A Niqab Crisis or a Community Crisis By: Mohamed S. Kamel

A Niqab Crisis or a Community Crisis

By: Mohamed S. Kamel*

Mar 14, 2010

When a big challenge faces a community, community leaders, the wise people, come together collectively to face it and this is the only road to success.

We do not have to dig far.  We just have to look a few years back, when the so called caricature crisis hit the world.  Community leaders of Montreal’s Muslims came together and acted very fast in the best interest of the entire society.  Acted collectively, 63 organizations and mosques signed a declaration and organized a nationwide press conference. As such, Islamophobia promoters were not able to use a single person after going out of line.

Another example was the arrest of the 17, or latter 18 which then became only 8.  In Toronto, the community acted on the same level and acted more clearly and in a full unity.  

But why is it not the case today?

Some individuals led a few organizations through a single minded competitive mode, in which their organizations became the goal not the tool.  The outcome was a fragmented and fragile community.  Every single person found him/herself in a position to react because the community’s sound was not echoed, and the community did not find a real representative.        

This is a direct result of the individuality, where each single community organization would like to work separately and consider its own agenda above the entire community’s needs.

Our community has a historical problem, from individuality on a personal level, to individuality on the organization level.  Each would like to take the credit of a work that was never done.

So where to go from here?

Unfortunately, the entire community has to pay the price of many mistakes, and the price has to be paid first before recovery can commence. As such if we did never pay the price, we will never recover and the mistakes will continue, and the next generation will to pay it double.

Could damage control work, not now and it is not the solution.  Damage control pushes the community more into negative reaction and does not help them to move to the action phase.

Before we search for a solution, we have to analyse the issues and the surrounding environment.

Before the Bouchard-Taylor committee, the Islamophobics tried to use attacking Muslim as a tool for a cheap political gain, ADQ’s rise in vote. The establishing of the committee was a wise decision and the outcome was a real proof that the long work in bridge building pays.  Most of the non-Muslim organizations submitted their report favouring the so called “Reasonable Accommodation”. But how has it been achieved? It is a long story of hard work between the wise people from the Muslim and Non-Muslim Quebecers.

Quebec’s society is sacrificing all the work done in the last years.  We are sacrificing the harmonization projects, the unity among Muslim and Non-Muslim in our way to build tomorrow’s Quebec.  

A quick read through the memoires presented from many Muslim and non-Muslim associations will proof what was previously said (eg. Bloc Quebecois, Federation de femmes du Quebec, Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, D'abord Solidaire, Ligue de droits et libértés, and tens of others worked hard in the bridge building process).

Wise Muslim and non-Muslim Quebecers managed to understand the reality of today’s Quebec and worked hard in educating people to assure that the community is able to react responsibly. They worked separately and jointly in the same direction, and the outcome was yes for the new Quebec, yes for all people with different attire, different look and different background.

The outcome was clear in many things; for example, yes Hijab and Turban are welcomed in the work place, but all agreed to stay silence towards the Niqab.

This silence on the Niqab was not discrimination against Niqabi ladies, but understanding the dilemma of the society.  Also, because they are a very tiny minority and their Niqab will not interfere with the society’s way of functioning because they will not try to work and they are rarely out of home.   

The main issue was not to confuse the Niqab with the Hijab, and not to inflame the Islamophobia environment.  

Those hate-mongers tried to prove that Muslims are attacking freedom and women’s rights by forcing their women to cover-up unwillingly. Great Muslim women hand in hand with non-Muslim women wan the battle wisely and proved the opposite.

The force of darkness did not like this win-win situation and tried to reopen the issue again using the identification process during the last provincial and federal election as another window to create a hatred environment between Muslim and non-Muslim Quebecers.

They tried to show the Niqab as an Islamic attack against Quebec’s society. Once again the wise people prevailed and the man made crises was defused in a few days, with the clarification to everybody that this is a tiny minority that we cannot deny them their rights and they are wise enough to accommodate the society’s need of identifying the person in front in an election and for security purposes.   

In all those fabricated crises, the majority of Quebecers, Muslim and non-Muslim, were very clever in overcoming this issue and in helping in distinguishing between the Hijab and the Niqab, not as rights but as the affect on the society.

But lately those Islamophobics came again, and because we did not learn the lesson, came out with some lies and fabricated stories about the case of the expulsion of a Niqabi new immigrant from the school.

But this time our wiseness was not there and the short sided were the winner.

Some Quebecers, Muslim and non-Muslims, messed the story by mixing the campaign against the Niqab with directed to Muslims.  They blew it out of proportion. This could be the case if we allow the provocation to take place.

So here we are!

    

Community leaders should think of society building not defragmentation, the balance between the wellbeing of the society and individual rights could be struck.

Crises could not be defused by looking for a winner over a loser.  Crises could be defused only when we are able to reach the win-win condition.

I am not here addressing the rights, because compromise in rights is not acceptable, but I am addressing the future building and the wellbeing of our children.

We should think outside the box, and this is the real challenge of the entire society, we have to think in the wellbeing of Quebec, our Quebec of tomorrow.

 Are we there or we have to pay the price first!

* Mohamed S. Kamel: is an engineer and a recognized project manager professional (PMP), a freelance writer, the editor of I.N. Daily, co-founder of the Canadian Egyptian for Democracy (CEFD), Alternative Perspective Media (APM-RAM) and the ex-president and co-founder of the Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF), could be reached at public@mohamedkamel.com