Islamic afternoon prayers have been held outside Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica for the last several months.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Every week, for the last several months, Islamic afternoon prayers have been held outside Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. The prayers are hosted by the group Montreal4Palestine, which has used the space outside the church to protest Israel’s continuing war in Gaza.
It’s either a beautiful or egregiously provocative scene, depending on how you look at it. Beautiful for what it illustrates about the freedoms afforded to people in Canada: the ability to practice one’s religion outside the place of worship of another religion. Egregiously provocative for what one might infer about the motives of those who have chosen Notre-Dame at the site for their protest and prayers.
Either way, the situation has become a tinderbox. In recent weeks, Quebec nationalists have staged counter-demonstrations at Notre-Dame, following months of urging the provincial government to take action. Back in December, Premier François Legault floated the idea of using the notwithstanding clause to ban public prayer in the province, saying his government wants to send a “very clear message to Islamists.”
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“Seeing people on their knees in the streets, praying, I think we have to ask ourselves the question. I don’t think it’s something we should see,” he said.
Months later, Secularism Minister Jean-François Roberge has confirmed that his government will indeed table legislation in the fall to outlaw public prayer. Mr. Roberge offered few specifics on how the law will be drafted, but it is likely the government will have to invoke the notwithstanding clause, since banning public prayer is quite patently a violation of Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedoms of religion and peaceful assembly.
The move will surely be a popular one in Quebec, where the government recently proposed expanding secularism rules to, for example, prohibit all public school staff from wearing religious symbols. But it is antithetical to the principles of democracy, which protect against state infringements on individual liberties of this kind. Banning public prayer is something that happens in autocracies, theocracies, and totalitarian states; it is a feature of a functioning democracy that Muslims and Christians can worship side-by-side – even if it’s unwelcome or perceived as deliberately provocative.
Of course, there is a difference between quiet worship and the type of public prayer that infringes on the rights and freedoms of others. There have been a number of instances, in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, where demonstrations that include prayers have blocked traffic and possibly violated noise bylaws, with no repercussions for participants. We have bylaws against these behaviours already; the problem is they’re not being enforced.
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Indeed, to ban public prayer in order to stop these sorts of disturbances is like banning the sale of spray paint across the province in order to stop graffiti. We don’t need to raid the shelves of Sherwin-Williams; we just need to actually start ticketing the people tagging bridges and bus shelters. In fact, a recent committee report into strengthening secularism in Quebec noted that norms and laws already exist in the province as they relate to public safety, for example, with regard to blocking streets. It recommended the province implement “guiding principles” on secularism to help municipalities to deal with these sorts of demonstrations, but it did not recommend a province-wide ban.
A province-wide ban does make a whole lot of sense, however, if you’re an unpopular government that turned a $7-billion surplus into a $13.6-billion deficit in less than a decade, and need a reliable distraction.
That distraction will have far-reaching unintended consequences, however. Depending on its precise wording, Quebec’s forthcoming legislation may prohibit prayer at public vigils, including at Remembrance Day ceremonies or gatherings after traumatic events. It may mean that holiday rituals like public menorah lightings cannot include prayers, which is much of the point. It may mean that yoga classes held in parks will have to be scrubbed of any religious-sounding chants or prayers. It will mean that churches that hold “prayer in park” activities in the summertime will have to move indoors; that campus religious clubs will be confined to buildings; that vigilantes will be on watch for groups performing the sign on the cross in unison.
A law banning public prayer is an unconstitutional, unnecessary distraction that some will support because they don’t like to see Muslims praying outside a church. But government is not justified in banning behaviours that simply make people uncomfortable, and especially not when we already have rules against behaviours that actually impede the flow of others. We don’t need to create new laws; we just need to enforce the old ones.