Mahrouse, Loi 21, and Midnight Mass
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A notorious aspect about Quebec is its debate about accommodating the practices of minority and immigrant groups. Mahourse discusses this quite a bit in her work “Reasonable accommodation in Quebec: the limits of participation and dialogue” and focuses on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. This study was supposed to help understand the state of secularism and national identity, as many believed that Quebecois culture and Quebec’s national history was under threat due to immigrants and minority groups. The results showed that this was not true, that the poutine-eating, profanity-ridden, country-listening culture of Quebec was safe and sound. Whew! Almost had me worried there for the Loco Locass and Les Cowboy Fringants! Can’t wait to re-read La Chasse-galerie again!
The Boucahrd-Taylor Commission had also touched upon secularism, a topic that has long been debated in Quebec and even in the rest of the West. Mahrouse puts it perfectly: “Concern with secularism was not just a preoccupation in Quebec but has been part of a much larger phenomenon in the West after 9/11, […], [it] has become a means of controlling some forms of public religious expression and not others” (p. 92). I had noticed this concern with religious symbols quite a lot in my high school. I remember when Loi 21 (Loi sur la laïcité de l’État) was first introduced. It was a topic that was even taught in my ethics class. I found it strange, because as the government was telling Muslim women to remove their veils in the workplace, a cross hung in every classroom. The hypocrisy was baffling to me, because it was clear that “secularism” to Quebec was simply Christianity. It was not about allowing for equality for expression, for “professionalism”, but rather a means to hide away any religion that did not align with the dominant one.
This had reminded me of a scene from a show. Midnight Mass was a great horror show on Netflix that had delved into topics like guilt and religion. I highly recommend it. A scene that had stuck with me was a debate about religion in the school. The Sheriff and his son are Muslim, but the majority of the population on the small island was a devout Christian. There was no tension between the two until a teacher, Bev Keane, had handed out Bibles to all the students. This had sparked some controversy, leading all the parents, the Sheriff especially, to have a discussion with Keane. The Sheriff explains how this is a public school, and that religion should be left out of these things. He was not uncomfortable with his son learning about Christianity, and in fact encouraged it. He was simply uneasy with how it was dealt with. This school is supposed to be secular but pushes Christianity onto its students as if it was part of its regular content. In a very important scene Keane, the teacher, has clearly had enough and states: “I don’t think that this is the place to discuss where our beliefs about scripture diverge”. It is exactly this that I find shocking. Secularism is all about leaving religion out of certain aspects, but Christianity seems to be everywhere, it seems to be the norm. Sheriff Hassan even mentions how he would be chased off the island if he had distributed the Quran to the children. The double standard for religion is everywhere and kind of makes me frustrated.
Here is the clip: https://youtu.be/7166L9WEexk