The niqab debate and the Treaty of Westphalia

The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended the devastating Thirty Years’ War and invoked the religious principle of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) which declared cuius religio, eius religio.  This meant that “the ruler of the land would determine the religion of the land”.[1]  If you disagreed with your ruler – or more likely with the confession of your area - you were allowed to migrate elsewhere.

The Treaty of Westphalia legally recognized Calvinism in Europe for the first time in addition to Lutheranism and Catholicism, but the principle behind Augsburg had been active before 1555.[2]  We find it in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella, in an effort to establish a homogenous territorial state, expelled the Jews and gained Moorish Granada in the same year that Columbus set sail for the Indies.

Similarly, prime minister Harper – not long after the Franklin discovery – is turning Canadian nationalism into a secular religion by attempting to cleanse the few niqab-wearing women from the citizenship ceremony.  While Canada is not quite a unified confessional state, save for government ventures in populist nationalism, and drum beating, Harper is employing the same principle found behind the Treaty of Westphalia, but he is no King, or prince.

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[1] Donald Kagan, Steve Ozment and Frank M. Turner, The Western Heritage, 4^th edition (Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1991), p. 406.

[2] See José Casonova, “Exploring the Postsecular” in Habermas and Religion, eds. Calhoun, Mendieta and VanAntwerpen (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), pp. 37, 38.