Leonard Stern, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, April 12, 2008
With so much religious conflict in the world, we’re starved for feel-good examples of cross-cultural cooperation. You’d think one of them would be the story, reported last week, of non-Muslim university students wearing hijabs to show “solidarity” with a Muslim friend. Unfortunately, it’s hard to muster much enthusiasm for this, well-intentioned though it may be.
The story concerns Carleton University’s women’s fencing team. One of the fencers, Mozynah Nofal, is from Egypt and, as an observant Muslim, covers her hair. Happily, this does not violate the fencing rules; she is permitted to wear the hijab during competition. Yet because she nonetheless stands out, her non-Muslim teammates have taken to wearing hijabs, too. “We decided since Moza can’t take the hijab off to be like us, we would put the hijab on to be like her,” explained one of the girls.
Canada prides itself on being a pluralistic society, but since when did pluralism mean we have to erase all evidence of minorities among us?
It would be one thing if Ms. Nofal were being persecuted or harassed for wearing the hijab. But that is not the case. She is comfortable with her hijab, as are the fencing authorities. The only ones who seem discomfited by Ms. Nofal’s public display of religiosity are her teammates. They noticed she was different and so wanted to blur that difference.
This is classically Canadian. In some places where difference is not tolerated, women would be ordered to remove their hijabs. In this liberal country of ours, we don the hijabs ourselves. One can’t help but wonder if similar impulses are at play: the impulse to take a giant iron and flatten out the textures that make the fabric of human society interesting.
Resistance to assimilation is called particularism. Sikhs who insist on wearing their kirpans are expressing particularism, as are Hindus who don’t eat beef and Jews who circumcise their sons and refuse to put up Christmas trees.
Totalitarians detest particularism, which is why they outlaw religious and cultural freedom. Fascists sought to create an Aryan master race; communists sought to create a muscular proletariat class. Everyone was supposed to look the same and have the same beliefs. In totalitarian systems, minorities that maintain their own customs and traditions are reviled, because they challenge the totalitarian project. China’s Falun Gong know all about this.
Yet many liberals detest particularism as much as the totalitarians do. The liberal faith in our common humanity can mutate into aggressive calls for assimilation, and resentment of those who resist — of those who “don’t mix.”
The young Muslim fencer appears to be OK with her non-Muslim teammates’ wearing hijabs, but it’s possible that another observant Muslim might have said, “The hijab is for me a religious obligation, a reminder to myself that I am Muslim — that I am special and different. If my non-Muslim friends start wearing hijabs, it will drain this very special symbol of its meaning, and weaken my Muslim identity.”
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