Dear Editor,

This most recent hijab-ban in Quebec is just another example of the province's xenophobes asserting their power. There is absolutely no excuse for this behaviour -these young women have competed with hijabs before and certainly wearing a headscarf fits easily into the category of "reasonable accommodation". As I said, this is just an example Quebecois xenophobia at work, and it is shameful. I should note that the organizer of the meet had asked the referee to let the girls compete in the tournament and then take the whole issue to the international governing body to sort it out, but the referee would not comply with the request.

To be frank, I hope that this issue (and the equally shameful case of the young soccer player) make it to the Supreme Court of Canada - frankly, I suspect, any court - where this kind of outright bigotry is sure to be overturned and condemned. Muslims in Canadian - in this case, Quebec - society are being subjected to unreasonable and ridiculous discrimination and it is time that this stopped. At the least, let's identify this as what it is - ie., the expression of outright prejudice.

These kind of actions are an embarrassment to Canada and a black mark against our ideal of creating a tolerant, multicultural society. And yes, that applies in Quebec, too.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Dear Gary,

I think that your comments on Irshad Manji are dead on. I've had a lot more exposure to Ms. Manji here in Canada, and her personal experiences have - not surprisingly - coloured her perception of Islam to an irreparable degree. The best analogy I can think of is think of a lapsed Catholic, someone who was abused by a priest or a nun, and whose hostility towards the Church is irrevocable and irrational. This hostility may be understandable, but it is also impossible to argue against.

I read Ms. Manji's piece in the NYT that you referenced, and I must say that I was appalled. Certainly, her point about the purpose of the wall is valid, but her absolute failure to address the fact that Israel built the separation wall all over the Occupied Territories, taking yet more Palestinian land, is incomprehensible. When it comes to the wall, very few people would object to it if Israel had only built the thing within its own internationally-recognized borders. Given that Israel's insistence on building settlements in the OT is -arguably - the single largest obstacle to peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, Manji's failure to address this obvious point is unconscionable.

Re: the larger point of your article, I'm sorry to hear that "America at the Crossroads" has so little to say about the history of the Middle East in the 20th century. Quite frankly, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the destructive meddling of the Western powers in the region will begin to develop an understanding of where Islamic/Arab antipathy is coming from. I wonder how many Americans know that the Zionist movement was trying to displace Palestinians from Palestine long before the Holocaust, or even that Palestine was occupied land long before the Zionists appeared on the scene? How many Americans know about their country's role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, or how the Shah maintained control over his population, with the support of the US? How many know that Saudi Arabia was a creation of the West and that the map of the region was redrawn to satisfy British and French colonial interests after WWI? The failure to talk about Western history in the region is a failure to talk about the problem of terrorism at all.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Dear Editor,

A lot of the people posting here seem to know nothing about the internal politics of Quebec or the fact that xenophobia in the province is nothing new. However, it has been given a new respectability in the past election and is now manifesting itself in many different ways. This is just the newest example of discriminating against women with hijabs.

I want to reiterate points made by some other commentators: in a multicultural society, finding a tolerant limit is absolutely essential. This is not a question of the "rules of the game". As an earlier writer pointed out, games develop within particular cultural contexts. They accommodate the needs of that context. If they wish to spread to or be accessible to people of different cultural backgrounds, the games need to be flexible. In a place like Canada, this kind of flexibility is an absolute necessity. The failure to realize this is, as I said in my earlier posting, shameful.

Let's make no bones about this: Muslims, and other minority groups, are under siege, in many different ways, within contemporary Western society. These petty examples of intolerance are symptomatic of much deeper problems. These issues are more pronounced within Quebec because of that province's long struggle with ethnic nationalism and its efforts to preserve and protect a distinct ethnic identity - efforts which, inevitably, shade towards racism when dealing with the "other". But the bigotry towards Muslims - which many people seem all too willing to justify - is a growing problem across the West. And it is more a problem of Westerners than Muslims.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine