hijab Archives - David Rand

Le conformisme lassant de Toula Drimonis

Normaliser le hijab est inacceptable

2024-08-08

Journaliste et antilaïque Toula Drimonis récidive ! Elle affirme que l’image d’une femme en hijab à l’entrée de l’hôtel de ville de Montréal, récemment rénové, est géniale et n’a aucune signification religieuse ! Pourtant, le hijab est chargé de sens religieux et politique, que la femme qui le porte en soit consciente ou non.

Summary in English Journalist and antisecularist Toula Drimonis is at it again. She claims that the image of a hijabi at the entrance to Montreal’s newly renovated city hall is just hunky-dory, with no religious significance! On the contrary, the hijab is loaded with religious and political meaning, regardless of whether the woman wearing it is aware.

This blog is available in English: The Tedious Conformism of Toula Drimonis

S’il y a jamais eu le moindre doute sur la vacuité des mots « inclusif » et « diversifié » lorsqu’ils sont utilisés par des idéologues antilaïques, ce doute a été dissipé par la dernière diatribe de Toula Drimonis “Montreal City Hall’s inclusive gesture is met with anger” (« Le geste inclusif de l’hôtel de ville de Montréal suscite la colère »), parue le 25 juillet 2024 dans The Gazette. Drimonis refuse de reconnaître la duplicité du choix de l’image qui accueille les visiteurs dans l’hôtel de ville récemment rénové. Après avoir retiré le crucifix de la salle du conseil pour respecter la laïcité, la nouvelle image montre trois personnes, dont une femme portant le hijab.

Mais, affirme Drimonis, cette image ne se trouve pas dans la salle du conseil, elle « n’a donc aucune influence, ni sur la mairie, ni sur la gouvernance civique » et « ne représente pas la religion ». Absurdité. Le choix de l’image d’une hijabi est chargé de signification, tout comme le hijab lui-même a une signification objective quelle que soit l’intention de la femme qui le porte. Drimonis elle-même admet que l’image correspond à la nature « multiculturelle et diversifiée » de Montréal, ignorant allègrement que le multiculturalisme est une idéologie très tendancieuse, un euphémisme pour le relativisme culturel et le multi-tribalisme. Il est incompatible avec l’universalisme nécessaire aux droits humains. Mais le multiculturalisme, soutenu par des mots galvaudés tels que « diversité » et « inclusivité », est l’idéologie promue à la fois par Drimonis et par la mairesse Valérie Plante.

…les religions et leurs signes bénéficient d’un niveau de respect et de déférence au-delà de toute raison et qui ne serait jamais accordé aux idéologies et symboles politiques.

Ce choix d’image est un affront délibéré à la laïcité et à la population québécoise qui la soutient avec enthousiasme. C’est une déclaration qui signifie que l’appartenance religieuse prime sur toute autre considération. En particulier, les religions et leurs signes bénéficient d’un niveau de respect et de déférence au-delà de toute raison et qui ne serait jamais accordé aux idéologies et symboles politiques.

Drimonis comprend-elle la signification du hijab ? Bien entendu, il s’agit d’un symbole religieux, raison suffisante pour l’éviter dans ce contexte. Toute manifestation partisane, religieuse ou politique, serait inacceptable. De plus, le hijab est un étendard de l’islam politique, un symbole de la culture du viol et de l’asservissement de la femme. Le hijab, comme toutes les variantes du voile islamique, est un sceau de pureté, indiquant que celle qui le porte est une bonne musulmane et, plus important encore, que toute femme — en particulier une femme musulmane — qui n’en porte pas est impure et mérite de passer l’éternité en enfer. Cette signification est indépendante de la mentalité de la femme qui le porte. Celle-ci peut être inconsciente de cette signification, comme Drimonis l’est, ou du moins prétend l’être.

…nous devrions prendre des mesures pour freiner la propagation d’un symbole aussi extrêmement misogyne…

Le voile islamique est odieux. Le normaliser est inacceptable. Le célébrer, comme le font la mairie et Drimonis, est obscène. En tant que société, nous devrions prendre des mesures pour freiner la propagation d’un symbole aussi extrêmement misogyne, d’autant plus que cette propagation est une stratégie volontaire des islamistes.

