Montreal’s administration isn’t endorsing or promoting the hijab. It’s merely reflecting the city’s diverse reality, whether that diverse reality displeases some or not.
It’s a disingenuous argument at best. The image at the entrance hasn’t replaced the crucifix. It wasn’t installed in council chambers and has no influence whatsoever over city hall and civic governance. Unlike the cross, once meant to signify the city’s connection to and support of Catholicism, this image doesn’t represent religion, but a human who just happens to be religious. It’s meant to signal that city hall belongs to all Montrealers. Young or old, Black or white, secular or faithful.
Montreal’s administration isn’t endorsing or promoting the hijab. It’s merely reflecting the city’s diverse reality, whether that diverse reality displeases some or not. (The city says the mural is a “representation of citizens … and in no way calls into question the secularism of the institution.”)
Some Quebecers seem to believe that Bill 21, the province’s secularism law, gives tacit permission to erase religious symbols — and the people wearing them — from Quebec’s public spaces, city hall included. Montreal has always pushed back against this notion.
Is it so odd that a city whose council unanimously spoke out against legislation that targets and marginalizes religious minorities, and that prides itself on being an inclusive metropolis, chose to amplify that — despite provincial politics — Montreal remains welcoming to all?
Muslim women who freely wear the hijab have been scapegoated and marginalized — treated by some as proselytizers, religious fanatics or brainwashed simpletons. It’s always struck me as curious that those claiming to be so offended by the hijab because, they say, it’s a symbol of oppression that invalidates women’s free will have no qualms about supporting legislation that does precisely that.
The Quebec government often acts as if only the majority matters. That in turn sends a message to some Quebecers that only they and those who look exactly like them can accurately represent the whole.
City hall’s image of a woman in a hijab, a wheelchair sign outside a store or a Pride flag flying outside a government building merely signal that these are safe and accessible spaces for minority groups facing added hurdles or stigmatization. They symbolize inclusion. Nothing more.