Exploring the intricacies and dissonances of religious governance: The case of Quebec and the discourse of request

Abstract

This article interrogates the extent to which institutional discourses on the governance of religious minorities are useful to think about the complexity of how religion gets negotiated in the quotidian. It takes as its starting point the exploration of the discourse on religious governance in the province of Quebec organized around the notion of request for accommodations. Through an analysis of public policy documents, it examines facets of this discourse of request, including the role it plays in delimiting what we imagine the religious (and Islam, in particular) to be and how we imagine it to work. Second, drawing on interviews with self-identified Muslims in Montreal, the article explores how piety gets negotiated in their everyday. These narratives are approached as fertile sites to think differently about the recognition of difference. This two-pronged perspective acts as an invitation to think more broadly about not only what institutional discourses “produce” but also what they “obscure.”

Keywords

Religious governance Islam negotiation accommodation everyday

When we have Christmas parties, well, we normally, every year, go to the house of someone, go to a colleague’s house, and, well, we do a small Christmas. So, they know I don’t eat pork. Okay? And, what is interesting is that they will respect the fact that I don’t eat pork. So they say “well since you don’t eat pork, I will do this and that.” For sure, there will be pork, but you know, this doesn’t bother me. I respect the religions and customs of others, you know, there is no problem. But they will also adapt themselves to me. This is what I like in customs, well that, I have a colleague called Line [she will say], “well you know, I will do this, normally I do it with pork but for you I will do it without pork. Ok?” There I said: “well Line you’re not obliged to do that.” “No, no, no! I really want you to taste this dish.” I don’t remember what it was, but in any case. “I really want you to taste this dish!” “You know, normally I do it with bacon and with” I don’t really remember what, so she adapted it. So I found that, for me, I found that, it really touched me. I felt, you know, I felt that, it was, I, I was someone important in the team. (Hassan, thirty-two years, my emphasis)

I interviewed Hassan, a thirty-two-year-old human resources officer born in Montreal, in February 2013, as part of a broader research project that I am conducting with Jennifer Selby (Memorial University) and Lori Beaman (University of Ottawa) that looks at how self-identified Muslims in Montreal (QC) and St-John’s (NL) negotiate their piety on a day-to-day basis. Hassan’s description of his office Christmas party is in many ways representative of the narratives and stories we heard throughout this research journey. First, food and drink, especially when it comes to sharing meals with colleagues and celebrating the almost inescapable Christmas party, have been identified by our participants as important areas of negotiation (on the “Christmas party,” see Barras et al., forthcoming). Many of our interviewees have shared how they try to strike a balance between multiple elements of their identities that are important for them. In this excerpt, Hassan discusses two important aspects of his identity: his dietary requirements and his relationship with his colleagues. This balance or co-existence is fragile. It changes with time and context and is often characterized by a certain flexibility. In many cases, negotiations take the form of a process, in which the ability to practice one’s religion is part of, but is difficult to detangle from other objectives, and is not necessarily considered to be the measure of the overall success of a negotiation. Take the example of Hassan. For him, attending the annual office Christmas dinner is important. Not only because it is a work-related event but also because his colleagues have become friends with whom he enjoys spending time. The fact that, from his perspective, it is a Christmas dinner—a traditionally Christian celebration—does not seem, in his case, to be identified as a concern. Rather, he presents it as an opportunity to share a meal with colleagues. Likewise, the fact that he does not eat pork is negotiated with relative ease. He avoids dishes with pork, whereas his colleagues make sure that there are alternative options available. What he does find important to underline is the effort made by his colleague Line to modify a traditional Christmas dish because she wants him to taste it; he is touched by this gesture. In fact, his narrative seems to put a special emphasis on a shared experience, on a co-existence, made possible because of mutual respect between participants. Although not all stories of negotiation capture this mutual respect, most of those collected describe a rather relaxed process, where the aim is to find a comfortable arrangement that strikes a balance between multiple identities and commitments that ensue.

These stories contrast with a more rigid and religiously centered discourse of request that has permeated and circumscribed recent policy discussions on the regulation of the religious in Canada, and particularly in Quebec. This emphasis on religious requests seems to be triggered, partly at least, by the usage of the legal notion of “reasonable accommodation” that carries the idea that someone “asks” for an accommodation, for an adjustment of the norm, when she considers that she is being discriminated by this norm. Yet, while this notion was first limited to the courts, it has now acquired a life outside the legal arena. It is being appropriated and has become part of the common parlance of policy makers, politicians, journalists, and citizens. In this article, I am interested in investigating the power relations within this discourse of request. That is, how it is intimately related to delimiting and rendering visible the boundaries of the religious and thus dissociating it from the “non-religious”? How does this discourse delimit what we imagine the religious (and Islam in particular) to be and how we imagine it to work? In other words, I am interested in thinking about what this discourse produces, as well as what it overlooks.