Les interdictions de symboles dans la fonction publique telles que celles prévues dans la Loi 21 imposent une éthique professionnelle. C’est exactement le genre de mesure qu’il faut : interdire les symboles de toutes les religions (évitant ainsi toute discrimination) dans certaines circonstances formelles, c’est-à-dire lorsque le porteur est un fonctionnaire ou un enseignant en service, mais maintenir une pleine liberté dans d’autres contextes. Mais Drimonis ne parvient pas à faire la distinction entre le contexte civique où l’interdiction s’applique et le contexte public mais non civique (par exemple, des non-employés vaquant à leurs occupations privées en public) où elle ne s’applique pas.

La laïcité repose sur le constat que la religion et l’État ne font pas bon ménage et que leur séparation est nécessaire pour protéger les droits humains, en particulier la liberté de conscience.

Drimonis est tristement connue pour son opposition à la laïcité en général et à la Loi 21 en particulier. Elle utilise un stratagème malhonnête, courant parmi les antilaïques : elle prétend soutenir la laïcité tout en proposant une fausse définition de celle-ci, la minant et l’affaiblissant. Dans un article publié peu après l’adoption de la loi en 2019, elle a écrit que « la véritable laïcité de l’État n’a rien à voir avec l’interdiction des signes religieux ». Mais si ! Il faut les interdire dans certains contextes. La laïcité repose sur le constat que la religion et l’État ne font pas bon ménage et que leur séparation est nécessaire pour protéger les droits humains, en particulier la liberté de conscience. Cette liberté comprend à la fois la liberté de croyance religieuse et la liberté de s’en affranchir. La Loi 21 reconnaît que les citoyens et les élèves méritent des institutions et des services publics exempts de prosélytisme religieux, y compris le prosélytisme passif des symboles portés par le personnel qui travaille.

Drimonis laisserait apparemment libre cours aux religions, comme si elle les trouvait totalement anodines. Ignore-t-elle que, dans l’islam par exemple, l’apostasie est considérée comme un péché abominable ? Cette doctrine est complètement incompatible avec la liberté de conscience. Quant à nous qui soutenons la séparation entre la religion et l’État parce que nous voyons les religions comme des menaces potentielles aux droits humains, ce qui est effectivement le cas si elles acquièrent une influence politique, Drimonis nous traite avec mépris, comme si notre attitude n’était que le symptôme malheureux d’une maladie mentale. Elle affiche un mépris similaire pour le droit des enfants à une éducation exempte de prosélytisme idéologique.

En Europe, la France est à l’avant-garde en matière de laïcité. Celle-ci est menacée par des fanatiques religieux tels que les islamistes et les catholiques pieux, et cette menace est encore aggravée par le soutien des islamogauchistes tels que le parti politique La France Insoumise (LFI).

Ici en Amérique du Nord, le Québec est à l’avant-garde et la laïcité y est également menacée. Les alliés objectifs de l’islam politique et des autres intégristes ici au Canada sont des conformistes imbuvables comme Toula Drimonis, prête à bafouer les droits des élèves, tout en prétextant défendre les minorités religieuses « stigmatisées », alors qu’en réalité son action favorise les fanatiques religieux. Les plus fanatiques sont des hommes qui ont pour but de normaliser le port du voile et de le rendre pratiquement obligatoire pour les femmes musulmanes. La fonction du hijab est de stigmatiser les femmes musulmanes qui ne le portent pas, qui sont donc insuffisamment pieuses selon ces intégristes.

Next blog: Bouazzi ne lutte pas contre le racisme

The Tedious Conformism of Toula Drimonis

Normalizing the Hijab is Unacceptable

2024-07-31

Journalist and antisecularist Toula Drimonis is at it again. She claims that the image of a hijabi at the entrance to Montreal’s newly renovated city hall is just hunky-dory, with no religious significance! On the contrary, the hijab is loaded with religious and political meaning, regardless of whether the woman wearing it is aware.

