Bill 62 is a means of communicating a national narrative and dominant discourse that not only pushes veiled women to the margins of society, but it solidifies a social and political divide among veiled and unveiled Muslims in Canada. If, in fact, the purpose of the bill serves a greater good to prevent Muslim women from being forced to veil, it is doing quite the opposite. That is, the bill strengthens communal unity among veiled Muslim women; while at the same time, it has calls into question the identities and solidarity of unveiled Muslim women living in Canada. In Foucault’s analysis of the tactical productions of dominant discourse, he argues that power manifests through multiple relationships of force that comes into play through multiple…show more content… For conservative Muslims, Bill 62 is rooted in orientalist discourses that aim to depict Muslims as backwards and barbaric as a result of their religious affiliation. In this way, banning Muslim women from practicing the niqab is part of an ongoing colonial project that creates knowledge and superiority through forced integration and adherence to a hegemonic citizenship. Ahmed re-describes this re-civilizing mission as a happiness mission. In the case of migrant Muslim Canadians, banning the face veil when giving or receiving a public service becomes part of a larger “…social promise extending freedom to migrants on the condition that they embrace its game” (138). In addition, migrants have a moral and emotional obligation to become unstuck from their past experiences of racism, otherwise they risk living in an endless state of unhappiness. In Ahmed’s analysis of popular contemporary representations of migrants in the mainstream, migrants who desire to be good Muslims in the west are presented as melancholic with unresolved pain which hinders their ability to “…participate in national happiness” (148). Thus, through a framework informed by Ahmed’s ideas about a constructed notion of national happiness, I offer an alternative understanding about the positionality of those Muslim women who refuse to…show more content… In addition, it depicts a national happiness that is contingent on happiness and forgotten histories of colonization and imperialism. Having said that, the burqa threatens the very notion of a superior west because it puts into question the western stereotype about the oppressed Muslim woman. That is, veiled Muslim women in Canada have been given the freedom to unveil, based on a history of believing that Muslim women live in endless oppression by their families or their husbands. However, veiled Muslim women in Quebec are resisting the new law and argue that it infringes on their fundamental human rights. On the other hand, women who speak out against this form of oppression within minority Muslim communities who become ostracized by them. This marginalization is also accompanied with the policing of unveiled Muslim women’s bodies in order to perform the ‘myth of the happy Muslim’ and indirectly translated to “You’re either with us, or you’re not”. In this way, power illustrates itself as emerging from the bottom up. That is, Muslim men and veiled Muslim women who police and regulate the behaviour of their unveiled Muslim sisters, mothers, and neighbors are perpetuating knowledge and power about what it means to be a “good” Muslim in the