My point of departure in this exploration is the Bouchard–Taylor report published in 2008 and the recent Bill 60 (Charter of Secularism) tabled by the Parti Quebecois at the Quebec National Assembly in November 2013. These two documents speak to public policy and describe how to regulate and manage religious diversity in public services in the province of Quebec. While examples in the Bouchard–Taylor report center mainly on Muslims and on Jews, and Bill 60 is framed in more general terms,¹ public discussions and debates triggered by these policy pieces have focused mainly on religious requests made by Muslims. Through analyzing both these documents, I sketch some of the effects created by using this language of requests, including how they project an image of how Islam works and how Muslims enact their faith.² In a second moment, I draw on loosely structured interviews with self-identified Muslims in Montreal, who discuss how they have been negotiating their religion in public services. The article focuses on public services precisely because the policy documents discussed in the first part of this piece speak to how those spaces should deal with requests for accommodations, including dietary needs. Interviews were conducted in the context of a broader research project, in which I did thirty in-depth semi-directed interviews of approximately sixty minutes each between 2012 and 2014.³ The aim of this section is to explore the intricacies of negotiations, and more particularly to shed some light on what the discourse of requests overlooks. I am deliberately choosing to combine both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, as I hope that this enables the reader to capture glimpses of the dissonances that exist between public policy discourses and lived experiences.

Thinking of the politics underpinning discourses on the regulation of religion

Although religion had rarely been the focus of analytical or public reflection, it has, especially since 9/11, moved to the center-stage of public discussion. This creates a situation where religious differences, and in particular, Islamic differences, are rendered “hypervisible,” and where Muslims especially are reduced to their religious identity (on this see, e.g. Kumar, 2012, and Asad, 2003; Dessing et al., 2013; Gianni, 2005; Jeldtoft, 2013). This magnification of the religious is visible in public policy on the negotiation of diversity in Canada and elsewhere. Likewise, the renewed interest of social scientists in religion, and in particular, orthodox readings of Islam, collapses religious identities (on this, see for instance, Dessing et al., 2013; Selby, 2016 in this special issue).⁴

Some scholars have begun to critically discuss the effect of this emphasis on religion. They have analyzed the power and authority of language used both at the policy and scholarly levels when referring to religion. Some have explored implications of narratives that speak about the “return” of religion in the public realm, as well as different subsets of this narrative that discuss how this “return” should be dealt with, including by “tolerating” or “accommodating” religion in a “plural” society (e.g. Beaman, 2012; Bender and Klassen, 2010; Brown, 2006; Jakobsen and Pelligrini, 2003) and/or by promoting “religious,” “freedom,” “pluralism,” or “diversity” (e.g. Bender and Klassen, 2010; Blommaert and Verscheuren, 1998; Castelli, 2005; Cozad, 2005; Mahmood and Danchin, 2014; Sullivan, 2005). Hurd (2012: 946) articulates research questions that capture this approach well:

From this perspective, the question for international theorists is not, “how to bring religion back in?” Instead, it is what kind of work is accomplished in and through discourses of religion in particular circumstances? What forms of transnational power and authority are authorized through the promotion of religious toleration, religious freedom, and religious pluralism? How are religious and political lives transformed in the process? (original emphasis)

Hurd’s (2012) analysis of religion’s “restorative turn” in international politics is an insightful introduction to this body of work. She explores how, over the past decade, religions have been approached by scholars and policy makers as having two sides: a “peaceful” and “tolerant” religion that can participate positively in society and “international public life” (Hurd, 2012: 947–949) and a “dangerous religion” that escapes state control and that is associated with “intolerance, gender and sexual inequality, fanaticism and terrorism”. For Hurd (2012: 952), this vision of religion has been a useful way to locate, delimit, and govern the religious. It has, in other words, facilitated the task of “simplifying” complex realities. This paradigm, I would argue, acts as an invitation to put into perspective the effect of discourses on religious tolerance and reasonable accommodations. Religious practices and/or beliefs that are identified as being worthy of toleration or accommodations are those that are understood at a particular point in time as not challenging (or not significantly challenging) the core values of a “liberal” society. Those who are intolerable or unreasonable are those that are depicted as deviating considerably from these values. While this tolerable/intolerable dichotomy is mobilized across religions, some practices and forms associated with particular religions (e.g. Islam and some of its practices) are subject to greater scrutiny than others at particular points in time. They have a harder time falling into the “tolerable” side of the coin and are thus subject to greater pressure to reform (Hurd, 2012: 951).⁵

