In various countries, mainly Europe, the question of whether to allow the Islamic veil for women has become one of these themes. In Belgium, in France, the issue of the hijab has become the pretext for strengthening secular and republican ideology, in other words, the ‘democratic’ state. This, too, was the case in Canada in French speaking Quebec. On September 14, in an appeal to religious organizations, a street demonstration took place in Montreal. On this occasion, our K-IC comrades deem it necessary to reproduce the following text from 2007 on their blog.
Fraction of the International Communist Left
An irrational accommodation: capitalism
For several months, the press and
bourgeois media spearheaded a massive campaign to divide immigrant workers from
their Québécois and aboriginal counterparts. The pretext: reasonable
accommodations for Jews and Muslims. Even if, for example, no Islamic religious
organizations requested the right to wear the veil during voting, the media
kept on about it. The whole point of this divisive debate is to have us
forget that the vote is utterly useless for the proletariat, regardless of
their origin. Amongst politicians, this
has culminated in the creation of the Bouchard-Taylor commission given the task
of touring Quebec. Everyone - bourgeois, petit bourgeois and workers are
invited as "citizens" to offer their opinion. This campaign serves to
fuel the worst of bourgeois ideology: racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, of
'every man for himself'. The capitalist class has only one aim in mind: to
prevent the proletariat from affirming its solidarity and its unity as an
international working class. While making believe that the Québécois proletariat
would have something to safeguard, to defend against all immigrants from Arab
countries or elsewhere, all this media hoopla endeavors to do is to make them
believe that the immigrant situation (1) is separate from the working class,
from the misery of its own condition as an exploited class.
We have even heard that
"lady of the manor" Pauline Marois, speak to us of "Our
identity" as nationalists. This "Identity" being the right to be
exploited by our own home-grown business people... The bourgeois elites, as
always, stand in the way of any real workers solidarity, which must extend
beyond nationality. This "faith" in the "secular" bourgeois
State as ultimate judge of peace and social cohesion, is just the kind of crap
that's thrown out for the unions. Behind this whole debate about reasonable
accommodation is the defense of "secularism" which is in fact the
defense of the special status given to the capitalist state and bourgeois
democracy.
The government has no intention
of diminishing the importance of religions, to the contrary – its aim is to
reinforce them. It will be under the staff of "our secular State"
that courses on all religions will flourish in the schools in the autumn of
2008. Religion will always be the opiate of the masses.
In the face of worldwide misery
and barbarism in full putrefaction, there is but one prospect for the working
class – to firmly reject the competitive rationale of its own exploiters, of
"every man for himself". No matter what their origin, language,
colour of skin, or religion, the proletariat has no interest in common with
national capital. It can only really defend its interests, by developing
everywhere its solidarity with the international working class, by resisting
any attempt to foster division as immigrants, Canadians, Quebecois and
aboriginal peoples.
Only the assertion of its common
interests in struggle will permit the proletariat to gather all its resources,
to affirm itself as a world class united in solidarity, to bring down the
capitalist Moloch before it destroys the planet.
Some internationalist communists
of Montreal
klasbatalo1917@gmail.com
(1) Note: from 1840 to 1930,
900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the USA. It is alarming to read the
racist report of an American functionary:
« With some exceptions the
Canadian French are the
Chinese of the Eastern States.
They care nothing for
our institutions, civil,
political, or educational.
They do not come to make a home
among us, to dwell
with us as citizens, and so
become a part of us; but
their purpose is merely to
sojourn a few years as
aliens…
…They are indefatigable workers,
and docile… All they
ask is to be set to work, and
they care little who
rules them or how they are ruled.
To earn all they can
by no matter how many hours of toil,
to live in the
most beggarly way so that out of
their earnings they
may spend as little for living as
possible, and to
carry out of the country what
they can thus save: this
is the aim of the Canadian French
in our factory
districts. »
Massachusetts Report on
statistics of labor Boston 13
th 1881
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