Religious Accommodations are Inadmissible

This is an English translation of the official position of the Quebec Secular Movement (Mouvement laïque québécois, MLQ) on the question of religion accommodation, adopted in February, 2007. The original document is “Les demandes d’accommodements religieux sont irrecevables.”

Contents

Defining the Debate

It is important to orient the current debate by recognizing up front that the controversy is limited in fact to religious accommodations.

Reasonable accommodation is defined as an obligation of an institution to resolve cases of unintended discrimination resulting from various regulations or norms applied to an extremely varied client base (the handicapped, women, the elderly, etc.) in order to facilitate as much as possible their participation in public institutions.

As a general rule, this obligation is uncontroversial when it involves, for example, guaranteeing accessibility for the handicapped or adapting schedules in order to accommodate the needs of parents of young children. This is because such measures are based on needs which are easily justified rationally in terms of fundamental rights whose importance is readily recognized by everyone.

On the other hand, controversy arises when these accomodating measures are based on religion, i.e. when requests to modify the rules or functional norms of public institutions are based on demands which are themselves founded on faith in certain religious dogmas which are, by definition, unverifiable. Obtaining a general consensus for such faith-based demands is much more difficult than obtaining agreement on accomodating measures based on rational and tangible principles such as equity, physical integrity and security.

Consequently, the debate about reasonable accommodation is ill-defined and affords little opportunity for constructive progress unless it is clearly specified from the beginning that the real controversy concerns accommodations made with respect to religion. This issue makes obvious the need for a thorough debate about the secular nature of civil institutions.

Nothing To Do With Immigration

If must be clearly understood that the debate about the secular nature of civil institutions is not related to the phenomenon of immigration nor to that of ethnic or cultural diversity. The problems raised by the secularisation of public institutions predate the waves of massive immigration which we currently observe in all industrialised countries. The need to secularise institutions is instead the result of a process of modernisation and democratisation of society.

In Quebec, the major phase of secularisation of institutions took place around the 1960s. Quebec civil society thus did not wait for the arrival of the recent waves of immigration to demand that medical decisions, the administration of justice and education be independant of the dictates of religion.

The debate about secularisation is current in all countries undergoing a process of modernisation and from which a major proportion of immigrants to Canada are drawn. It is thus completely erroneous to link the debate about religious accommodation to immigration or to ethno-cultural diversity, because secularisation is a universal issue. The issue would be important in Quebec even if there were no immigration, and the debate about secularism is taking place or will take place in all societies from which immigrants are drawn. It is thus important to reject the implicit error which consists in assuming that immigrants do not support secularism or that they are never atheists. This attitude, discernable among many participants in the debate, is in fact very condescending because it is based on the assumption that it is always the immigrant who is incapable of stepping back from and reflecting objectively about religious questions.

It is very important to make this point clear from the outset, because by doing so we will avoid the highly regrettable slide into racism and xenophobia which can be observed in the extremely sensationalist media coverage which this issue has received.

By the same token, those schools of thought which emphasize intercultural education and the ideology of multiculturalism, despite their generally laudable good intentions, lead the debate about religious accommodations towards a dead-end and turn the political landscape into a minefield for years to come.

The debate concerning the secular nature of civil institutions is fundamental to political philosophy and of pivotal importance to all citizens because of its implications for universal principles. This debate cannot be played out on the level of the particular characteristics of individuals or communities, and it would be a serious error to underestimate its wide-ranging importance by reducing it to trivialities such as teaching people to be mutually tolerant.

Freedom of Expression and Reasonable Accommodation

These two concepts, although very different, are often confused with each other. The Charters guarantee freedom of expression which consists in the ability to express an opinion without risk of reprisals or discrimination. With respect to religion, this is equivalent to being able to display one’s religious convictions using distinctive symbols or rituals without risk of suffering persecution. In a historical context, freedom of religion and the spirit of tolerance which it imposes represent an enormous advance over the ravages of the religious wars and massacres which afflicted the western world up until the middle of the twentieth century.

However, to exercise one’s right to express oneself does not necessarily imply that the rules and functioning of public institutions need be modified. Yet so-called “reasonable accommodations” do indeed consist precisely in modifying rules and norms with the intention of promoting full participation, and are thus not to be confused with simple freedom of expression.