This scholarship looks at how discourses on the regulation of religion produced by institutions, policy makers, and/or scholars imagine the forms religions take. The empirical analysis below draws on these insights to highlight the power-relations ingrained within the discourse of request, and sheds light on what it produces. To do so, I take as a starting point the idea that this discourse conveys that requests are made to accommodate religious differences, and I analyze what these three notions (i.e. request, religious, and difference) produce. More specifically, I discuss how they craft an authoritative image of Islam, and the forms this religion is thought to (or should) take.

The regulation of religion in Quebec

Brief background

In 2007, during a public audition of the Bouchard–Taylor Commission in Sherbrooke (QC), Gérard Bouchard (in Nitoslawski, 2010), one of its commissioners, asked the following question to the Estrie Association of Maroccans:

Est-ce que votre communauté est demandeuse d'accommodements? Est-ce qu'il y a un débat sur les accommodements? Est-ce que ca pose problème à Sherbrooke ou tout se règle bien? Parce que vous ne demandez pas d'accommodement? Ou parce que vos demandes sont bien reçues? (my emphasis)⁶

Bouchard’s question is an excellent example of the language that is associated with the regulation of the religious (especially minority religions, and in particular, Islam) in Quebec (and in Canada). The term “demande” (best translated by “request”) is repeated three times in Bouchard’s question. It conveys the idea that Muslims are expected to make requests, or to voice and render visible their religious concerns and needs. Note as well the usage of the term “problem,” which conveys the idea that either your request creates a problem or it does not. That is, either it is compatible with the values of society or it is not. Although the question does not unilaterally assume that a request creates a concern, it is articulated around this either/or framework.

The notion of reasonable accommodation has played a central recent role in how religion (especially minority religions) is approached and regulated in the Canadian context. The usage of this notion, first limited to employment law, was conceived as a tool for employers to deal with employees who requested an adaptation of norms in their workplace to be able to practice their religion (on this, see Ryder, 2008). Beaman (2012: 2) notes that with the Multani case in 2006, the Supreme Court used this notion for the first time outside of employment law. It ruled that the request of a Sikh student from Montreal to wear his kirpan in a public school should be accommodated to respect his religious freedom. This decision triggered vivid debates, especially in Quebec where “reaction was swift, much of it negative, and much of it focused on the idea that there was simply ‘too much’ accommodation happening” (Beaman, 2012: 13).

As a consequence of this decision and its reception, the notion ceased to be confined to law, and became one of, if not the, framework used to speak about the regulation of religion in the Canadian context, and to evaluate the reasonability of practices. This new usage was clearly visible in Quebec in 2007 when the provincial government set up the Bouchard–Taylor Commission, whose mandate was to conduct public consultations on accommodation practices. As Beaman (2012: 3) points out, in so doing, the commissioners instigated “a public discussion” and produced “a public response” on the topic. With the commission, the notion of accommodation became a public artifact associated almost automatically in the public imaginary with religious minorities. Although the commission’s mandate was to look at Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, not surprisingly, discussions, public consultations, and examples in the report focused mainly on religious differences (Bender and Klassen, 2010: 4), and more specifically on examples of accommodations requests by religious minorities.

It is relevant to note that the Bouchard–Taylor report attempts to go beyond the legal notion of reasonable accommodation to focus on the notion of “concerted adjustment” (Bouchard and Taylor, 2008: 19). The report argues that there are different ways of dealing with difference: the legal route, associated with the notion of reasonable accommodation, which is rarely used and means that individuals resort to formal mechanisms such as courts, and the citizen route, associated with the notion of concerted adjustment, which is more frequent. Bouchard and Taylor (2008: 19) clearly favor the citizen route, as it requires, among other things, that citizen engage in dialogue to work out their differences and find a compromise.

