Once again, the hérouxvilliste wing of the Parti Québécois has come to the fore, and disgraced what is left of that party’s reputation as a mildly progressive political formation.
Now it’s chickens. More specifically, it’s halal chickens, birds slaughtered according to Muslim ritual. The values of les québécois pure laine—and no doubt their precious bodily fluids—are apparently in jeopardy.
PQ agriculture critic André Simard called the sale of halal chickens to customers who were not informed an “unreasonable accommodation.”
Simard said “as a veterinarian” halal meat “does not correspond to Quebec values” though he acknowledged that halal kosher meat, for Quebec’s Jewish community, is “legal and permitted.”
The imam who supervises the slaughterhouse, Mohammed Ghalem, calls the whole thing “a tempest in a teapot,” motivated by Islamophobia.
Asked what he thinks of claims that Muslims refuse Quebec values, Ghalem said: “I am a Canadian first. We live in a state of law with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
If this all reminds you of something, it should. Remember Butterball®, and the far-right non-feeding frenzy last Fall when the rumour started that the popular turkeys were halal?
More recently, none other than the current leader of France’s fascist party, the Front National, has been whipping up hatred and hysteria about—guess what?—halal meat. Odd how these memes travel.
Maclean’s magazine’s Paul Wells treats this latest wingnut nonsense with the amused contempt that it deserves. Meanwhile PQ founder and staunch social democrat René Lévesque must be spinning in his grave