Accommodations go much further than merely allowing each and every person to expose his or her beliefs or to voice freely her or his opinions. Accommodations have the result that rules which would normally apply to everyone must be modified for the benefit of certain persons and thus accommodations put a heavier load on public institutions because they necessarily imply supplementary efforts and costs for those individuals whose duty it is to see to the proper functioning of such institutions.

Furthermore, to defend secularism is not to negate religious sentiment. Church/state separation and the secular nature of public democratic institutions is fully compatible with the religious freedom of individuals.

In Light of the Above Explanations, the MLQ Takes the Following Positions:

(1) It is essential that the secular nature of public institutions be guaranteed.

The MLQ deplores the fact that currently there is no official recognition of secular nature of the state, either in Quebec or in Canada. A declaration of secularism is essential, even urgent, given the context of the debate currently raging in our society.

The secularity of public institutions is necessary in order to ensure that rules and decisions always be founded on rational universal principles and not arbitrarily oriented according to the metaphysical beliefs and superstitions of those who may represent the majority in these institutions and also in order that access to or participation in these institutions not be subject to any religious discrimination.

Rational principles which must be given precedence are: respect for human dignity, the pursuit of happiness, security and the public good. Religious precepts and/or traditions which happen to conflict with one or more of these principles must never be allowed to have priority over these principles, because if there is conflict, this can only be because the beliefs or traditions are incompatible with the integrity of the human being.

The MLQ denounces the inaction and inconsistency of the Commission des droits de la personne (Human Rights Commission) which considers that, in order to be acceptable, an accommodation need only avoid being an excessive load on the institution in question. On the contrary, a religious accommodation may not represent an excessive load yet be socially unacceptable because it violates the above mentioned principles. This illustrates why religious rules must not take precedence over other rules which ensure public well-being and the proper functioning of society.

In Quebec, the major part of the process of secularization of public institutions was accomplished by the Quiet Revolution, with the exception of the secularization of school systems which will only be completed when the application of the not-withstanding clause is terminated in September 2008. That event will finally bring about the disappearance of religious teaching in the public school system. This last step in the secularization process has become urgent because the presence of religious classes in public schools constituted a precedent on which religious groups other than Catholics and Protestants could attempt to base a claim for similar courses in public schools. It would then become impossible for schools to manage the multiplicity of new and traditional religions. The secularization of schools became the only democratic solution which could guarantee universal access to public education while avoiding the creation of special schools which would have become religious ghettos.

In light of that recent example, the MLQ insists on the importance of working to complete, as rapidly as possible, the secularization of all public institutions, laws (e.g. the Criminal Code imposes a sentence of 2 years in prison for blasphemous libel) and even the Canadian Constitution (the first “whereas” of the constitutional bill of 1981 proclaims the supremacy of God over the rule of law). This is required to ensure the removal all forgotten archaic measures which otherwise could eventually be exploited by fundamentalist or extremist militants in order to justify a return to religious principles in public institutions.

The position of the MLQ should generally imply the following action priorities:

  • the demand for official recognition of institutional secularism.
  • the demand for fundamental legal reform which would expunge all religious references from legislation.

2) Requests for Religious Accommodation are Not Admissible

We have so far established the necessity, for modern, democratic societies, of guaranteeing the secular nature of public institutions. Given this necessity, we consider that it is henceforth impossible to turn back the clock and accept that generally prevailing rules based on rational principles — such as respect for human dignity, the pursuit of happiness, security and the public good — be modified by reintroducing arbitrary religious rules into the domains of health, science, justice or education.

Furthermore, requests for accommodations based on religious beliefs are, by definition, impossible to satisfy as the essentially intangible and unverifiable nature of religious beliefs easily leads to limitless metaphysical extrapolation. Requests based on religion rapidly reach the limits of the absurd from the point of view of any person who does not share the beliefs on which they are based, and consequently religious accommodations soon become unmanagable.

Reasonable accommodation based on religion is arguably a contradiction in terms, because such accommodations are not justified by rational principles. This is why requests for religious accommodation are simply not admissible for the public institutions of modern, democratic societies.

On the other hand, requests for accommodation based on respect for human dignity, the pursuit of happiness, security and the public good (for handicapped persons or young single mothers, for example) can indeed be considered reasonable as they involve real-life situations which are within the range of possible experience of human beings in general and are amenable to the application of scientific expertise.