While this notion of concerted adjustment is interesting because it emphasizes exchange between citizens rather than on a zero-sum game, it remains articulated in the Bouchard–Taylor report as a tool to deal with “requests” concerning a “religious difference” adjustment. Thus, it continues to carry the idea that it is the religious individual who makes the request and the institution that evaluates whether it can be granted. In fact, as highlighted below, the report provides little documentation on the process of “dialogue” and “exchange” that leads to a particular compromise. In my view, this notion, like the notion of reasonable accommodation, can therefore be considered to be a language that is constitutive of the discourse of request. In so doing, it produces a particular image of religious difference, and more specifically of how religious individuals behave and perform their piety that resembles that produced by the notion of reasonable accommodation.

It is equally important to note that the efforts made in the Bouchard–Taylor report to move away from the legal notion of reasonable accommodation have not been successful in shifting the emphasis given to the term “accommodation” in public discourse, including in public policy (Beaman, 2012: 4). As such, reasonable accommodation, and in particular, the word “accommodation” remains the primary notion mobilized to speak about the regulation of religious difference.⁷ This usage was visible in Bill 94 tabled by the Liberal Party at the Quebec National Assembly in 2011, entitled: “An Act to establish guidelines governing accommodation requests within the Administration and certain institutions” (my emphasis). Bill 94 surfaced again in 2013, during debates over Bill 60 that aimed to provide “clearer” guidelines to deal with religious accommodation requests. Advocates of Bill 60 argued that one of its objectives would be to address concerns that there were too many requests, and that too many of those were “unreasonable.” Its title is indicative of the hegemony of this language: “Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men, and providing a framework for accommodation requests” (my emphasis).

The conceptual conundrums laden in the notion of “request”

It is useful to think of the discourse of request, central to both the Bouchard–Taylor report and the Charter, in terms of Hurd’s paradigm discussed earlier. Even if concerted efforts were made in the Bouchard–Taylor report to complicate this paradigm, the word request inevitably creates an either/or conceptualization of religion. That is, the outcome of a request is either accepted or refused; the request is either compatible with “liberal” values or it is not.⁸ Words such as “accepted,” “granted,” “allowed” or “refused,” “prevented,” and “rejected” are used extensively in the report when it discusses accommodations or adjustments (see, for e.g. Bouchard and Taylor, 2008: 85). While the Bouchard–Taylor report mentions on several occasions the possibility of finding a compromise that could be understood as striking a middle-way in this either/or framework, it does not reconfigure the structure of this language. On the contrary, the aim of the compromise is to render the request acceptable—“acceptable” with the values of a “modern” “liberal” society. If the compromise is not deemed sufficient or fails, then the request is refused. Thus, this discourse produces two forms of religions: an acceptable form (or a form that can be modified to become acceptable) and an unacceptable form.

Moreover, the usage of the term “request” inevitably (re)produces hierarchical power relations; again, despite efforts in the Bouchard and Taylor (2008: 7) report to diffuse them. In effect, actors who end up evaluating whether a request is acceptable are institutions asked to adapt/modify their regulations:

There is a broad a consensus in Québec concerning the need to clarify the guidelines that interveners and managers must follow in the handling in their milieu of harmonization requests. (ibid) (my emphasis)

When an accommodation request on religious grounds is submitted to a public body, the public body must make sure that […] (3) the accommodation is reasonable (Bill 60, 2013: 8) (my emphasis).

Authors have already highlighted the unequal power relationships produced by the language of accommodations and tolerance (e.g. Beaman, 2012; Berger, 2010; Blommaert and Verscheuren, 1998; Brown, 2008; Jakobsen and Pelligrini, 2003). This unequality is reinforced by an “us” and “them” dichotomy (Beaman, 2012; Mahrouse, 2010; Povinelli, 2002). That is, an “us” who is put in a position of authority to “make sure” or “evaluate” whether a religious request (requested by the “them”) is “reasonable” or to express a “willingness”⁹ to find a compromise with requesters. In this structure, requesters are inevitably put in a vulnerable position. The “us” (the “public body,” the “manager,” the “intervener”) is given authority in fashioning the religious and in delimiting acceptable forms of religiousness. In the Bouchard–Taylor report, special attention is given to how interveners should handle requests. The report discusses the need to “introduce mechanisms and mobilize resources that promote sensible, enlightened decision-making by interveners and managers, who are facing accommodation and adjustment requests” (2008: 168 (my emphasis)). In so doing, this document focuses mainly on how interveners should handle requests and how they should be open to compromise once requests are made. Even examples of creativity and flexibility focus principally on the ingenuity of interveners (on this point, see Bouchard and Taylor, 2008: 171).

