Religious Rights vs. Equality

I am not against Muslims wearing turbans or Hijabs in public, just like I am not against Canadian men and women wearing cowboy hats, baseball hats or spaghetti strainers, live and let live.

The problem I have is that because I am not religious and I do not believe in religion I do not have the same rights as people who do believe in this religion.

Muslim men are allowed to wear their turbans in their drivers licence identification. Jewish men do not wear their Kippahs in this ID do they? Are Hutterite men allowed to wear their hats in their drivers licence pictures? I do not believe so. Nuns would not be allowed full head wear during this process either. So why is it only one religion is allowed to have their head wear on during picture Identification?

There is a lot of back and forth debate, with name calling and slander, going on about whether the Turban and the Hijab are religious wear.

I see many Muslim men and women not wearing this head wear and many of them will admit that it is not in the Quran as a religious belief. They will say the Hijab and the Burka are ways to suppress their women and the Turban is to show which mosque they belong to…if that means the turban is a religious symbol, okay I will give that to you, but your driver’s licence is not in color so you still do not need to wear it in your picture.

Many people say if we are allowing Hutterite women, Mennonite women, Nuns and Cancer patients to wear scarves and head wear why we are not allowing Muslim women.I don’t have a problem with Muslim women wearing the Hijab, in PUBLIC.

When it comes to areas where I, as a Canadian citizen, am not allowed to wear a hat, I do not agree that any other individual should be allowed to either. Plain and simple, I do not care if it is a religious belief or not.

You should not have any more right than the person next door just because of your religion.

That said, the Burka is a completely different story. Not only does this garment hide an individual it can hide a weapon. It does not have to be a woman under this garment, as we well know.

When women go to a Muslim country they are expected to cover their heads and/or faces. Like Muslim women we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions. While the First Lady did not do this, she was well protected. I don’t think the average woman would be and could very well take the chance of being shot. My point, we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions in Muslim countries, but Muslims cannot follow Canadian laws and traditions in Canada? One being, no head wear in our courtrooms and no head wear in our driver’s licences.

Taking off a scarf in a courtroom or a turban in photo identification would go a long way to showing all Canadians that all Muslims want to be a part of our country and not just use their religion as a way to get what they want. No one should get special treatment because of their religion.

I do not believe in any religion. So because a group of people who believe in a religion do, they are allowed more rights than I here in Canada where I was born and raised?

I welcome you with open arms to our wonderful country called Canada, but do not use your religion to get rights in my country that I am not allowed to have myself.