When I was stuck at the hotel at the Toronto airport Monday morning, I got a free copy of the Globe and Mail, where I saw this story about a Muslim tae kwon do team in Quebec who won’t be allowed to participate in a tournament in Quebec because they refused to remove their hijab. As in so many other cases, “safety reasons” were cited, despite the fact that the hijab poses even less risk than it does in soccer, because with tae kwon do, the required helmet covers the headscarf.
The girls, between the ages of 10 and 14, had trained for days and were eagerly anticipating competing for medals at the competition in Longueuil, south of Montreal.
The members of the Montreal team were told they couldn’t participate unless they removed their head scarves for safety reasons.
However, organizers from the Muslim community centre that sponsors them say they were at the same event in previous years and there was no problem whatsoever with their garments.
The incident — the girls and their coaches refused to comply and were joined by the 10 members of the Muslim boys club who snubbed the event in a sympathy protest — was a sharp reminder that the issue of so-called reasonable accommodation of religious minorities continues to simmer in Quebec.
It also has unfortunate similarities to a recent incident in the Montreal area in which an 11-year old Muslim girl from Ottawa was expelled by a referee from a soccer game for wearing a hijab, again for safety reasons.
Unfortunately, the online version of the Globe and Mail story doesn’t have the photos of the girls which ran in the print edition. They were dressed in their uniforms; one girl had the helmet on over her hijab, as well as her chest padding; another had on the hijab. Oddly, three of the girls were pictured with their hair uncovered, but neither the photo caption nor the article offered a reason why. Had they always had their hair uncovered and were acting in solidarity with the two covered girls? Or did they uncover after this incident?
Disclaimer for the tedious: no, I’m not defending the hijab itself; I’m defending the right of the women and girls who choose to wear them to participate in public life. Let’s remember: the more that women who choose to wear the hijab participate in the public life of Western countries, the more that they’re exposed to ideas and people beyond their immediate families (where they might very well stay should they be forced out of hijab):
“The whole discussion about reasonable accommodation that has been taking place in Quebec has contributed to this, big time,” said Mr. Hussein, the president of the executive committee of the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal, which backs the boys’ and girls’ tae kwon do clubs.
“It used to be very normal, very natural [to wear the hijab at sporting events]. Now, everyone is second-guessing this,” he added, pointing out there is no danger of a choking or grabbing incident involving head scarves in tae kwon do, given the fact that the hijab is almost completely out of reach under the mandatory helmet.
“It’s not something that was there before, it was never an issue. Now it’s being politicized,” he said.
Women from Indonesia, Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries routinely participate in international tae kwon do competitions and are not banned from wearing the hijab, according to Mr. Hussein.
The danger is that seemingly unreasonable hijab bans will only succeed in alienating members of religious minorities when all they want is to be accepted as full members of society by joining activities such as tae kwon do, he said.
Some of the reasonable accommodations cited in the article are frosted windows on a gym in Montreal, so that men in an adjoining Hasidic community don’t have to see women working out. Is that such a big deal? I don’t think so. It’s basically being neighborly, and is no different than putting frosted glass on the window in your shower. But I remember reading that childbirth classes were being made female-only in order that Sikh and Muslim women would not be offended by the presence of men. Is that a reasonable accommodation? Not if ALL the classes are made female-only, rather than some. Certainly, women who aren’t offended by the presence of men should be able to have the fathers of their babies attend classes.
It’s not just Quebec where this kind of stuff happens — when I met Jenna and A. Pang, both students at the University of Toronto (albeit different campuses), they mentioned some anti-Muslim feeling on campus, translating to anti-immigrant sentiment (even among immigrants from European countries, but they don’t count as immigrants, since they’re white).
Very Know-Nothing, isn’t it?
This is such a stupid excuse. If this were the real issue, why not make them wear something like these rather than remove it entirely?
Oh! But they’re not racists!
Oh, come now, zuzu. You know women are just public property, which is to say that they’re private property, and if they have the bad taste and poor judgment to venture out in public, everyone gets to decide how they comport themselves except for the women in question. And need I remind you that these are minorities, maybe even (gasp!) immigrants?
No no no. See, they’re defending women by not letting them participate in public life. If they would just do what everyone else told them to do, they wouldn’t have all these problems!
The theme that has emerged from prior discussions of this issue vis a vis Quebec is that because Quebec had, until quite recently, allowed the Catholic church to run roughshod over their civic life before they finally woke the fuck up, no other group should be allowed to be able to practice their own religion without some kind of governmental, or at least societal, disapproval.