Sommaire en français Journaliste et antilaïciste Toula Drimonis récidive ! Elle affirme que l’image d’une femme en hijab à l’entrée de l’hôtel de ville de Montréal, récemment rénové, est géniale et n’a aucune signification religieuse ! Pourtant, le hijab est chargé de sens religieux et politique, que la femme qui le porte en soit consciente ou non.

Ce billet de blogue est disponible en français : Le conformisme lassant de Toula Drimonis

If there were ever any doubt about the vacuity of the words “inclusive” and “diverse” when used by antisecular ideologues, that doubt has been dispelled by Toula Drimonis’ latest diatribe “Montreal City Hall’s inclusive gesture is met with anger,” published 2024-07-25 in the Montreal Gazette. Drimonis’ refuses to recognize the duplicity of the choice of image which welcomes visitors to the newly renovated city hall. After removing the crucifix from council chambers in accordance with Bill 21, the new image displays three persons, of whom one is a hijab clad woman.

But, claims Drimonis, this image is not in council chambers, so it “has no influence whatsoever over city hall and civic governance” and “doesn’t represent religion.” Nonsense. The choice of an image of a hijabi is laden with significance, just as the hijab itself has objective meaning regardless of the intention of the woman wearing it. Drimonis herself admits that the image is in line with the “multicultural and diverse” nature of Montreal, blithely ignoring the fact that multiculturalism is a very tendentious ideology, a euphemism for cultural relativism and multi-tribalism. It is incompatible with universalism which is necessary for human rights. But multiculturalism, supported by buzzwords such as “diversity” and “inclusivity,” is the ideology promoted by both Drimonis and mayor Valérie Plante.

This choice of image is a deliberate affront to secularism and to the Quebec population which enthusiastically supports it. It is a declaration that religious affiliation takes precedence over all other considerations. In particular, religions and their symbols are afforded a level of respect and deference beyond all reason and which would never be granted to political ideologies and symbols.

…the hijab is a banner of political Islam, a symbol of rape culture and the subjugation of women […] a stamp of purity…

Does Drimonis grasp the meaning of the hijab? Of course it is a religious symbol, which is reason enough to avoid it in this context. Any partisan display, religious or political, would be unacceptable. Furthermore, the hijab is a banner of political Islam, a symbol of rape culture and the subjugation of women. The hijab, like all variants of the Islamic veil, is a stamp of purity, indicating that its wearer is a good Muslim woman and, more importantly, that any woman—especially a Muslim woman—who does not wear one is impure and deserves to spend eternity in hell. This meaning is independent of the mentality of the woman wearing it. She may be unaware of that meaning, as Drimonis is, or at least pretends to be.

The Islamic veil is odious. To normalize it is unacceptable. To celebrate it, as city hall and Drimonis do, is obscene. As a society we should be taking steps to discourage the spread of such an extremely misogynistic symbol, especially given that that spread is a deliberate strategy of Islamists.

Civil service symbol bans such as those in Bill 21 are a matter of professional ethics. They are just the sort of measure that is required: banning all religious symbols (thus avoiding discrimination) in certain formal circumstances, i.e. when the bearer is an on-duty civil servant or schoolteacher, but maintaining full freedom in other contexts. But Drimonis fails to distinguish between the civic context where the ban applies and the public but non-civic context (e.g. non-employees going about their private business in public) where it does not.

The basis of secularism is the observation that religion and State make for a very bad combination, and that separating them is necessary to protect human rights, in particular freedom of conscience.

Drimonis is notorious for her opposition to secularism in general and to Quebec Bill 21 in particular. She uses a dishonest ploy which is a common among antisecularists: she claims to support secularism while offering a false definition of that term, robbing it of meaning. In an article published shortly after the law was adopted in 2019, she wrote that “true state secularism has nothing to do with the banning of religious symbols.” Yes it does, in certain circumstances. The basis of secularism is the observation that religion and State make for a very bad combination, and that separating them is necessary to protect human rights, in particular freedom of conscience. That freedom includes both freedom of and freedom from religious belief. Bill 21 recognizes that citizens and schoolchildren have a right to civil services and institutions free from religious proselytism, including the passive proselytism of symbols worn by working staff.

