Montreal – A Quebec judge told a Muslim woman appearing in a Montreal courtroom she would not hear her case until she removed her head scarf, CBC news reported on Thursday.
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The broadcaster, citing an audio recording it obtained of the proceedings, said Judge Eliana Marengo was heard telling Rania El-Alloul on Tuesday that the courtroom is a secular place, and that she was not suitably dressed.
“Hats and sunglasses for example, are not allowed. And I don’t see why scarves on the head would be either,” Marengo says in the recording.
Reuters was not able to authenticate the recording. Quebec’s Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond after business hours to a request for comment on the case. Judge Marengo could not be reached for comment.
El-Alloul was in court to apply to get her car back after it was seized by Quebec’s automobile insurance board, CBC said.
It said the car was seized after police stopped El-Alloul’s son for driving with a suspended license and the board was set to keep the car for a month. El-Alloul was asking the court to return it sooner.
The public display of religious symbols has been hotly debated in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province in recent years.
In 2013, the pro-independence Parti Quebecois (PQ) government moved to ban public servants from wearing Muslim head coverings such as hijabs, Jewish skullcaps or other obvious religious symbols. But the bill died when the PQ was defeated in a provincial election last year.
Scarves over the head and not blocking the face are no different than wigs, specifically the white wigs that English judges wear
Tell the judge to do his job or stop taking the paycheck.
It seems that this judge is following in the footsteps of the previous governing party here in Quebec that was defeated with a unheard of landslide because of their narrow mindedness. One of their main issues during their term in government was pass a law about wearing Kaplech and other forms of religious head covering.
If this judge wants to practice that kind of law in her chambers, it seems that she has no place even in such a narrow minded place like Quebec where the population completely rejected this kind of behavior from the government in the last election.
If she was wearing a Burka and you can only see her eyes, then the Judge would be correct, but this is not the case here.