Lovers and Fighters | Section 22

International Women’s Week is a week of celebration, education, and awareness surrounding women’s and gender issues. During this week there was two Muslim women shared how Law 21 has created new realities for them that have affected their sense of belonging and ability to thrive in Quebec. Their presentations were very impressive, especially Nadia Naqvi’s speeches made me interested in Bill 21 and the Islamic veil.

Bill 21 is a controversial law as the arguments in the news Quebec women’s rights group defends Bill 21 in montreal.citynews.ca. On one hand, supporters say the Islamic veil is a symbol of sexism and doesn’t belong on public school. Marie Claude says the group’s stance is a defence of secularism, and democratic society is secular…they are defending the neutrality of institutions…it’s important for the province to be neutral and democratic. On the other hand, opponents say PDF hurts the women and the ban prevents a muslim woman from becoming a teacher or prosecutors.

It seems that it is obligatory for some muslim women to wear the Islamic veil. The majority of Muslim scholars and exegetes agreed that the believing women must cover their hair by putting on a Khimar and leave only their faces and hands uncovered in the presence of men who do not have a direct family relationship with them. (Asma-Lamrabet.com) Asma Lamrabet says the essence of Hijab aimed, mainly, to educate Arabs of that time to respect the privacy of people and good manners, but women were separated from men and society, in the name of Islam, by replacing the Khimar with Hijab means to confuse different and opposing semantic and conceptual fields in order to endorse, in the name of Islam, the exclusion of women from the sociopolitical space behind a curtain! Gender difference was produced in the same way as Kimmel stated in gender as an institution, the differences between women and men are reproduced, and in this way the inequality between women and men is legitimated.

The question of Hijab or the veil is currently one of the most controversial issues both in the Muslim country and the West, but beyond the question of the right to claim the “veil” and its religious legitimacy, it is helpful for women to aware more about women’s and gender issues through international women week.