This emphasis on interveners differentiates them from requesters. Little attention is paid to those making requests and their position, including to the process that brought them to make a request and to their willingness or unwillingness to compromise (or to propose a compromise). While the Bouchard–Taylor report calls for genuine discussion and a dialogical process, it contains few accounts of how this process actually unfolds.¹⁰ The reader is left with the impression that interveners are the active ones in the negotiation. They make compromises, think about the request, and determine whether it is compatible with norms, and whether they are “respecting” “requesters,” and their emotions (Bouchard and Taylor, 2008: 82). This language projects, even inadvertently, requesters as passive and rigid. Their voices and how they experience these requests for adjustments are almost absent from the report.¹¹ This might be due, at least partially, to the fact that the Bouchard–Taylor report is a document that speaks to public policy and that seeks to provide guidance to public institutions on how to deal with accommodation requests. Yet, at the same time, it resonates with Benjamin Berger’s comment on the relationship between (Canadian) law and its legal tools (including the notion of reasonable accommodation), and religion, in which, for him, the former never engages in equal terms with the latter (see Berger 2010:100).

A union between “religion” and “request”: Rendering religion “hypervisible”

It is relevant to think of what the emphasis on religious difference in the discourse of request creates. This almost exclusive focus seems to sketch an image in which the idea of request is invariably associated with Islamic differences. This association implicitly produces an image of members of minority religions as being “requesters.” Even if Bouchard–Taylor’s report notes that there has not been an increase in adjustments or in accommodation requests, this emphasis on religious requests situates individuals belonging to a religious minority as negotiating their difference through the act of requesting an adjustment. This positioning is more blatant in Bill 60.

This image of religious minorities as requesters has multiple effects. First, it carries the risk of granting authority to individuals who feel comfortable making requests, or/and who abide to particular conservative readings of religion. It overlooks how those who do not identify with these paradigms are living and negotiating their religion. The language of requests requires individuals to frame their religiosity as something that is well-defined and “public,” which contributes to its hypervisibility.¹² In other words, this process simplifies complex “religio-political landscapes” (Hurd, 2012: 952). Second, it is important to highlight that this discourse of request is frequently linked to notions of “conflict,” “refusal,” “problems,” and so on. Recall Bouchard’s question to the Estrie Association of Maroccans. The fact that religious minorities are identified as requesters thus associates these individuals with “negative” and “conflictual” behaviors.¹³ This linkage disregards not only the flexibility of negotiation processes but also, as Beaman (2014) has highlighted, the “positive” stories of negotiations.

Religious “difference”: Isolating religion

Finally, it is useful to think about the word difference, which is often implicitly or explicitly conveyed by the discourse of request (i.e. requests based on religious differences). Emphasis on religious difference renders other types of requests that are not necessarily about or exclusively about religious difference invisible.¹⁴ In other words, it defines and reifies the boundaries of religion as separate from other aspects of life. This language also evaluates the success of a negotiation in terms of whether this difference is accommodated/adjusted or not (in other words, whether it creates a conflict or not); that is, the successful end-result of this process is understood to be the accommodation of difference. This approach leaves little space to view negotiations as fertile sites, where the recognition of differences is depicted not only, and/or not primarily, as the accommodation or non-accommodation of difference.

In sum, the way the discourse of request is structured and conceptualized in the Bouchard–Taylor report produces a number of issues. First, this focus on requests projects a simplified image of religious forms, which are either acceptable in our “modern” societies or unacceptable. In so doing, the particularities and complexities of the context in which requests unfold are easily overlooked or are pushed to the background. Second, it tends to (re) produce, and this despite concerted efforts by the Bouchard–Taylor report not to do so, an “us” versus “them” dichotomy. The “us” (associated with institutions) is imagined as an active actor looking to strike a compromise and carefully think about the impact of the request, whereas the “them” (requesters) are passive in the negotiation. The fact that religious differences are central to how the discourse of request is articulated produces an image of religious minorities (especially Muslims) as requesters. That is requesting, rendering one’s faith visible, becomes a central component to how minorities are imagined to act, and thus becomes, at the same time, a way to locate and delimit the religious (located within the parameters of verbalized requests). This framework grants particular authority to individuals who are comfortable making requests. Finally, by focusing mainly on differences, this language sets the accommodation or non-accommodation of difference as the end-result of a negotiation process, as the measure of success of this process. This format leaves little space for thinking differently about the role and place of the recognition of differences.

