Not even the Parti Québécois’ much-loathed values charter proposed the latter. Stupid enough, apparently, to believe that this isn’t really about niqabs, but about a general outbreak of people riding public transit without their faces showing. Whereas the values charter targeted kippas, turbans and hijabs, the National Assembly only went after a tiny sub-minority of Quebec Muslims on Wednesday. Bigots will hate this law because it only targets a few women; principled secularists will hate it because it does nothing to “foster state religious neutrality.” (Indeed it does the precise opposite.) Fifty years on from the Quiet Revolution, if this monstrosity is what passes for state neutrality in Quebec, maybe it can’t.

Source: National Post October 18, 2017 23:03 UTC