Jonathan Kay: The PQ is now the celebration of small-minded atheists

Ms. Marois along with her PQ constantly insist that their secularism charter just isn’t section of a xenophobic, notably less racist, political agenda. Yet celebration members keep doing and saying creepy things. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

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The Parti QuГ©bГ©cois styles it self as being regarding the vanguard of feminism, secularism, intimate threshold and all sorts of the other hallmarks of social liberalism. Yet in certain means, its users are mired in xenophobic attitudes that the others of Canada rejected a generation ago.

Jonathan Kay: The PQ is starting to become the celebration of small-minded atheists back once again to video clip

In an meeting with Los Angeles Presse, PQ prospect Louise Mailloux said she appears by previous responses, including that kosher official certification is a plot by rabbis to fund “religious wars.”The declaration has angered one Jewish team, whom stated the idea is “created and spread by the Ku Klux Klan” and neo-Nazi teams. Fourteen years back, a conservative Alberta-based mag posted a write-up en titled “Is This Kosher?” by which the writer reported credulously on allegations that kosher food labeling in Canada comprises a “Jewish income tax” that rabbis use to siphon cash out from the pockets of gentile food purchasers. The source associated with the allegations ended up being an eccentric, retired psychologist that is ukrainian-Canadian. To start with, the mag endured by the report. However when it became clear that the content had been indefensible, the editors backed down, and published a rebuttal that is lengthy Ottawa author Joseph Ben-Ami. This is actually the final time any conventional English-language Canadian book has advanced level the idea that Canadians are now being victimized by way of a tax.” that is“jewish

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Yet in Quebec, this concept seemingly have a rack life more than a container golfer mates login of Manischewitz. Certainly, by 2008, theories that Kosher and food that is halal significantly inflate food charges for Quebecers had become so typical that people in the Bouchard-Taylor payment on “reasonable accommodation” felt compelled to handle the problem at once. (For the record, they unearthed that such worries are unfounded and “fanciful.” A 1997 federal research found an equivalent summary.) In 2012, the problem once more seized the imagination of many Quebecers — including PQ farming critic André Simard, whom warned the province that using halal spiritual criteria to your slaughter of pets “collides at once with Quebcecers’ values.” Other politicians jumped in the bandwagon. The page that is front of Journal de Montréal declared hysterically: “WE ARE TYPICAL EATING HALAL” — as though “halal” were some form of toxic center Eastern tuber. Given that National Post editorial board noted during the time: “One could imagine the tabloid’s editors operating half-deranged all over newsroom, screaming out of the truth associated with the headline, just like a 1973-era Charlton Heston warning every person that ‘Soylent Green is individuals!’”

Now, right right here our company is in 2014, hearing the exact same rancid that is old: This week brought news that PQ MP Louise Mailloux has advertised, in several discussion boards, that both kosher and halal food official certification regimes are “taxes” that fund “religious wars.” Some have actually accused Ms. Mailloux of being anti-Semitic. But offered her remark that baptism is comparable to rape, we’d say that she appears prone to just be an equal-opportunity zealot that is anti-religious. The fact Pauline Marois is sticking by this extremist is troubling The Parti Québécois has already established great deal with this type of difficulty lately. Previously this week, it had been revealed that PQ candidate Jean Carriere had set up a Facebook post having a woman that is half-naked an obscene motion alongside the words “F—K Islam.” Mr. Carriere offered their resignation the moment the whole tale broke, and Ms. Marois correctly accepted it. But Ms. Mailloux deserves to walk exactly the same plank that is political.

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Ms. Marois and her PQ constantly insist that their secularism charter just isn’t section of a xenophobic, notably less racist, political agenda. Yet celebration people keep doing and saying things that are creepy. In protecting the secularism charter, as an example, the PQ has argued that the legislation possesses precedent in 2 U.S. state laws and regulations. But early in the day this week, it had been revealed that in one or more of these situations, their state legislation under consideration is an obscure, long-ignored, century-old vestige of this segregation period. The PQ just shrugged this disclosure down. Information outlets managed by Pierre Karl PГ©ladeau, whom needless to say happens to be a star PQ candidate, didn’t even report it. Battling religious extremism is definitely a essential federal government policy objective. Nevertheless the PQ’s approach that is hysterical this task reminds us that militantly anti-religious activism, for instance the sort preached by Ms. Mailloux, can certainly mutate into a different sort of hateful extremism. In the event that PQ takes these haters in its midst, it’ll quickly be referred to as ongoing celebration of little minds.