The move by Education Minister Bernard Drainville to ban public schools in Quebec from making rooms available for students to pray has sparked outrage in the province as leaders in the Muslim community throughout Quebec have rejected it.
Reacting swiftly to the development in a joint statement, representatives from several mosques with the Table de Concertation des Organismes Musulmans expressed their indignation at the decision.
The state said “We are also outraged that this decision is made in the middle of the month of Ramadan, a month of blessings, fasting, meetings with all fellow citizens and prayers for the Muslim citizens of Quebec”.
Some of the persons who signed the statement are representatives from the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec, the Islamic Association of Rimouski, the Islamic Cultural Association of Estrie, the Association of Muslims of Greater Lévis, Mac-Québec, the Association socioculturelle islamique Louperivoise and BelAgir-Québec.
A day earlier, Drainville had announced that he will send a directive to all school service centres to ban prayer rooms on the premises of public schools in Quebec.
Justifying the move, the father of the Charter of Values when he was in the 2012-2014 Parti Québécois government, Drainville said he had been told of at least two cases of schools in Laval where students could gather in a room to pray, thus contravening, according to him, the spirit of the law on secularism.
More so, the PQ MNA for Matane-Matapédia, Pascal Bérubé, said that a third school, in Vaudreuil, was doing the same.
However, in their reaction, Muslim leaders said they were “shocked and surprised by the allegations” of young people praying in schools. They describe the students as “people who are clean in their minds and devoted to their studies and above all far from the delinquency that we know.”
“We are also outraged that the minister is attacking the young people, who are our future for all of us,” they said.
“We say to the minister that you are not offering us the path of dialogue, but you are pushing us to assert the right recognized by the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights and freedoms, to fight against this decision.”
According to them, it would have been wise of Drainville to meet with Muslim leaders to explore solutions “without disturbing either the young people or the institutions of the education sector.”
They conclude by emphasizing that they are “willing to work with the authorities so that solutions are found without making waves or animosity.”
Meanwhile, the members of the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion specifying that “the establishment of places of prayer, regardless of confession, in the premises of a public school is against the principle of secularism.”
