Québec solidaire goes to war against Bill 21 and will advocate for the right to wear ostentatious religious symbols among state employees, whether they are in a position of authority or not.
While this law had managed to create a consensus in the population (consensus does not mean unanimity, of course), QS decided to break it.
Worse: QS decides to break it when the Canadian courts want to torpedo it.
Religion
One could see in this positioning a gesture of disloyalty towards Quebec. Especially since QS rallies on the matter with the PLQ – it is not far from embracing Canadian multiculturalism even more greedily than it. It is the race between the PLQ and QS to know who will be the most diverse.
Let us still ask ourselves the question: how to explain this submission to multiculturalism?
By ideological rallying, probably.
The woke left has convinced itself that the pursuit of the common good is no more than the mask, today, of the tyranny of the majority. She even imagines that a society which imposes its cultural references on populations of immigrant origin is slipping into neocolonialism.
Let us insist: in the past, colonialism consisted in imposing one’s culture on others. Today, it is assimilated to the fact of imposing one’s own culture at home. In concrete terms, Islam is taking hold in the West without making any compromises. Rather than westernizing itself culturally, it seeks to Islamize us by imposing its conception of religion on us.
But the positioning of QS may also be explained by something other than a simple ideological radicalization.
We will see an electoral calculation in two stages. QS first notes the hegemony of the CAQ among Francophones, and does not really believe itself capable of making real gains there.
Conversely, QS is well aware of the fragility of the PLQ, which was traditionally the party to which immigrant populations rallied. QS therefore intends to conquer ground among PLQ voters. This is a strategy of ethno-religious clientelism. This strategy, without leading him to victory, could allow him to progress.
This is the strategy followed by La France insoumise which is somewhat the sister party of QS on the other side of the Atlantic. By becoming a clearly multiculturalist, he won the support of 69% of the Muslim electorate. We can believe that QS makes similar calculations, in a very different context, of course.
Strategy
Through this, we must not forget one thing: secularism is essential. It not only allows the expression of our identity, it protects democracy from the pressure of religious communitarianism.
If one teacher can wear the veil, can another wear a t-shirt that reads, “God doesn’t exist, and if he does, he’s misogynistic”?
And why should we give priority to religious convictions rather than to political convictions? How are they existentially superior?
Why can’t I, the next time I give a Quebec sociology class, wear a t-shirt with a slogan in favor of Quebec independence or even the colors of my favorite party?
