Quebec-Islamophobia Inc.

Legault's promise to ban public prayers is just another in a long list of Islamophobic legislative attacks

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Radical Islam and Donald Trump walk into a bar. They grab seats near the bartender, leaving a seat in the middle for their friend. Radical Islam orders a mint tea; Trump, a diet Coke. They shoot the shit.

Maybe 5 minutes later, in walks François Legault. He takes the seat between Radical Islam and Donald Trump and orders a tall glass of milk over ice.

Legault looks to his left at Radical Islam, sipping on his tea. He thinks about how much the two share in common: a relentless drive to keep their version of identity pure, an obsession with women’s clothing and a radical adherence to patriarchy. Look at us. He cracks a smile and radical Islam nods, barely noticing that Legault is there.

Then he looks to his right. Trump is nursing his diet Coke. Legault wishes he could be as rich as Trump is. The two share a lot in common: both run government like a business, the top office as the office of a CEO. Both cut their teeth in the ruthless world of business. Legault thinks to himself: he’s actually done better than Trump has. He grew up working class, fought for everything he’s ever won. That’s the true Quebec spirit. The dream of l’Amerique française, he laughs to himself.

* * *

François Legault says that he is the only thing standing between Radical Islam and its threat to Our Identity, and Donald Trump and his threat to Our Economy. Or, that’s what Legault announced this past weekend. With his popularity is in free-fall, he has decided to ride out 2024 by promising to fight Radical Islam in the province of Quebec.

While Donald Trump surely poses economic challenges to Quebec, whatever Legault thinks he means when he talks about Radical Islam surely does not. But it’s easy to whip Quebec, and in particular white Quebec journalists, into a frenzy. The most recent frenzy has Legault promising to ban public prayers.

But not just any prayers — on that he’s clear. Islamic prayers. The quiet praying that you might come across from someone who finds a corner in a library or shop to pray. Not the kind of prayers that emininate from the PA system of malls, bus terminals or radio stations at this time of year — no — those are le patrimoine. The promise of a new born King in the Christ child is our common heritage in Quebec.

To promise such a ridiculous attack on free speech and free expression, Legault needed a scandal, which he found in an October report about a public school, École Bedford where, according to CBC, a group of teachers terrorised the school. You need to read the news in French to learn that the teachers were mostly Brown.

Now, anyone who knows anything about bureaucracies knows that these kinds of things do happen. Poor management, harassment, intimidation — they are all common and unless confronted, can grow out of control. Take, for example, the Cité-des-Prairies facility. There, conditions were so terrible that there are allegations that workers were running prostitution rings among the students, and a worker was impregnated by a student. It was a total and horrific failure of the public system.

And yet, in the reports about Cité-des-Prairies, there was no talk about radical Islam. Nor were there any talks about how rampant historical sexual abuse in Catholic schools inspired these workers to bring sexual violence into a secular facility. The workers must have mostly been white. But that wasn’t the case for École Bedford where Muslim students routinely prayed at school. Of course, the crisis of intimidation that existed among a group of teachers was determined to be cultural. That this is Radical Islam, not simply a mismanaged school with staff behaving inappropriately.

Predictably, Quebec politicians lost their shit over the news. The PQ’s PSPP (acronyms are also part of our patrimoine in Quebec) argued that schools where 75% or more students all come from the same country, and where in that country everyone practices the same religion (or, to be clear and not use PSPP’s euphamisms, if there’s a school where everyone is maghreban and Muslim), then Quebecers can’t expect the students to integrate into Quebec Society. The students en soi pose a threat to Quebec.

Nevermind that the students are children. Nevermind that the students are Quebecers. Nevermind that in the relationship between students and the probable next premier of Quebec, PSPP is the one who poses the real threat and not the other way around. In Quebec the Islamophobia Machine is big business and PSPP sees this business as handing him the crown in the next provincial election.

But heaven forbid you say these things aloud. Quebec Solidaire MNA Haroun Bouazzi knows this well. For almost two weeks, he was the centre of a hellstorm created by the opposition parties and media for having the gall to state what is happening when the CAQ and the PQ target Muslims. He said this to a radio show (translated): “God knows that I see it at the National Assembly every day, the construction of The Other; of an Other who is Magrebin (from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), who is Muslim, who is Black, who is Indigenous, and whose culture is, by definition, dangerous or inferior.”

God certainly does know this because that is exactly what happens every single time the CAQ or the PQ decide to do politics off the back of Muslims. Every. Single Time. It’s so transparently obvious that its boring even writing these words. And yet, there are dangerous consequences. The construction of The Other in Quebec has created the conditions for the emergence of an active and violent far right, a mass murder within a Quebec City mosque, marginalization, police brutality and police murder, insecure housing, insecure access to food, workplace violence and on and on and on and on.

Legault’s obsession with Muslim prayers don’t extend to Catholic ones, of course. My child has been singing Personent Hodie nonstop this week, learned at school. The same child will be singing at the basilica on Christmas Eve as part of his public school music program. Catholic private schools are funded with public tax dollars. The prayers are fine, as long as the God is Catholic or Catholic adjacent.

Unfortunately, we have a severe lack of adults in the province who can state these things plainly. Instead, we have white women who cry upon hearing about the systemic creation of The Other in Quebec. We have columnists inventing stories of Holocaust denial or extreme anti-Jewish hatred being taught by Muslim teachers in schools (because it’s like that in Belgium and France, disait Dick Martineau)! And all for what?

And all for …. what?

It’s simple. It’s all for white supremacy. It’s all to make it as easy as possible for the painfully mediocre minds of Legault and PSPP and the like to maintain their grip on power. To convince people in the regions that they should be afraid of The Other. Be afraid of Montreal. That the only people who have any business in any positions of power in Quebec should be white, Quebecois de souche, who will passent leur réveillon avec la famille, peut-être à l’intérieur d’une église that barely has any congregation any longer.

And with Donald Trump sitting at the right hand of The Father, Legault knows that he needs any spiritual intercession he can get to navigate what is about to happen to Quebec’s economy. After all, it’s far easier fighting immigrant children than it is to fight the President of the United States.

Bisous à Sophie Durocher :)