At the Supreme Court of Canada, the challenge to Bill 21, Quebec’s religious symbols ban, has reached a divisive stage.
Public debate risks once again focusing primarily on legal arguments: the scope of the notwithstanding clause (Section 33 of the Canadian Charter), the balance between fundamental freedoms, legislative powers, and constitutional interpretation. These questions are essential. But they also carry a danger: that of transforming a profoundly human reality into an abstract debate.
Since its adoption in 2019, Bill 21 has opened a troubling breach. By preventing some civil servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work, it has contributed to normalizing the idea that certain rights and freedoms can be suspended in the name of a misguided and populist conception of secularism. This logic has already extended into other legislative initiatives, notably Bill 94 and Bill 9, which expand and reinforce exclusionary measures once again targeting the visibility of Muslim female bodies in educational environments, from early childhood settings to universities.
These new measures also target a range of Muslim practices, such as prayer in public spaces, the provision of halal food options, and religious accommodations. Meanwhile, Quebec continues to tolerate — and even normalize — certain expressions of a dominant “Catholic secularism,” in which symbols and legacies rooted in colonial Catholicism remain widely accepted in the collective sphere.
Samira describes Bill 21 as a “violation of [her] dignity,” noting that “the government has opened the door to discrimination — both by state agents and by the general public.”
Indeed, it was in reaction to collective prayers that took place in the streets of Montreal during demonstrations in solidarity with the human rights of the Palestinian people that the government announced its intention to go even further in restricting Muslim expressions.
Quebec Premier François Legault’s striking remarks revealed the racism underlying these legalized exceptional measures: “When I see people kneeling in the street praying, I think we have to ask ourselves questions. I don’t think this is something we should see… We are considering all possibilities, including the use of the notwithstanding clause.”
Bill 21 is already producing tangible consequences by establishing a precedent that normalizes the erosion of the rights and freedoms of minoritized groups in Quebec — and even across Canada. Since its adoption, the governments of Alberta , Ontario and Saskatchewan have cited it to justify their own use of the notwithstanding clause.
In Quebec, the suspension and derogation of a broad range of rights and freedoms constitutes a serious democratic and historical regression — particularly at a time when the 50th anniversary of the Quebec Charter was recently celebrated. If the primary purpose of Charter rights is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority, then the situation created by Bill 21 in Quebec calls for correction.
The illusion of secularism — mobilized both as a political pretext and as a national narrative — emerges in a context where Quebec was already, it bears recalling, a secular society prior to the adoption of Bill 21. Presented as a vehicle of national affirmation or cultural distinctiveness, this law certainly participates in a political discourse about Quebec identity. But it also produces something very concrete: cruel consequences for a specific category of women in Quebec society, as Judge Marc-André Blanchard himself noted in his decision before the Quebec Superior Court.
These consequences are precisely what I documented in my doctoral research through in-depth interviews with 21 women whose professional and personal trajectories have been profoundly disrupted by this law. Samira describes Bill 21 as a “violation of [her] dignity,” noting that “the government has opened the door to discrimination — both by state agents and by the general public.” She feels a loss of control and respect as an individual, explaining: “It takes away a lot of empowerment… I worked hard to get here. And now you’re taking away my tools.”
She expresses frustration that the law deprives her of her dignity and autonomy. For her, the issue goes beyond religious freedom and touches something deeper: “It’s not so much the right to freedom of religion that upsets me, but the fact that I have no dignity as a Muslim woman.” She compares her experience to a process of dehumanization, stating: “In legal terms, what this is, is dehumanization… it’s really serious.”
The accounts collected reveal a violent reality that extends far beyond a simple professional restriction. Several women describe a total social experience that I have theorized as social death.
Social death refers to a process of erasure — being gradually excluded from spaces of participation, made invisible while also hypervisible as a “problem,” and seen as out of place where others belong. It involves losing one’s social identity, weakening social ties, and experiencing physical and psychological strain, including pressures affecting one’s relationship to the body.
Moreover, even for those protected by the “grandfather clause,” the hostile workplace climate created by Bill 21 means that they remain under constant scrutiny and stigmatization by some colleagues or school administrators. At the same time, their geographic and professional mobility is restricted for fear of losing their acquired rights. This constant pressure generates stress, anxiety, and an overall deterioration of well being.
“It’s not so much the right to freedom of religion that upsets me, but the fact that I have no dignity as a Muslim woman.”
These experiences of discrimination illustrate a broader political phenomenon that goes beyond the mere application of a law: the normalization of gendered Islamophobia. In other words, while Bill 21 appears neutral and applicable to all individuals in form, in practice it targets a very specific group of citizens: Muslim women whose religious visibility becomes a legally sanctioned ground for exclusion.
In the name of state neutrality and gender equality, these women are excluded precisely because they are identifiable as Muslim.
The paradox is striking, especially given that this law and its extensions are often presented as measures promoting gender equality. Yet Bill 21 struggles to withstand feminist scrutiny. Muslim women who refuse to remove their hijab are rarely recognized as feminist subjects; their choice is instead interpreted as evidence of alienation, rendering the very real violations of their rights invisible.
When asked whether the law could be considered feminist or whether it “saved” them from any obligation, all the women interviewed reacted strongly. Their response was unequivocal: No! The reality on the ground shows that these women are doing everything within their power to save themself from the provisions of a law that restricts their flourishing and undermines their physical, psychological, professional, and financial security.
It is also important to recall that during the Superior Court trial, one of the applicants argued that the law violated Section 28 of the Canadian Charter, which guarantees equality of rights between women and men. In his decision, Judge Blanchard acknowledged that the law indeed produces gender-based discrimination against Muslim women, while nevertheless concluding that the scope of this provision remained limited in a context where the notwithstanding clause suspends several fundamental rights.
On appeal, the three judges of the Quebec Court of Appeal adopted a similar reasoning, considering Section 28 primarily as an interpretive tool that cannot, on its own, neutralize the effects of the notwithstanding clause. This exposes a troubling implication: that Muslim women are not fully acknowledged as women.
Nor should Quebec society reduce this legal exercise to a supposed confrontation between Canada and Quebec. Such framing has already appeared in the semantic construction of the CAQ government’s notion of “parliamentary sovereignty,” invoked during the renewal of the notwithstanding clause in February 2024 through Bill 52. While Quebec’s political parties — both on the right and the left — have been largely hesitant to denounce this renewed suspension of rights protected by the Canadian Charter, numerous civil liberties organizations have been unanimous in their condemnation.
As the Supreme Court prepares to examine Bill 21 and determine whether the use of the notwithstanding clause as a constitutional tool is compatible with the fundamental principles of Canadian law, it is crucial to remember that this case cannot be reduced to a technical matter. Behind constitutional principles lie lives, interrupted professional trajectories, and well-documented experiences of exclusion.
The challenge to Bill 21 before the Supreme Court represents a pivotal moment. Yet a democracy is not measured solely by the sophistication of its legal debates. It is also measured by its capacity to hear the voices of those who live the most direct consequences of its political choices. In the case of Bill 21, these voices have too often been pushed to the margins of the debate, rendered inaudible. Perhaps it is finally time to listen to us.
Zeinab Diab is a writer and academic expert on Quebec’s Bill 21, whose work examines the law and gendered Islamophobia.