Can I just say that the “Outdoor” scarf from Vanessa’s link is brilliant? I bet all the Muslim parents in my freezing cold prairie hometown would LINE UP to buy that for their daughters. Even the ones whose families don’t even wear hijab. (Which was most families there, actually.) It’s like a toque and a scarf in one! If they add a nice, flexible, wind-proofing material, I bet even non-Muslims would want it.
Ahem. Back to your discussions.
zuzu, political life in Quebec can get extremely defensive as it tries to balance secular rights among communities that it just ignored before or that they encouraged to come and who have naturally expected to have certain rights. It is an argument that often requires some rather divisive argumentation before results are found. The whole ‘accomodation’ backlash is a fairly natural side effect of this dialogue.
The YMCA at Park Ave. thought that it had a solution to its groundfloor gym problem by putting in the frosted glass windows. I actually wish more gyms would cover up their ground floor windows and I have no religious ax to grind, I just don’t want to see all that exercising going on. They are now having to remove the glass and find a new solution because it would appear that frosted glass violates the rights of exercisers to be seen from the street, who knew. There is a very large Hasiddic community in the area that has been there for at least 40 years to my personal knowledge. I would argue that returning the Y to its original brick box state would make it architecturally and historically accurate and solve the argument but then post-modernists would tell me that I was interfering with their right to have more glass and steel structures. I joke but it is a balancing act that can get pretty expensive when it is about major renovation projects.
The sport hijab issue is a more telling one because the argument is rather specious. The girls wear the sports hijab that fits tight and tucks under the collar. With the helmet on it presents a difficult object to grab. Other girls at the same tournament had long hair that flowed out under the helmet and over their collars and that was deemed safe. I think that entire set of safety rules has to be looked at for what the object of the rules is and how to ensure a balanced playing field.
I think there’s a qualitative difference between frosting the YMCA windows so the Hasidic men don’t have to see women, and allowing girls to wear hijab. The hijab is a personal choice about your own actions; but the frosted glass is an imposition on other’s conduct. I’d personally be pissed if I were a woman working out in the YMCA, that I was being hidden away to protect the sensibilities of a man! Some Hasidic people also object to hearing music on the Sabbath or hearing women sing at all — so should the Quebecois be made to ban music in public places?
We do alot of things as an imposition on other’s conduct. Should the twenty-year old ‘sexy serveuse’ at my local binerie be pissed because no one can see her serving poutine topless due to the window covering? No, we have to ‘think of the children’.
The Y is a private building (membership is required) but the street it faces is public domain. It is a balancing act as to whether an action taken in regulating where private and public meet is a reasonable imposition.
I agree it’s a balancing act. But I personally draw the line at retrogressive impositions on my mere presence in public doing something completely normal, like working out. What’s next, women being forced to wear long skirts in public because the sight of ankles offends?
Thank you. I can’t stand to watch the news here anymore. Every time something like the hijab is mentionned, they bring people on the news like the mayor of Laval who opens city councils with a Catholic prayer which caused controversy and all these fucking right-wing Christians come out asking why the Muslims can wear their hijabs but they can’t have a perfectly normal prayer right before a government function (which they can, given that the secular groups haven’t gotten rid of it yet). Yeah, like personal expressions of faith and government endorsement of a religion is the EXACT same thing. Idiots.
Also, if the sight of women offends, them, then the synagogue should put up curtains and tell its young men not to walk past the gym! In purely democratic terms, a small minority should not be able to force changes in the majority, when that minority can simply alter its own conduct to solve the problem.
This seems to be an argument about two minorities squabbling over who is or should be offended. Not all women who exercise feel a need to do so in front of a window facing a major commercial thoroughfare and a bus stop. When the Hasidic community tried to get Outremont to ban bikinis in the public parks they got nowhere. The larger issue is when is it really an issue between the rights of some and the rights of all, this one seems to be an argument between the rights of some and some others.
Here’s what really happened at the YWCA (I know two members there).
There was a curtain covering the window. It started to get worn and tattered. The Y took it down temporarily, intending to replace it with a new curtain.
Before it was replaced, the Hasidic Synagogue across the alley (the window faced the back alley) offered to pay to have the window frosted. The Y asked its members, and the majority were in favor of having the window frosted (they preferred it to a new curtain, as it would allow light in).
A few members wanted to leave the window uncovered to spite the Jews, and upset that they were voted down, contacted the media and claimed that the Jews demanded that they cover the window (the Y contradicted that account).
It was a very neighborly solution that left both sides satisfied.
But zuzu! We already know you hate America! Now you’re telling us you hate Canada too?!
As for the tae kwon do incident, officials gave three reasons why the hijab is not permitted:
1. Competitors ears must be exposed so that if she is knocked out and the headgear cannot be removed, a doctor will still be able to look into her ears (I’m no doctor, so I can’t say if this is a legitimate concern).
