The religious debate in Quebec is getting heated with the proposal of a "Charter of Quebec Values," and it seems to have spilled over onto the streets, as this exclusive video from Huffington Post Quebec shows.
The McGill University student who recorded the video on August 28 wished to remain anonymous, but told HuffPost Quebec that "The conversation started when the lady entered the bus. The man told her to remove her headscarf or return to her country." The altercation apparently lasted between five to ten minutes, with the man using abusive language, associating the woman with the Muslim Brotherhood, and criticizing the lack of Muslim integration into society.
Despite the man's rant, the hijab-clad woman was far from cowed, at one point even getting up from her seat in order to tell him off. During the exchange in French, she dismissively told him to shut up, adding, "You're a coward."
Quebec politics reared its head as the man mentioned premier Pauline Marois in his rant, shouting, "With Marois, we will remove the hat."
Marois' Parti Quebecois is behind the proposed Charter of Quebec Values which will ban overt religious symbols from the civil service, including the hijab, or "hat," as the irate passenger referred to it.
Though the incident took place before the Marois government had officially unveiled the Charter of Quebec Values, it occurred after a draft was published by a newspaper. The creator of the video said the man mentioned the charter and its values in his tirade.
The charter has divided Quebec residents, many of whom consider it xenophobic or even racist.
The videographer waited two weeks before sharing the video, because he was unsure of the best venue to anonymously post it, and didn't want the angry man to retaliate against him. He said the recent incidents in Quebec pushed him to make the video public.
A rough translation of part of the man's rant, provided by HuffPost Quebec, is below:
Haitian, Portuguese, and Chinese are all well integrated. [Muslims have] no integration. Zero. Women on one side, men on the other side.
Wow! That's liberty!
Fuck you. Shut your mouth.
That's it. That's all the same. All the countries with wars are Muslim. Look at Syria, Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Zero integration. Zero.
Put your hat on. We should never have opened the door. Yes, the hat will go. That's my stop.
Keep your hat. You can stay home. Make war with the Muslim Brotherhood.
That's good.