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Canada says women can vote while wearing the niqab and the burqa
The General Director of Elections in Canada has announced a policy whereby Muslim women will not have to uncover their faces for identification purposes in order to vote in upcoming local elections. (The story, from the Presse Canadienne, is in French.) Though a federal law passed earlier this year requires that voters identify themselves, the new rule would allow alternative forms of ID that do not involve showing one’s face. Ken Hechtman, the Canadian leftist who reads VFR and also supports the legalization of Muslim polygamy in Canada, sent me the article with a note saying that the new policy created a huge stir, leading the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberal Party, and the Conservative Party to call for changing the rule so that Muslim women cannot vote while veiled. The left-wing party that Mr. Hechtman belongs to, the New Democratic Party, is the only holdout in favor of the new rule.
If it turns out that allowing women to vote while completely veiled is a multicultural bridge too far even for the Canadians (thus giving rise to an unprincipled exception to the prevailing suicidal liberalism), perhaps a slightly less threatening form of multicultural accommodation will be more acceptable and allow the Canadians to affirm that their hearts are in the right place after all. I therefore propose that Muslim foot baths be installed at the entrance of every voting place in Canada. Email entry |