2. It would give the competitor an unfair advantage as it could help keep sweat out of her eyes (bandanas or headbands are banned).
3. It could be a safety issue if the hijab moves and obscures her vision.
I get so damn sick and tired of women’s bodies being used as political fodder for others’ moralizing.
Hawise – I think we have to agree to disagree on the YMCA example! I really see it as a case of someone saying “your mere being offends me. Go away.” I don’t there’s any need to accomodate to prevent this particular offense, particularly where part of the offense has to do with simply being a woman.
Speaking as a woman who competed in sport taekwondo for years, as well as coaching a number of girls in the age group mentioned in the article- I would have been concerned, from a safety perspective, about the hijab. We’re talking about a sport where officials carry nail clippers and will cut off your nails before you go into the ring.
I’ll allow that, given the rash of similar occurences in Quebec, it’s worth examining- I’m just saying, my couch would have been worried about me, and I would have been worried about my girls going into the ring wearing hijab.
That being said, the level of disrespect for women that’s endemic to TKD is alarming. It’s the biggest good-ol’-boys club I’ve ever seen, and I grew up in rural North Carolina.
Heh- couch=coach
On reflection, that’s a very cryptic remark. What I meant was, I watched a Saudi broadcast yesterday in which a Muslim scholar was telling a female journalist how important it was for women to wear the hijab, in order to keep from being a temptation for men. And today I read this. Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. That’s what I meant.
I was thinking how the Aerobics one looks pretty cool XD I know I’m sounding shallow but the tight close to the head look with the stripes is making me think of a super hero uniform X3
But on the more serious if they’re going to ban the Hijabs they should make sure to crack down on long hair being tied up properly…
nausicca- I agree to disagree ;)
My problem is I see this as both sides saying “your mere being offends me. Go away.” We need to get past the offense to the underlying problem which is that modernization has ruined the historic appearance of my old Y, stupid post-modern construction.
Sorry about the typo in your name nausicaa.
I think hijabs (that’s just the headscarf, right?) can be very fetching fashion accessories — a sort of 1950s Audrey Hepburn look. I feel the same way about Sikh turbans. I once had a very cute Sikh coworker who would match his turban to his shirt. Very handsome look.
It’s so hard to comment on this because you just can’t win. Between all the specious arguments about safety or regulations, the faux-feminist freakouts about safe space, and (from the other end of the spectrum) moralizing about “temptation”, there’s not much talk about what actually helps women lead public lives.
Hey cool, I got referenced. ;-)
The TKD issue reminds me of a girl on our Board. She has an orange belt in judo but stopped competing because she couldn’t wear her hijab at provincials. I don’t remember when this was or if the media ever got wind of it, but I remember how we all felt pretty sad/angry about it when she told us.
While I might not like the fact that I need to covered from men’s eyes like that, I wouldn’t mind the frosted windows. In fact, I’d like the privacy.
myid8myego, I have to disagree about TKD always being an old boys’ club. In my experience, it has been one of the most woman-friendly of the martial arts I’ve encountered. I think this is a factor of what dojang you are part of and where you live. At my dojang, many of the black belts and instructors are female, and all of us women are treated with the same respect and courtesy given to any student. We also have a very multicultural student body, and we make allowances for a lot of cultural variations (we have some Sikh students, for example).
I can’t see a problem with wearing hijab under a sparring helmet. The helmet covers the ears already (addressing the one “concern”) and fits very tightly on the head, so the chance of the hijab slipping or moving would be quite slim. Also, nobody should be grabbing anyone in a tournament! Even if there is a concern about choking, why not simply require that the hijab be fastened with velcro or another closure that will open if pulled, the same way that a velcro helmet strap will come undone if it’s pulled. As for the risks of catching and pulling things, many of the women in our gym have long hair that sticks out of their helmets. I have waist-length hair, and I wear it in a braid. Nobody worries about that!
My greater concern about women in hijab competing would be the racism they might face from some competitors. I’d worry about a girl getting hurt by someone who decided that it was a good chance to beat up a Muslim than anything else—you know, just a bad kick. That sort of attitude is contrary to the principles of taekwondo, but some people don’t follow the rules too well.
Devout female Mennonites wear this little net hat. I don’t suppose that anyone has a fit about those.
i dunno.
i think the safety concerns are valid. *i* wouldn’t want to compete in an active sport wearing loose-fitting, flowing cloth wrapped around my head and neck, especially if it involved close contact with other people.
then again, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down these rugby players.
Let me reiterate. Doesn’t something like this seem to be the solution? Couldn’t they at least attempted to make some sort of move in the direction of a sport-safe hijab if that was *really* the reason?