Secularism allows us to limit our deliberations to those concerns which are humanly accessible and we can thus reasonably aspire to finding an area of mutual agreement among all parties, in spite of diverging religious convictions which, on the contrary, should be restricted to the private sphere.

Consequently, the MLQ considers that the decision of the human rights tribunal relative to the prayer room in the ETS school (École de Technologie Supérieure), as well as the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning the wearing of the kirpan, were errors in the sense that these decisions gave higher priority to religious (irrational) principles over rational principles (sound management of the institution, security). These two decision-making bodies could quite legitimately have considered the requests unacceptable and refused to intervene in either affair.

The MLQ would also like to underline the extreme importance of high court judgements and their consequences. These decisions are very intimidating for those who administer institutions which receive requests for accommodation. (We could cite the example of the YMCA administration which, without any legal obligation to accommodate a religious community located in a neighbouring building, replaced the windows in its gymnasium, probably out of fear that a lawsuit similar to the one against the ETS would be undertaken. This fear was unjustified, of course, but reinforced by the powerful message sent by recent high court decisions.)

Such decisions carry a great deal of weight and quickly acquire the status of legal principle. The administrators of public and private institutions all have a tendency to extrapolate from these legal judgements because of the reasonable expectation that such principles will eventually be applied everywhere in a similar manner.

3) It is not the responsibility of civil society to manage the religious convictions and private values of individuals.

The comparison between accommodating a physical handicap and accommodating a religious belief is fallacious because the handicapped person neither chose nor desired his or her handicap. It is only just that society should make an effort to re-establish equality in the case of a natural inequality. But in the case of religious practice, the person involved has the freedom to make choices. The believer may choose to renounce his or her religion (apostasy) or to forgo his or her participation in society (monastic life) if the two are found to be totally incompatible. The person may also choose to make religious compromises which will permit him/her to satisfy the particular requirements of his/her religion AND his/her social obligations. These are undoubtedly difficult decisions, but they are personal and intimate choices which belong to the individual and his/her conscience. It is the individual who must have the courage to assume responsibility for these choices. Society is under no obligation to substitute itself for the individual by multiplying exceptions which will compromise the integrity of public institutions.

Individuals who are torn between their beliefs and their social obligations also have the responsibility to share their concerns with fellow believers and to insist that reforms and accommodations be made within their own religious community. Some religions have adapted to the requirements of modernity and secularism; those who practice a religion must assume the responsibilities which flow from the restrictions which they have chosen to impose on themselves by adopting rituals which are constraining from the point of view of secular civil society.

In a similar manner, individuals who wish to work within secular public institutions must be willing to forgo their right to freedom of religious expression and to accept that the authority and neutrality of their role in such institutions take precedence over their personal rights. This giving-up of certain personal rights in order to meet the requirements of one’s official position is normal in public service. Doctors and nurses regularly put the well-being of patients ahead of their own personal well-being by accepting to work at night or on legal holidays. Similary, soldiers, members of police and fire departments, and ambulance workers put public security ahead of their own personal security — if they did not, their profession would have no purpose. By doing so, they voluntarily waive certain fundamental personal rights, while on duty, in order to exercise the function which society has entrusted to them.

We could also cite the example of teachers who renounce their freedom of expression in order not to abuse the authority which they exercise over their pupils. It is common for individuals to renounce voluntarily certain rights guaranteed by legal charters in order to accomplish their role in public institutions.

Therefore, the MLQ considers that the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada authorizing the wearing of a Sikh turban by members of the RCMP was an error whose direct result will be to weaken the authority which flows from the requirement that the appearance of members of the police be consistent with neutrality. The Supreme Court judges, having themselves a duty to show restraint, should have been the first citizens to recognize that certain public offices imply a relinquishment of some freedom.

The MLQ especially wishes to denounce at this time the adverse effect of court decisions which, far from reducing the frequency of requests for religious accommodations, have on the contrary contributed to the exacerbation of this phenomenon by a series of favourable decisions. Such religious accommodations run the risk of becoming easier to obtain than other types of accommodations based on real social needs which, from a human rights perspective, are as legitimate as — indeed more legitimate than — certain so-called rights based on religion.

Translation: David Rand

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