Inspired by this week's Supreme Court of Canada ruling allowing ceremonial daggers in Canadian schools, Muslims say it's high time they be allowed to wear hijabs in all Quebec private schools and have prayer rooms set aside for Muslim students at all Quebec universities.

But the Muslims are in for a fight in Quebec, where statements by callers on radio talk shows and writers of letters to newspaper editors suggest French Canadians are fed up with accommodating religious immigrants.

As well, some see the kirpan controversy as another excuse for anglos here and in the rest of Canada to engage in "French-bashing," attacking Quebec's secular values and mistaking a fear of orthodoxy with outright intolerance.

Calling the court ruling "reassuring for many Canadian Muslims, particularly those in Quebec," the Ottawa-based Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations said some Quebec private schools don't allow Muslim girls to wear the hijab head scarf, while McGill University has refused to give Muslim students a special room to pray.

"We hope this (kirpan) decision - a strong commitment to upholding religious freedom - will resonate throughout Canada and cause educational and other institutions, public and private, to respect the religious practices of minorities," Halima Mautbur, the council's human rights co-ordinator, said in a news release after Thursday's ruling.

The Supreme Court decision was also welcomed by two major Jewish organizations.

The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada compared it to the court's 2004 decision allowing Orthodox Jews to build succah huts on their high-rise condominium balconies, and said: "It is not the role of the state to limit an individual's right to practise his or her religion according to his or her own customs and traditions."

The Canadian Jewish Congress said the Supreme Court "reaffirmed that freedom of religion is a fundamental value" and "recognized that individuals are entitled to have their religious practices accommodated unless there is a compelling reason not to do so, so long as there is a sincere belief the practice is a requirement of the faith."

"A multicultural democracy like Canada requires an ongoing healthy tension between the particular claims of minorities and overall societal interests," CJC national president Ed Morgan said.

That tension was all too apparent yesterday on Quebec radio airwaves and in the letters pages of some newspapers. La Presse received more than 500 emails on the Sikh decision - almost all of them denouncing it - and published some them yesterday.

"What price, freedom of expression?" one was titled. "Where is the logic?" another asked.

"France understood," commented one. "And what if it were a revolver?" another wondered.

On CKAC radio yesterday, host Jacques Fabi began his open-line show with the kirpan issue for a second day in a row.

"We have the impression, and it may be the right impression, that we've been deprived of our own (Christian) religious symbols," Fabi said on air.

"We've always been asked to show some discretion with our religious symbols, whereas now justice has decided other religions can exhibit theirs. In essence, that's what shocks a little, and I can understand the dismay some people have."

One caller said schools should be "neutral territory" free of religion.

"We've had enough of tolerating turbans on heads," he said. "Aren't they capable of putting on a cap like the Quebecois? We're, like, fed up with seeing people coming from the outside and doing what they want."

Another caller, "Paul from Cap de la Madeleine," said the Supreme Court judges obviously don't understand Quebec.

"Mr. (Ian) Binnie, Mr. (Morris J.) Fish and Mrs. (Rosalie Silberman) Abella, they have Canadian values and another agenda," he said, ignoring the francophone judges in the decision, Louise Charron, Marie Deschamps and Louis LeBel.

"We should also denounce certain anglophone media that are profiting a little from this judgment to do some French-bashing," a caller said. "In their newspapers they publish the reactions of Quebecers on the air, to say, 'You see how they are, the francophone Quebecers? We're not like that.'

"For them, it's a way to distinguish themselves and say, 'Look how they are in Quebec. They're a gang of intolerant people.' "

On Radio-Canada, talk-show host Pierre Maisonneuve took a call from a man named L'Heureux who decried the Canadian brand of multiculturalism of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau that leads to issues like the kirpan.

"We mustn't forget that multiculturalism is meant to drown out le fait Quebecois," he said.

"I understand quite well why Quebecers don't accept it. There's no reason they should."

jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006