Q&A: Quebec's religious garb debate intensifies

[rug]

Philosopher Jocelyn Maclure on freedom of religion in a secular society

By Daniel Schwartz, CBC News
Posted: Aug 22, 2013 5:26 AM ET
Last Updated: Aug 22, 2013 6:05 AM ET

The Quebec government's plan to introduce a "Charter of Quebec Values" has fanned the flames of an ongoing debate. For years, Quebec has been confronting the issue of reasonable accommodation with its many minority groups in a religiously diverse society.

According to the Journal de Montréal, the draft charter will prevent employees in public institutions like schools and hospitals from wearing religious symbols such as turbans, niqabs, kippas, hijabs and highly visible crucifixes.

These sorts of issues, about reasonable accommodation and secular societies, are at the heart of author and philosopher Jocelyn Maclure's work.

Maclure teaches philosophy at Laval University in Quebec City, and was an expert adviser to the commission appointed in 2007 by then premier Jean Charest, best known as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, after its co-chairs, sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor. (Taylor this week condemned the proposed charter, saying the idea of a blanket ban on the wearing of religious symbols "is like something we would see in Putin's Russia.&quot

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/08/21/f-charter-quebec-values-jocelyn-maclure.html

Video at link.

[Downwinder]

1. How about hair and beards? Both can have religious significance.

[rug]

2. It's the same principle.

The "Charter of Quebec Values" is not scheduled for release until next month. I can't find the text of it on-line yet. It's been getting a lot of pushback already. The title reminds me of The House Committee on Unamerican Activities.

[Downwinder]

3. It would be such a boring world if everybody was the same.

[MisterP]

4. Parlez français, Soyez propres!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha

[Downwinder]

5. Interesting.

At the same time France was stamping out other languages. French was being stamped out in LA.

Without diversity there would be no Alexandre Dumas. To me that would be a great loss.

[dimbear]

6. There are two sides to this. Look at India, China, and so on seriously harmed by the fact that

their citizens can't understand one another. Even Norway (!) has the problem.

[Downwinder]

7. The Bangladeshi at the gas station down the street

speaks Bangla, Urdu, English, and Nepali.

I was bilingual in Spanish and English until third grade when we moved away from the border. I've lost most all of my Spanish, which I regret.

Have a friend from Louisiana. who tested out of college French. He spoke it but had difficulty writing it.

My brother's children are fluent in Mandarin and English.

If you have multiple languages in use people will learn to use them.

Freezing out other cultures does not benefit the primary culture, it only limits the society as a whole. Shall we eliminate Chinese influences, Binary math came from the I Ching.