Kids' Soccer and Religious Accommodation in Quebec

Norman Podhoretz, former editor of Commentary Magazine and intellectual doyen of the neo-conservative movement in the U.S., took the civil rights movement to task for what he perceived as its exploitation of children in targeting schools as the front line in the desegregation battle.

Podhoretz felt that breaking the colour barrier in schools by forcing the first black children to run a gauntlet of hostile people in the glare of media spotlights was a cheap stunt. He believed that contested adult sites, such as the armed forces, where segregation was also rife, would have made a more appropriate political stage for reform-minded activists.

His point was well taken. Children should not be human shields for battling ideologues. Which brings us to Quebec, children playing soccer, and multiculturalism.

As we are all only too aware, considering the brouhaha it stirred up, the PQ government supported the Quebec Soccer Federation in banning religious head cover – hijabs and Sikh head turbans (patkas) – in children’s soccer leagues.

The issue has galvanized the attention of pundits. The overwhelming response from the rest of Canada has been contempt for Quebec’s position, and support for accommodating Sikhs’ and Muslims’ religion-based headwear.

Media commentary has focused its umbrage on the QSF and the politicians who stand behind it, incredulous at their indifference to the plight of children affected by the ban (“Let them play in their backyards,” said Brigitte Frot, QSF director-general).

The original claim that it was a safety issue fooled no one, especially since soccer’s international body, FIFA, allows hijabs. Everyone understands that the ban is a dual-purpose touchstone illuminating how Quebecers feel about immigrants from a certain part of the world, and how sovereigntists feel about their autonomy within Canada.

A Léger marketing poll finds 87% of Quebecers support a ban on religious modification of athletic uniforms. This overwhelming support is perceived in the rest of Canada as racism. The Canadian Soccer Association has suspended the QSF, which will doubtless encourage nationalist Quebecers to once again consider themselves victims of the anglo-Canadian juggernaut.

As I write, FIFA, the international soccer association, has clarified its approval of turbans—and the QSF is acceding to the ruling—but the underlying cultural and political issues will persist in Quebec, regardless of the official position on soccer.

Are Quebecers racist? Or is there a rational, non-racist case to be made for many Quebecers’ instinctive discomfort with the hijab and the patka on children, especially in amateur sport, which is acknowledged to be an excellent terrain for acculturation and social integration? I think there is a case to be made for their feeling of discomfort – but not a case for acting on that discomfort.

A good launchpad for my argument is a cogent piece that ran in the National Post’s opinion blog Full Comment on June 13, by Wayne K. Spear: “It’s Team Multiculturalism vs Team Integration in Quebec.” Spear points out quite rightly that we would not have plunged into this debate before 9/11. Since 9/11, we have nervously appraised “the lessons of current-day England and Amsterdam — to cite only two of the more poisonous examples — where failed policies have yielded state subsidized cantons of nominal citizens with no particular allegiance, and in some cases active hostility, to the host culture.”

Precisely. And those new citizens “with no particular allegiance” happen also to be those with the greatest attachment to their religion. And those with greatest attachment to their religion are those who adhere to traditional customs and – in a memorable phrase I am stealing from polemicist David Solway – their “sartorial lamination.”

Multiculturalism has brought a spectrum of change to western culture. At the happy end, we find ourselves comfortably accepting daily interaction with people of different races at all levels of social, commercial and political life, and we greet the sound of a dozen foreign languages with equanimity. We adopt with gusto the Italian pizza, the Portugese barbecue chicken, the Greek salad and the middle eastern cous cous platter. Spear calls this the “shawarma” pole of multiculturalism.

But at the worrisome end, not to put too fine a point on it, are stories that disturb us: of anti-western radicalization, honour killings of girls and women, terrorist plots, mosques that preach contempt for infidels and “takfir” (accusations of apostasy). This is what Spear calls the “Sharia” end of the spectrum.
(In its literal sense, Sharia law applies only to Muslims, of course, but certain cultural dynamics, notably honour/shame attitudes that can produce intra-family or intra-cultural violence (see Air India flight 182, 1985), are common to other South Asian religious groups, and may for rhetorical purposes be subsumed under that heading).

