۱۰ فروردین ۱۴۰۳ |۱۹ رمضان ۱۴۴۵ | Mar 29, 2024
Quebec ruler who bans Hijab but claims Crucifix is not religious symbol!

The newly elected governor of Quebec has been criticized after claiming that the crucifix is not a religious symbol—after pushing forward with plans to ban officials wearing religious clothing such as hijabs.

Hawzah News Agency (Quebec, Canada) – François Legault wants to ban civil servants from wearing clothing hijabs or skull caps seen as denoting religious faith—but is refusing to implement a 2008 government commissioned report calling for a crucifix to be removed from the Quebec National Assembly.

The reason, according to Legault, is that the crucifix is not a religious symbol, but a historical symbol.

"We have to understand our past," Legault told reporters in Yerevan, Armenia, where he is attending a Francophone summit, reported CBC.

“In our past we had Protestants and Catholics,” Legault said Thursday. “They built the values we have in Quebec. We have to recognize that and not mix that with religious signs.”

Debate over the place of religious symbols in government and public spaces has raged in Quebec for years, and after Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec won a majority in last week’s election, he renewed calls to ban public servants wearing "ostentatious" religious symbols.

Police officers, teachers and judges are among those who could be fired if they refuse to obey the rule if it passes. 

The crucifix was installed above the speaker’s chair in Quebec’s legislature in 1936, but was recommended for removal in a 2008 report, which said it breached laws separating church and state.

No politician has taken steps to implement the decision though.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is among those who have criticized Legault’s proposed ban for unfairly targeting minorities, saying that the state has no right to tell Muslim women they cannot wear a hijab.

And the Montreal Gazette has published a 2013 statement by Quebec’s Catholic bishops issued during a previous controversy over the crucifix in which they describe the cross as exactly that which Legault denies it is: a religious symbol.

“It must be treated with all the respect due to a fundamental symbol of the Catholic faith,” wrote the Assemblée des évêques du Québec, adding that they would respect a decision from democratically elected representatives to remove it.

 

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