled in all its ugliness and hatefulness.