Because of its cultural siege mentality (partly warranted, largely not), Quebec is much more sensitive to finding the sweet spot between shawarma multiculturalism and sharia multiculturalism. As an aggressively secular state, and as well an aggressively dirigiste state that likes to control the message on its collective social project, Quebec finds religious accommodation of most kinds irksome.

One might say that racism lurks behind this irritation, but one can just as easily find the culprit to be rigorous logic. André Pratte of La Presse, for example, notes that it is a legitimate position to hold that integration can best be accomplished by uniformity of appearance in public arenas. That, after all, is the position behind France’s 2003 ban on hijabs in schools (which interestingly produced almost no outcry or protests), and Quebec is far more attuned to the French intellectual tradition than the rest of Canada.

The question in many Quebecers’ minds – certainly it enters my mind – is, will accommodation end with hijabs and turbans?

It's unfortunately not a huge leap from the hijab to full arm and leg coverage for girls. At this point, you have a health and a performance issue; the girls will get overheated in hot weather and underperform, creating both a personal and a team problem. So where does one draw the line in what can and cannot be worn in the name of religion-inspired modesty?

And speaking of lines, as long as we are accommodating religious customs in garb, can a case not be made for accommodation of other religious customs? Take the case of Orthodox Jews. Their children cannot take part in games on Shabbat. But Saturday is prime time for kids' sports. Nobody in their right mind is going to suggest that whole teams defer or withdraw from games on Saturday to accommodate Jewish children. But then, Jews have traditionally not asked for much accommodation in these matters.

They have always understood that the customs of the majority take precedence in most collective activities (apart from voting, a legitimate beef when an election is held on a religious holiday). Still, one can see the proliferating possibilities once one has conceded fungibility around the concept of team “uniform.”

I think that behind the clothing-accessory issue in feminism-dominated Quebec is the looming fear of the niqab. It is almost inconceivable that there would be Canadian girls who would be forced to wear it (although girls as young as 5 with face cover have been sighted in North America); and even if they were, it is that much more inconceivable that they would be allowed by their parents to play soccer. But once people envisage slippery slopes, it is difficult to allay their fears.

Since I vigorously supported Bill 94, the mooted Quebec law that would have banned the niqab in tax-funded settings like courts, schools and all government agencies (licence bureaus, passport offices, etc), I'm sympathetic to Quebecers' uneasiness with head cover in publicly funded domains. France’s and Belgium’s complete niqab bans (which I found a little draconian) were almost universally deplored in Canada’s media, and so was Bill 94, including, to my chagrin, by the National Post’s entire editorial board.

Spear concludes that the turban on the soccer field falls more on the shawarma side of the multicultural spectrum than the sharia side. And I think it is clear that most Canadians agree with him. Quebec sees the turban as more on the sharia side, and I sympathize with them. And I don’t call it racism.

But.

Sport, of course, is a different domain completely from public schools, which children must attend, nolens volens. Sport participation is voluntary. And here we do have a real conundrum. Getting kids to participate in sports is hard enough, as it is a sacrifice of parents' time and money. Add to that the fact that in certain cultures, especially amongst the religious, sport and physical fitness are not at the top of the needs hierarchy, often considered frivolous or meaningless in the scheme of things, rather than, as we increasingly perceive, a form of "literacy" - like music and art - that must be acquired in youth or will never be acquired naturally or spontaneously.

So religious parents who do make the effort should be encouraged for their children’s sake. And as I can see watching my own grandchildren’s soccer games, immigrant parents in attendance gain just as much social benefit by socializing with heritage Canadian parents as their children do with their teammates in practices and on the field.

No question, sport is a natural common ground for integrating newcomers. Banning headwear will mean many kids miss that golden opportunity. Marginalization of immigrants’ children will quite rightly arouse resentment and encourage social alienation.

Podhoretz was correct. Political theatre is an adult game. Innocent children should not be punished for adults’ concerns about other adults’ acculturation. Whatever legitimate sharia fears Quebecers harbour, as the old saying goes, they must pick on people their own size to assuage them.