Socio-legal tension between secularism and multiculturalism: Bijuralism as a key to understanding the Quebec debate on the relationship between law and religion
Quebec has been the scene, in recent years, of debates about the legal and political development of religious diversity, raising legitimate questions on reconciling the requirements for religious neutrality of the state and those concerning the legal recognition of religious identity. In this article, the author defends the idea that bijuralism can serve as a key to understanding the tension between secularism and multiculturalism. Multiculturalism in Canadian law allows to offer solutions that align well with the founding characteristics of the common law legal tradition of English origin, which is more prone to develop contextualized and personalized decisions, such as reasonable accommodation. For its part, secularism as sometimes portrayed in debates in Quebec may be echoed in the civil law tradition of French origin, which has more abstract and general points of reference, such as universal principles. According to the proposed analysis, the tension between secularism and multiculturalism captures the difficult internalization of the mixed nature of Quebec law within Quebec legal culture, illustrating the existence of the “two solitudes” of bijuralism.