Law 21 in the face of religious terror

Sixty years after the Quiet Revolution, Islamists want to plunge Quebecers back into religious terror. The Supreme Court of Canada will be able to decide whether or not they have the right to do so if it chooses to decide on the merits of Law 21.

In the 1960s, Quebec got rid of the stifling influence of the Catholic Church.

Let us remember that this terrorized Catholics by threatening them with ending up in hell for the slightest pretext.

The priests stigmatized couples who had few or no children. They dabbled in politics in barely covered terms. In short, they made terror reign and they controlled consciences.

We have freed ourselves from this totalitarianism.

But religious fundamentalists would like Quebec to return to that era. The Islamists in particular are at the front of this offensive.

And the wearing of the Islamic veil is the symbolic heart of this offensive.

Gods above the law

Religious fundamentalists consider human laws to be beneath what they interpret as divine wills.

Therefore, anyone in authority who wears an ostentatious religious symbol sends a signal that, rather than applying human laws, they will apply where necessary what they deem to be divine right.

This position is incompatible with the very existence of the Supreme Court, which should, according to this pseudology, also bow to the decisions of religious leaders.

A condemnation of Law 21 would amount to condemning the very architecture of all states governed by the rule of law which consider that human affairs should not be subject to the wishes of religious leaders.

This would deviate democracy from its trajectory and ultimately plunge us back into the Middle Ages, like Islamist states like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Philosophical God

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes, in its preamble, “the supremacy of God and the primacy of the laws”. In the minds of the document’s drafters, this is not a Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist god. In 1982, they had a Christian god in mind.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who contributed through his writings to the Quiet Revolution, would never have endorsed a legal interpretation that would favor the reestablishment of a type of religious power that he had fought.

The best interpretation of the Charter’s reference to a god is to see it as a reference to Christian philosophical principles in which Western laws have been steeped for nearly 2000 years.

Here, the protective multiculturalism of religious fundamentalism comes into violent conflict with the founding principles not only of Canada in 1982, but also of democracy in general.

For this reason, the Supreme Court could ultimately decide on the form, that is to say the right of the provinces to use the notwithstanding clause in religious matters, rather than on the substance.