MONTREAL - A Montreal Muslim woman says the abrupt change to Quebec election rules for veiled voters will fuel a growing hostility toward Muslim women in the province.
"If I was wearing a face veil I likely wouldn't go and vote on Monday,'' Sarah Elgazzar of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada said in an interview Saturday.
"I'd be scared.''
A ruling by chief returning officer Marcel Blanchet on Friday means that the face of anyone who votes Monday must be visible before a ballot is cast.
That includes Muslim women, a scenario Elgazzar believes will keep many at home on election day.
Elgazzar said there has never been a problem with Muslim women who wear face veils.
"These women regularly uncover their faces to identify themselves, and they never asked for any kind of accommodation,'' she said.
"This controversy kind of hunted them down and they didn't have anything to do with it.''
The issue blew into the open a few days ago when Le Journal de Montreal, a popular tabloid, wrote a story saying Muslim women could vote Monday even if their faces were covered.
Blanchet then changed the rules after he received threatening phone calls and read reports that some citizens were planning to wear masks to the polls.
Elgazzar said Muslim women who wear veils show their faces when necessary, including visits to banks, crossing the border and when dealing with police.
She said the current Quebec environment is "very hostile'' toward Muslim women who wear headscarves and face veils.
"People here have the impression that they (Muslim women) weren't ready to comply and that they (Quebecers) have won some kind of victory,'' she said of Blanchet's ruling.
Elections Quebec spokesman Denis Dion said all voters will have to show a piece of photo identification at polling stations. If they don't have photo ID, they must provide two other pieces of ID and sign a document before being able to vote.
He said there is no guarantee female returning officers will be available to check the identification of veiled Muslim women at polling stations.
"If she doesn't want to do it (show her face), she won't receive a ballot to vote,'' Dion said.
Providing female officers at all stations "would be reasonable accommodation, and we don't want that,'' he said.<
Muslim Council of Montreal president Salam Elmenyawi accused the media of manufacturing a crisis.
Elmenyawi said the news reports that broadcast the old rule and related it to Muslim women stirred hatred in Quebec.
"Again they're putting the Muslims in the news and talking about us as if we don't exist,'' Elmenyawi said of the media. "I think....they are fanning the flames of divisiveness and of hate and of isolation.
"It's going to have a very long-term effect on our society here.''
Debate over reasonable accommodation of racial, cultural and religious minorities has surfaced several times during the election campaign, with Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont often leading the charge.
Dumont has been hoping to tap into the unease many small-c conservative Quebecers feel, particularly in non-urban areas, about how far the province goes to accommodate ethnic minorites on cultural issues.
On Saturday, he repeated his support for Blanchet's decision.
"In the old days, apparently, people voted without any ID and there were all types of ramifications,'' Dumont said.
"It's got to apply to all citizens in Quebec and I think today we have a logical decision that applies the laws of Quebec.''
Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair came under fire recently for using the French equivalent of the term "slanting eyes'' to describe Asian students, and his party defended a candidate who was blasted for a book that questioned the extent of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Dumont dumped a candidate earlier this month for saying Quebec should boost its birth rate so it's not overrun by "ethnics.''
