The women keep one hand to their chests and the other to their stomachs, as they are told to respire in after which out. The workshop started with a guided meditation and a brief dialogue about a way to cope emotionally with Quebec’s new secularism law, handed closing week, which bans sure companies of civil servants from sporting spiritual garments.
But it’s clean. The 20 or so Muslim girls right here aren’t ready to relax. They are on the edge of their seats, just a little while later, capturing questions at legal professional William Korbatly approximately the regulation’s fine details what they need to realize, although, is how to fight it. “What is that this law? What can we do now?” one female we could out, shaking her head. “It’s ridiculous. I want us to cease this law. It’s unjust.”
The ladies start pitching ideas. Can they pass the law? Are there distinct ways they can hide their hair, possibly?
“You positioned a wig on a pinnacle of your hijab,” says Mejda Mouaffak, a fundamental college teacher, with amusing. A social media marketing campaign uniting extraordinary faiths (Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity) in team spirit a criminal offense is pitched. Another campaign to make fun of the regulation is recommended. Self-defense workshops are some other ideas, ones that also touch on verbal attacks and how to react.
‘We may be Muslim and feminist’
Participant Sara Hassanien wants to connect with the Quebec feminists who’ve spoken in favor of the regulation, specifically within the French media.
Religious symbols ban pits Quebec feminists in opposition to each different.
“I’m trying to tell them that not like what you’ve usually concept … we may be Muslim and feminist,” she said, noting there are approximate as many motives women wear the hijab as there are girls who do. Hassanien says, on the other hand, her community must realize the history of Quebec’s hard relationship with the Catholic Church. “I definitely empathize with you,” Hassanien instructed CBC News later, as though addressing feminists who aid the ban on nonsecular symbols.
“I completely recognize what Quebec has been thru. I understand that your mothers, your grandmothers, fought so hard for women’s liberation, and I support that. I am here to comfort them, to reassure them that we aren’t ever going to call for going again.” At the same time, Hassanien says she is bored with feeling like she has to talk for her whole community in areas wherein it’s miles underrepresented.
The small workshop in an empty community center in a northwestern Montreal neighborhood lasts almost two hours longer than planned. The discussions are as nuanced and various as its members, who hail from distinct backgrounds and practice some professions.
Most of them wear a hijab.
Outside, it’s a sunny afternoon on one of the metropolis’s first real summertime days in this northwestern Montreal neighborhood. Families are shopping at the Arab grocery store downstairs and striking out in the cafe automobile parking space around the corner. The accumulating changed into prepared for Muslim ladies to regroup after Quebec’s new CAQ authorities pushed via key pieces of rules, both affecting human beings of color in the province, at some point of a marathon weekend within the National Assembly the week before.
