The ban on face coverings is the latest move by Quebec politicians to impose neutrality on residents. A previous suggestion, seen above, included a ban on all conspicuous religious symbols in the public service. Photo courtesy of the Government of Quebec.

Jacques Cartier, right this way
I’ll put your coat up on the bed
Hey, man, you’ve got the real bum’s eye for clothes
And come on in, sit right down
No, you’re not the first to show
We’ve all been here since, God, who knows?

Gord Downie’s passing this week hurt many of us because he brought us together as Canadians to experience this country only as we could. He was a musician, a historian, and a storyteller who captured particular narratives that resonated with many of us who recognized our stories in his songs.

But it was his optimism about the future of Canada that captured so many hearts—especially as he dedicated his final project to shining a necessary light on Canada’s shameful history with the Indigenous peoples of this land. When once asked whether he believed Canadians were racist against the country’s original inhabitants, he adamantly replied in the negative, clinging to the belief that people simply had too little “exposure.” Whether or not one can accept that premise is beside the point. He wanted to believe the very best about each and every one of us—and he put his heart and soul into teaching empathy by sharing a poignant story that he hoped would make all of us come to understand the awful injustices perpetrated against innocent children and communities for far too long.

While it would be an incredible testament to his memory, it’s hard to hold on to that optimism in light of the news that broke the day after his death. Quebec’s provincial government passed a law banning anyone covering their face from giving or receiving public services. While the government claims its new legislation isn’t about targeting any one community, only the most naive and gullible would fail to see this as a clear attempt to win favour among those Quebecers who strongly dislike outward displays of religion—particularly Muslim ones.

The further painful irony of the ban is that it was announced on Persons Day, a Canadian commemoration of the decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons.” Rather than continue to look for ways to remove systemic barriers that may prevent vulnerable and marginalized communities from further participating in our communities, this bill does the very opposite, forcing women to choose between their religious beliefs and access to public services. It is impossible to fathom how, in 2017, such a choice would be foisted on anyone.

What’s infuriating is that the move could simply be a ploy by the Quebec Liberals to pander to populist and xenophobic tendencies of its population, while knowing full well the legislation may not hold up in court. Already constitutional lawyers and civil liberties organizations have come out strongly against the bill. Whatever the outcome, the damage has been done: Muslim women are being victimized and threatened in a proxy war they never signed up for, a battle over so-called state neutrality and religious freedom.

We’ve seen this before. Who can forget former prime minister Stephen Harper’s obsession with the issue of a woman wearing a face veil while taking a citizenship oath?  It was made out to be a central issue in the 2015 federal election. Journalist Davide Mastracci found that the niqab had significantly higher coverage over a specific a seven-day period than even the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an issue with much wider implications. Equally exasperating was the previous government’s claim that it was limiting a woman’s freedom of choice in the name of women’s rights—while that same government slashed funding to organizations that actually served women and had refused to launch in inquiry into the high numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

With this latest ban, visibly Muslim women are again more vulnerable to harassment and attack, as we saw during the last election, during which human rights organizations and police services noted a spike. Statistics Canada would later report a 60 percent increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim communities that year.

The horrific attack on a Quebec mosque in January should have put a stop to all of this. The shootings took the lives of six men and left several more seriously injured. There was a real opportunity for the province to end the anti-Muslim narratives that permeate its airwaves, television channels, newspapers, and social media platforms. It was chance for the political class to finally rein in the xenophobic machinations that emerge from time to time.

And certainly, that painful event did soften attitudes towards Muslims for the first time in that province, according to an Angus Reid poll following the murders. But alas, the governing party has now demonstrated it cares more about winning elections than about the well-being and human rights of its own citizens.

With that same party also reneging on holding a meaningful commission on systemic racism, there isn’t much hope left that it’s truly committed to equally serving all its residents. It’s like watching history repeat itself, dominated by the same chauvinistic and arrogant characters of yore.

