Canadian Muslim Brotherhood Group Demands End to Bill Barring Civil Servants from Wearing Religious Clothing

Cana­di­an media is report­ing that the Nation­al Cana­di­an Coun­cil of Mus­lims (NCCM) has pub­lished a Que­bec elec­tion pol­i­cy guide ahead of the Octo­ber 3rd vote, in which it rec­om­mend­ed the abro­ga­tion of Bill 21, bar­ring the wear­ing of reli­gious sym­bols by civ­il ser­vice employ­ees in posi­tions of author­i­ty and by teach­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Mon­tre­al City News:

Sep­tem­ber 24, 2022 “Bill 21. It’s very straight­for­ward. We rec­om­mend the abro­ga­tion of the bill,” said El Bakir. “It dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects Quebec’s reli­gious minori­ties, espe­cial­ly, vis­i­bly Mus­lim women.”

Read the rest here.

The NCCM said that there was “no doubt” that Bill 21 made it pos­si­ble to legal­ize dis­crim­i­na­tion against reli­gious minori­ties. Accord­ing to the group, this goes against the fun­da­men­tal human rights enshrined in the Cana­da and Que­bec char­ters. Oth­er key rec­om­men­da­tions in the French-lan­guage guide include the offi­cial recog­ni­tion of “sys­temic racism” by the gov­ern­ment, estab­lish­ing a law pre­vent­ing hate speech dur­ing elec­tions, and increased fund­ing of local NGOs com­bat­ing hate crimes.

The NCCM, for­mer­ly known as CAIR Cana­da, is the Cana­di­an branch of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR), among the most promi­nent Mus­lim advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions in the US and which has close ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB). The most impor­tant leader of NCCM has been Jamal Badawi, who is also a leader in many of the most impor­tant GMB orga­ni­za­tions. He is the son-in-law of the late Ahmed el Kadi, one of the ear­li­est lead­ers of the GMB in the US. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that the NCCM had released an open let­ter to the Alber­ta Jus­tice Min­is­ter signed by 28 Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions and called for the Alber­ta Human Rights Com­mis­sion Chief’s res­ig­na­tion over com­ments the NCCM labled “Islam­o­pho­bic.”