Drimonis would apparently allow religions free rein, as if she considered them to be totally innocuous. Is she unaware that, in Islam for example, apostasy is considered a heinous sin? This tenet is utterly incompatible with freedom of conscience. As for those of us who support separation between religion and State because we see religions as potential threats to human rights, which indeed they are if they gain political influence, Drimonis treats us with contempt, as if our attitude were the unfortunate symptom of a mental illness. She displays similar contempt for the rights of schoolchildren to an education free of ideological proselytism.

In Europe, France is in the vanguard of secularism. That secularism is under threat from religious bigots such as Islamists and pious Catholics, and that threat is made much worse by the support of islamogauchistes such as the political party La France Insoumise (LFI).

Here in North America, Quebec is in the vanguard and secularism is similarly threatened. The objective allies of political Islam here in Canada are tedious conformists like Toula Drimonis who are willing to flout schoolchildren’s rights, just so they can claim, self-righteously, that they are defending “stigmatized” religious minorities when in reality they are facilitating religious fanatics. The most fanatical are men whose aim is to normalize the veil and make it practically mandatory for Muslim women. The aim of the hijab is to stigmatize Muslim women who do not wear it.

Next blog: Les critiques de la cérémonie d’ouverture des Jeux Olympiques se trompent de cible

This Does NOT Promote Child Health

2019-08-16

In this blog I criticize the decision of the editors of a paediatrics journal to use a photo of a veiled girl on the journal’s cover.

Sommaire en français Dans ce blogue je critique la décision prise par la rédaction d’une revue de pédiatrie de se servir de la photo d’une fillette voilée pour faire la couverture de cette revue.

It has come to my attention (via a tweet from Ensaf Haidar) that a recent issue (July 2019) of the academic journal Paediatrics & Child Health, Journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society, published by the Oxford University Press, featured a photograph of a young girl wearing an Islamist veil as shown in the accompanying image. (Here I use the word “Islamist” instead of “Islamic” for reasons explained in my previous blog.)

Click to enlarge
Paediatrics & Child Health
Vol. 24, #4

Why would the editors of a paediatrics journal choose a photo of a veiled girl, given that the veil is a flag of an international far-right political movement? The kindest thing that can be said about this choice of cover photo is that it is airheaded fashionable nonsense. The editors have obviously fallen under the influence of the identitarian, islamophilic “left” and their centrist emulators, who are obsessed with religious minorities, especially Muslims, and therefore act as if Muslims can do no wrong, even when it is a radical fringe of fanatic Islamists who are setting the agenda, pretending (falsely) to speak for all Muslims.

Using a cover photo of veiled female of any age, as if such a phenomenon were perfectly banal and ordinary, is bad enough. After all, the Islamist agenda is to promote the veiling of females anywhere and everywhere, regardless of circumstances, with the goal of rendering the veil just that: banal and ordinary, that is to say, to normalize it, to make us forget just what a disgusting icon of women’s subjugation it is. But to use a photo of a minor, especially for a journal devoted to children’s health of all things, is inexcusable!

In my writings I have already pointed out several times that imposing the Islamist veil on a child for any extended period of time (weeks, months, years) is a form of child abuse and should be illegal. Even if the child wears the veil of her own volition, that does not change the situation: after all, we do not allow children to make their own decisions about many things, and I would suggest that wearing such a retrogressive symbol should be one of those things.

As I wrote in a previous blog discussing a similarly unacceptable photo used by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, “The consequences of wearing the veil are very serious for a young girl. There may be negative physical effects (such as Vitamin D deficiency or an impediment to the child’s normal physical activity), but the most grievous consequences are psychological and social. When the person wearing the veil is a child, the social segregation is much more serious, depriving the young girl of a normal childhood and erecting a barrier between her and other children.”

Of course I do not know the context in which the cover photo was taken. Perhaps the girl wore the veil only for the duration of a photo shoot, in which case no harm has been done to her personally. Nevertheless, the use of such a photo for a paediatrics journal remains dubious at best and arguably harmful. Indeed, it is literally unhealthy. It is an affront to children’s physical and mental health, especially the latter.

