New Study About Women in Canada Who Wear the Niqab Claims to "Shatter" Myths

The "myths" it supposedly shatters are that chicks wear the veil because they're forced to and/or because they're uneducated. In fact, says the report, neither is the case.

What I found most interesting--and most disturbing--about the study (it would have been my lede, had I been the CTV reporter): it reveals that most of these women did not wear the face covering back in their home countries but took up the veil only after arriving in Canada. In other words, they became more devout, and more visibly Muslim, in a democracy where chicks and men are equal under the law.

Call it the melting pot in reverse (which, when you think about it, is what multiculturalism is really all about).



Update: Lynda Clarke, er, sorry, Dr. Lynda Clarke, is a professor in the Department of Religion at Concordia U. Here's a bit of info about her which might help explain what appears to be a pro-niqab bias:

Dr. Clarke has also worked with Muslim activists and the Ontario Law Society to produce a Muslim Marriage Contract Kit (2010, available in French as Trousse de Contrat de mariage musulman) designed to address issues with the private use of Islamic law in the West, and she continues to consult and hold workshops for women's groups across the country on this subject.

I'm shocked--shocked!--that a woman who believes in the sharia way of marriage would have positive things to say about wearing the niqab. 

Just kidding. Actually, I would have been shocked had she been able to keep her apparent biases out of the report.

FYI, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women press release makes no mention of "my" lede, but it does point out that we, the Ontario taxpayers, paid for the niqab study via the province's Trillium Foundation.

Update: The Trillium website reveals that the CCMW received

$191,000 over two years to conduct research with Muslim women who wear the hijab or niqab to increase understanding of why Canadian Muslim women choose to wear the veil and what that means in a Canadian context in order to support civic engagement and better inform service provision.