Shifting our gaze: Glimpses of a different reality

But, when we speak about reasonable accommodations, even for me what comes to mind is Muslims, Muslims that demand, you know? First of all, how many Muslim women wear the veil? And even less how many request, demand […] there are not that many people I know that demand, you know. (Ouria, thirty-one years, original emphasis)

Ouria’s comment is a good illustration of how the language of reasonable accommodation has taken a life of its own outside the legal arena, and delimits the contours of how Muslims are thought to perform their faith. Yet, this thirty-one-year-old reporter quickly points to the fact that this image of Muslims “making demands” is deceptive. Taking Ouria’s comment as my point of departure, this section of the article considers what the image projected by the discourse of request overlooks. To do so, I ground my discussion in interviews that I conducted in Montreal in 2012 and 2013 with individuals who self-identified as Muslims, where I asked about how they negotiated religion on a day-to-day basis.¹⁵ Because the Bouchard–Taylor report and Bill 60 center on accommodations in public services, this section focuses specifically on negotiation in that setting, and more particularly, for the sake of concision, on how interviewees negotiate dietary requirements.¹⁶

A first element that comes out of my interviews is that not all participants are comfortable with the act of requesting, and making their religion visible. In fact, several interviewees discuss how they often come up with a solution themselves with which they feel comfortable and thus do not need to share it with others. For some, it could be choosing the vegetarian or fish option if they cannot eat meat, or for others, it could be by making a distinction between attending after work events in “resto-bars” rather than “bars” to mitigate their discomfort with environments where alcohol is being served. For Hassan, whom we met at the beginning of this article, participating in after-work “5 à 7” cocktail events is important to feel and indicate that he is part of the team. To reconcile participating in outings, where there is alcohol with his religious practice, he has chosen to only attend events held in restaurants (and not in bars) and to drink non-alcoholic beverages, usually Perrier:

I thought about it and for me, in any case, for me, (.) I (.) I thought about it so much that at the end, I don’t drink it [alcohol], I am only around these people, for sure, you know, these are not my fulltime friends, and, and, I say well, look in my case, I don’t want to isolate myself, from my colleagues because you know, I would feel bad if I wouldn’t go to ‘5 à 7’ in any case. (Hassan, thirty-two years, my emphasis)

Hassan makes clear that his choice to participate in these events is the result of lengthy reflection. So too is the decision of Aydin, a Montreal-based postdoctoral fellow, to go out with his colleagues occasionally to “legitimate” restaurants (but not bars or clubs) to celebrate the publishing of an article, even if not “every Friday night”:

I can deal with it occasionally [going for a drink with colleagues]. So publish a paper, it happens once a year. Fine, tell me every Friday night we’re going out I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. I do get those invites sometimes like Friday night or whatever. (Aydin, twenty-nine years)

Both Hassan and Aydin’s comments are illustrative of how many negotiations happen first and foremost with oneself, and are about determining what types of practice with which one is comfortable. Often, these negotiations are not only about one’s religious identity but also about conjugating several elements that are identified as important. Like in the case of Hassan and Aydin, these could include building relationships with colleagues, or maintaining one’s physical and mental health, and/or being perceived as a “good” and “polite” employee.

Forty-five-year-old Sonia, who works as a researcher in a Montreal hospital lab and in a private company, and who prefers to separate her religious practice from her work life, explains the intricacies and contextual dimensions of this balancing act:

S: Well you know that we [Muslims] can eat kosher, so Jewish [eating Jewish Kosher food] is not a problem at all. If there are any conferences, any gathering, any meeting they have everything kosher and they have fish most of the time so. You know they are more strict than we are most of the time. Fish and stuff we don’t mind. It’s just chicken and lamb and what to you call it, veal. Because pork, we don’t eat. So there it’s not a problem. Say something, the problem is when I used to go out with my clients at the company. Because then it’s like, say you go to St-Hubert chicken place.¹⁷ There’s nothing except-

A: Salad?

S: No not even salad. You just like, “what are you on a diet?” And-

A: -You just take a dessert or something.

S: Exactly. That’s like- You’re talking to your client and you’re just not having it. So I have to pick a place where they have vegetarian or seafood or anything that you know or bread or soup or whatever that I can eat. So because it just seems impolite on my part to do that. This is the only challenge that something that I’m working on how to deal with this issue. How to not be impolite and follow your faith as well.