In fact, I would say that any paediatrician who accepts the long-term veiling of young girls lacks the ability to deal competently with the psychosocial development of children.

Next blog: Another Notch Lower for Canada

Summary: The Islamist Veil

2019-08-12

A summary of my analysis of the implications of the Islamist veil.

Sommaire en français Un résumé de mon analyse des implications du voile islamiste.

For future reference, I have decided to summarize here an analysis of the Islamist veil and its implications. I could call it the “Islamic veil” instead, but the word “Islamic” applies to Islam in general. However the veil is much more closely associated with the fundamentalist and radical variant of Islam known as Islamism or political Islam, and it is for that reason that I refer to it as “Islamist.” That veil is, after all, a political symbol even more than a religious one. It comes in several versions of course: hijab, chador, burkini, niqab, burqa, etc. This blog summarizes and builds on my previous blog Notes on the Islamist Veil.

Some essential points:

The Islamist veil, in all its forms, is an advertisement for political Islam, regardless of the mentality of the woman wearing it.
The Islamist veil is imposed by fanatics. It is not an article of clothing for Muslim women in general—but Islamists would like us to think that it is!
Most women who wear the Islamist veil, especially in Muslim-majority countries, do so because they are in some sense forced to do so, as they are under severe pressure from family, community, fundamentalists and sometimes the law. The consequences of not wearing it can be life-threatening.
Those women who decide to wear the Islamist veil willingly, mainly in non-Muslim countries, are implicitly expressing solidarity with political Islam, whether or not they are conscious of the implications of their decision. Such women are objectively allied with religious fanaticism.
The Islamist veil is a marker of segregation, keeping Muslims separate from other “inferior” people. It also sends the message that religious affiliation (for Muslims) is more important than other attributes.
The Islamist veil is a purity symbol, a form of slut-shaming. Wearing it means that other women who do not wear it, especially Muslim women who do not wear it, are impure, i.e. “easy.”
The Islamist veil is an expression of rape culture. It implies that women are responsible for the sexual excesses of heterosexual men.
The Islamist veil is not just an article of clothing. To treat is as such is to empower the religious fanatics who use it for proselytism and propaganda.
The Islamist veil is a tool to control women’s bodies.
Proponents of political Islam use veiled women in the same way that dogs use their urine: to mark their territory.

In summary, Islamists treat women in general with contempt and they use veiled women in particular as tools for their political purposes. Recall that Islam is arguably the most misogynistic of all major religions, and that political Islam is a fundamentalist variant which takes that misogyny to an extreme.

Finally, it must be emphasized that all of the above observations about the Islamist veil apply regardless of the mentality of the woman flaunting it. The objective meaning of the veil does not depend on the thoughts of the bearer. She may be naïve, she may be totally unaware of the implications of the accoutrement she has “chosen” to display or been forced to display or, on the other hand, she may be fully cognizant that she is effectively supporting political Islam. In all cases, she is just one more veiled woman, one more walking advertisement for one of the most dangerous extreme right-wing movements on our planet.

Thus, the wearing of the Islamist veil should be discouraged and it should be banned where appropriate to do so. There are three main contexts (this list may not be exhaustive) where banning is appropriate:

Wearing religious symbols—including all versions of the Islamist veil—by public servants, i.e. State employees, while on the job, should be banned.
Imposing any Islamist veil on a child for any extended period of time (weeks, months, years) is a form of child abuse and should be illegal.
Versions of the veil which obscure the face, i.e. the niqab and burqa, should, like all face-coverings, be banned in any situation where covering the face compromises security, identification or communication. This includes at least situations where security checks are performed, such as in airports or at entrances to some public buildings. However, there are further reasons why the niqab and burqa should be resisted, as these veils represent a violation of human dignity and women’s rights. Extending the ban to everywhere in public is an option to be considered.

In other situations, the wearing of the Islamist veil should be tolerated for reasons of personal freedom, but it should be neither endorsed nor encouraged—and certainly not celebrated as some governments (such as Canada) foolishly do.

Next blog: This Does NOT Promote Child Health