Vive Quebec

Judging from the snippet I heard on CBC Radio tonight, the sharia law debate continues in Canada. In a brief automotive interlude, I heard As It Happens interviewers speaking to Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, Minister of International Relations and of La Francophonie in Quebec, who defended Quebec’s refusal to allow any aspect of sharia law to take hold in La Belle Province. Here is the gist of what she had to say:

First, immigration is a privilege, not a right. As a twice-over immigrant, I whole-heartedly concur, and cannot agree with the woman in this article who assumes that Islam is given to her “naturally,” as it were, and that she must therefore naturally be allowed to practice it in full, regardless of where she is. When she says, “It’s something nobody can change and we must follow,” she expresses in a nutshell what is wrong with fundamentalist religious belief: namely, the idea that social states are non-negotiable (“something nobody can change”). In the West, the notion of freedom is eviscerated by the idea that negotiation cannot take place. That notion makes a mockery of all those who put their very lives on the line for political and individual freedom.

Second, those who want to leave their country of origin should be able to agree, before arriving in the new country, that they will abide by the system of justice of the country they wish to emigrate to. Otherwise, they must stay where they are, or go somewhere else. It is illegal in Quebec, as well as in Canada, to practice violence against women, to practice polygamy, and to practice female genital mutilation, whereas each of these illegal acts is allowed under sharia law. The Canadian justice system says this is wrong. It therefore makes no sense to say, “well, we’ll allow a second system of justice in the area of ‘family law’, even though we’ll make everyone abide by Canada’s justice system for the ‘big picture.'” That’s bogus: there is one justice system, and letting a second system of justice take root simply makes a mockery of the first. While “reasonable” religious folks might say, “Well, we don’t really want to practice x [genital mutilation, polygamy, etc.], we just want to have that little space in that one little area [‘family law’] — and of course if someone does something truly criminal, we’ll submit to Canadian law,” they are not being reasonable at all. They have come into the host country under false pretenses, so to speak, and it’s really not up to the host country to change to accomodate those fundamentalist views. Monique Gagnon-Tremblay argued that sharia is fundamentalism, regardless of where or in what little nook or cranny it takes hold, and that the justice system in Quebec has no room for fundamentalism.

Too bad Ontario didn’t have someone as clear-spoken as that. What’s underlying B’nai Brith’s support of Sharia law in Ontario gets elaborated by Jewlicious – 100% Kosher, which has a really interesting comments thread as well.