How do we remain optimistic that this won’t be the type of stories our future songwriters memorialize? One word: Courage.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

I vividly remember my first snow fall. We had just arrived in Canada, fresh off the plane in 1987. It was the first time I saw downtown Montreal. We were standing on Sherbrooke, padded with synthetic warmth in our puffed out jackets. The snow fell slowly. Little flakes of culture shock.

A couple years later, I was immersed in a new language, speaking a mixture of British English (from my schooling in Dubai) and French (with a battered Quebecois accent), maintaining Arabic at home. It was the early-’90s. The “Mother of All Battles” waged in Iraq, and I lived in a neighbourhood that wasn’t the brownest in town. I don’t know what changed me more: experiencing war through the xenophobia that comes with the conquest of a nation, or watching it on a television.

School bullying taught me I could be stronger than my physical presence. The constant pulling of my roots and my ethnicity, the jokes, the graffiti, the TV, the kids pushed me to be funny. It made me want to laugh at people, not with them, about how they feel about Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, The Other.

By 2000, while studying Political Science and Communication Studies at Concordia, I started to dabble in song, using the university facilities to record at night. Then, a year into expanding my darkest and deepest thoughts into music, came another media war. September 11, 2001 was a tipping point for many in North America, and doubly so for those of us who are Iraqi Muslim boys and girls.

Fast-forward to today, and the events of the last two months have shaken my faith in humanity—and yet also affirmed the importance of placing hope in my children’s future paths. It is extremely difficult to watch the hijacking of our religion. It is more painful to scroll through social media feeds on my iPhone and see children weeping over their parents, and parents weeping over their dead children. I don’t know where to place all the injustice we experience third-hand. The news cycle is so quick. Two-hundred-and-fifty-eight dead in Baghdad. A police officer’s bullet deletes a young Black man from this Earth, streamed on Facebook Live. We are living in the most visible and blind times ever. Our choices will resonate even faster and longer into the future. The healing of our combined history is up to us—just having the conversation isn’t enough.

Canada, I bid you the best of peace, the hardest of self-reflection, and the sincerest of honesty on our history. I would like (and unlike) to believe that we are at a tipping point, yet again. The mistakes of our previous leaders must be accounted for, to help us understand the by-products of violence that today plague us. Our appointed leaders should be held accountable in a court of law, just like any citizen who wants a true and free democracy. As we move forward into the future, we must decide whether we want to pave the way to violence or build the world in peace.

A World War Free is possible—if we want it.

The dangerous narrative goes like this: Only women from the mysterious and scary non-West are raped and victim-blamed; only their wome are murdered, and no one cares; only their culture tells women they have to wear oppressive clothing based on what their men want. Besides being racist, these conversations seem to have forgotten about Nova Scotia’s Rehtaeh Parsons case; Canada’s missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada; and how our western patriarchal society capitalizes on making women insecure so they will buy millions of dollars’ worth of beauty products.

A classmate of mine used a good illustration in describing this thought process: One neighbour is looking at another neighbour’s home, judging all the bad things going on within it, meanwhile, these same things are happening in their own backyard. This xenophobia is nurtured in Western culture and women are exploited. They’re used as justifications to start wars, targeted as new customers for “life-saving” Western beauty products, and generally become distractions from and scapegoats for the West’s many challenges and own sexist culture. As Farrah Khan said at a recent This Magazine event, it is treated as though acts of violence were something that were brought in, not something this country was founded on.

Since these ideas are something we in the west are raised on, even the good-intentioned may fall victim to the white saviour complex. Kathryn Mathers shares examples of this from her experience as a visiting assistant professor at Duke University, teaching global development.

“Some might ask what the problem is with trying to do good in places where you don’t live. Indeed, it is not easy to critique anyone’s good intentions … On the issue of context, it is impossible to escape the history of colonialism. That era is thankfully over, but its consequences continue to echo through ongoing inequalities that determine who gets to be the savior and who has to be saved.”

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.