[…]

S: I don’t want to give it out that I eat halal. That’s not in my discussion. “Are you on a diet?” “Yeah something like that.” You know? I just want to eat lighter. (Sonia, forty-five years)

It is insightful to note how Sonia mentions that she is “working on how to deal with this issue.” Negotiation is a process that takes time, that changes in function of circumstances, and that often implies flexibility and a careful consideration of one’s environment, including the emotions and reactions of colleagues. Her ability to strike a balance between appearing respectful of her clients and her faith seems, for example, to be more complicated when she finds herself in an environment that does not offer vegetarian options.

This processual dimension is present regardless of whether the negotiation is only with oneself or involves other parties. In effect, the decision to make a verbal request is often preceded by a careful internal reflection and balancing act. Nour’s experience as a secondary teacher in Montreal illustrates this point. She notes how it is only after her third year working in her school that she decided to ask for a special dietary requirement at a parent–teacher meeting. She stresses how it was first important to take the time to get to know her colleagues. This consideration echoes the attention given by many interviewees to craft trusting relationships prior to engaging in a negotiation of any sort (whether on religion or something else). Note as well how Nour mentions that it is the combination of her religious needs and the fact that she was pregnant at the time that incited her to talk to her colleague. This is interesting, if only because it is the addition of different elements (including, but not only her religion) that creates a situation that is conducive to voicing her needs:

A: So at Christmas parties and things like that you were, in a sense, you were able to find options that were available to you [vegetarian options]?

N: Yeah and if, if it’s going to happen that it isn’t the case then I just won’t go. I’m not going to demand it.

A: Why not demand it?

N: Because it’s not just about me. Like next week, we have parent-teacher interviews. And in every school in the school board there’s a break in the middle where the school provides the meal for the teachers. And at my school every year they order Dagwoods. And Dagwoods will send over a platter of sandwiches and they will send over their vegetarian option will be a cheese sandwich but then they will cut the cheese on the same machine as the meat so I won’t be able to eat it. Only this year do I feel comfortable enough to say to the person organizing, “can you just have them prepare a tuna sandwich for me?” It’s a question of being, feeling comfortable as well. You know?

A: Comfortable with the people? […]

N: Comfortable for both. I mean if someone doesn’t know me and I ask them for something they’re going to feel put out. They’re going to feel as if I’m forcing them to do it. You know? So yeah this is the first year I know, and partly because also it’s going to be a long day for me. I’m pregnant; I have to think about whether I’m eating properly. And I feel comfortable with that school secretary who’s in charge to say, “can you do this?” (Nour, thirty years)

In several cases, when participants did emphasize religious difference, it was to highlight the fact that its negotiation and recognition facilitated the sharing of a moment with others. Dalia, a thirty-one-year-old participant of Lebanese descent and daycare employee, explains how the way in which she negotiates the presence of alcohol is influenced by the aim of a particular event. Its presence is not a problem during her daycare’s Christmas party, for instance, as for her this celebration is about an annual collective gathering:

They [her colleague], they had their alcohol and I had my Coke or my Pepsi or whatever, that’s not a problem. And the main reason there was a dinner was just to gather us all, not necessarily to drink. That wasn’t the main issue. The main thing, the main reason that we’re gathered there.

She points out, however, that this negotiation becomes more complicated (and even in some cases impossible) when the aim of the event is different (e.g. drinking with colleagues).

Interestingly, for several participants, this shared moment is facilitated when someone in their entourage recognizes their religious difference and makes efforts to include it in their preparations (e.g. the Christmas party). Hassan felt validated, like “someone important in the team,” when his colleague Line changed the recipe of a Christmas dish, so that he could taste it. He did not ask for an adjustment nor did he expect this gesture, so he was surprised and touched by this small action. What seems to be particularly relevant is that participants express a particular contentment toward the fact that this type of gesture allows them to participate fully in an event. In other words, recognition of religious difference is not necessarily approached as an end in itself. Rather, in some cases, the emphasis is on understanding it as an element that is conducive to co-existence. Caroline, a thirty-year-old convert who works in a work placement agency, notes that she appreciates the fact that her boss gave her a bottle of sparkling apple juice instead of a bottle of Champagne at Christmas. She explains how this switch allows her to participate in the office toast, that is, to feel that she is “not apart.” One can imagine that Caroline and Hassan would have negotiated these events with relative ease without these gestures. Hassan would not have eaten the pork dish, and Caroline would not have participated in the annual toast or would have done so with an empty glass or a glass filled with water. Yet, what makes these situations worth telling, in the eyes of participants, is the sensitivity of their entourage, a sensitivity that is dependent on the mutual character of negotiations.

Turning to the narratives of participants points to the rather impoverished and partial picture offered by a public discourse of requests. One realizes that the decision to make a request or not—thus to render one’s faith visible—is very circumstantial. It depends on one’s geographical and social environment, one’s mood and thought processes, and where one is in her life-course. Oscillation between visibility and invisibility makes the “religious” harder to locate than in accounts in which individuals are expected to make well-defined requests with respect to their faith. One also becomes aware of other dimensions in the negotiation process that seem to go unnoticed in the policy pieces. Like the efforts described in the Bouchard–Taylor report made by employees of institutions, interviewees are involved in a complex and creative reflection, in which they take into consideration the emotions of their entourage and the impact their religious practices could have on their environment. These concerns are part of a delicate thought-process, which includes a negotiation with oneself on how at a particular point in time, one’s religious practice can be combined with other aspects of one’s life. Although interviewees do discuss their religious needs, they rarely depict them as over-determining. Rather they offer us a more complex picture of their lives, where they are trying to strike a balance between multiple norms and identities, and commitments that ensue (as colleagues, friends, believers). This is not to say that religion is not important for them, but that, in many cases, it is not the only way they define themselves. Finally, several accounts point to the importance of not approaching the recognition of difference as an end in and of itself, but as an element that is part of understanding the textured dimension of co-existence.

Concluding thoughts

The aim of this article has been to reflect on the dissonances that exist between public policy discourses articulated around a discourse of request and lived experiences of negotiations. To do so, I started by exploring some of the facets that characterize the discourse of request. I suggested that using a discourse that is articulated around the notion of request projects a simplified and dichotomic vision of religious practices, which is conducive to reproducing power imbalances. In fact, I explored how the notion of religious differences that underpins this discourse produces an image of religious minorities (especially Muslims) as “rigid” requesters, differentiating them from “flexible” institutions. Requesting, therefore, becomes a central component to how these minorities are imagined to act, and becomes, at the same time, a way to locate and delimit their religiosity. Finally, I proposed that by focusing mainly on differences, or on how religious differences are or could be accommodated, experiences where this accommodation is perhaps part of the process but not necessarily approached as the primary measure of success tend to go unnoticed.

By embracing a bottom-up approach in the second half of the article, I have sought to convey a more complex and ambiguous picture, in which requests are not necessarily the prism through which individuals frame and experience their faith. Through this exploration, I discussed the circumstantial and processual character of making a request. When individuals decide to make a request, it is often the consequence of a long and delicate thought process, in which they evaluate the impact this request could have on their environment. This process, as respondents have pointed out, bears similarities with other (non-religious) processes of negotiations. Participants’ narratives complicate the world imagined through the discourse of request. The religious becomes more diffused, ambivalent, flexible, and harder to locate: it gets entangled in the messiness, fragility, and unpredictability of everyday life.

In this article, I have tried to convey the importance of engaging with and combining institutional top-down and individual-based bottom-up approaches. Indeed, so doing should act as an invitation to think more generally about the limits of contemporary policy discourses on the governance of religion in and beyond Canada. Because the objective of these types of policy discourses, even implicitly, is to assess the compatibility of religious claims, they are configured around a need to locate, delimit, and consequently rigidify the religious. By focusing almost exclusively on Islam, they also shape and (re)produce discourses on the “Muslim question,” whereby Islam and Muslims are imagined as special, different, and visible. These limitations are made ever more visible when we shift our gaze and delve into participants’ narratives. In fact, I suggest that these narratives should be approached as alternative and fertile sites to help us think differently about the recognition of difference. In other words, they add texture to the otherwise flattened accounts of religious governance. They act as vehicles to see and appreciate other pieces that are part and parcel of the story of how everyday lives get negotiated.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the insightful comments I received on earlier drafts of this article from participants at a workshop on “Re/posing the ‘Muslim Question’” (St-John’s, Newfoundland, June 2014) and during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (San Diego, November 2014). I would also like to thank CRR’s three anonymous reviewers, as well as Jennifer Selby, Lori Beaman, and Warren Goldstein—for their precious feedback.

Funding

Research for this article was made possible by a Swiss National Science postdoctoral fellowship.

Notes

Author biography

Amélie Barras is an assistant professor in the department of Social Science at York University, Canada. Her research considers the relationship between politics, religion, gender and law in and beyond Canada. She is the author of Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey: The Case of the Headscarf Ban (Routledge, 2014).

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