French headscarf ban

Dec. 26 - Boycott French products, says cleric:

A Shiite cleric called Friday for an Iraqi boycott of French products in protest at France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia from schools.

"We condemn the French government's decision prohibiting the Islamic veil and we demand the liberty that France says it embodies," Sayyed Amer al-Husseini told some 10,000 worshippers in the Shiite-populated Baghdad Sadr City district.

"We encourage a boycott of French products and call on Muslims in France to continue wearing the veil," he said in a sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers.

Interesting.

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French headscarf ban

Dec. 18 - Interesting take in the Telegraph (UK) on Chirac's proposal to ban Islamic scarves in schools and other overt symbols of religion, the reaction from French Muslims and teachers, and Chirac's reasoning for the ban:

Even the most moderate Islamic leaders said the proposal was likely to exacerbate tensions and showed a marked misunderstanding of France's immigration problems.

Dalil Boubakeur, the president of the Council of French Muslims, set up by the government last year to mediate with France's diverse Muslim communities, said: "The breakdown of integration is giving rise to a law that does not tackle the reasons for this breakdown."

He said the proposed law would "stigmatise" French Muslims.

The Council of Imams called the proposal "anti-constitutional" and said it would lead to street protests.

In a speech broadcast live from the Elysee, M Chirac acknowledged the need to "shatter the wall of silence and indifference which surrounds the reality of discrimination" against immigrants seeking jobs, houses, bank loans, even membership of sports clubs.

Announcing the creation of France's first independent anti-discrimination authority, he said that he knew "the feeling of incomprehension, despair and even revolt" among young French immigrants.

He feels their pain! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) He admits that they are victims of racism (in a nuanced way, of course, because he doesn't come right out and say it.)

So the ban seems to be following the "get 'em while they're young" strategy: get them used to going to school without religious identifiers (which it is reasoned will lead to ending religious identification) and they'll will find it easier to forgo those things when they leave school and enter the social mainstream and workforce. Soon they'll give up on attending church, synagogues and mosques, and the problem will be solved because nobody will discriminate against them because they'll be secularly French.

Or, youth being rebellious, it could make them cling all the harder to those things that identify them when they're away from the schools. Did the commission or Chirac consider that possibility? Forbidden fruit, so to speak, with irony.

Politicians across the spectrum are suddenly engaged in a lively debate about the merits of positive discrimination and the means by which the government can stop the rise of radical Islam.

"Postive discrminination" on this continent would mean affirmative action, but I'm cautious as to what it means to the French.

M Chirac's speech followed the publication last week of the Stasi report, commissioned to examine the need for a new law on secularism.

Would passing a new law on secularism infringe upon the rights of the people? Do any French lawmakers or the French courts ponder that question? This article has the objections of Muslim groups on record, but what have been the responses from Jewish and Christian leaders?

The report concluded that the dramatic rise of religions such as Islam required a new approach as they were threatening the strictly secular identity of the French state.

I still don't get how the report reasons that having people in the country who practice a religion - any religion - threatens the strictly secular identity of the French state. The state can be secular without requiring the people to be so.

Millions of French schoolchildren exhibited Christian and Jewish symbols before the immigration of Muslims and somehow the secularism of the French state survived. Is their concern based on the fact that Muslims aren't abandoning mosques in the same numbers as Christians are abandoning churches? Or is the real problem that Muslims have values and beliefs that challenge the acceptance of different religions which is the historical basis for secularism?

That was admittedly rhetorical because French Jews can identify a specific intolerance in France aimed at them and acted upon mostly by Muslims, and even though the EU shelved the report Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union, it should worry everyone. Does Chirac and his brain team think attacks will disappear if Jewish boys and Muslim girls are not recognizable as such? What about synagogues? Should they remove identifying religious symbols?

[Chirac] rejected a suggestion that the Jewish and Muslim celebrations of Yom Kippur and Eid should become school holidays, but said no child should be prevented from taking these days off on religious grounds.

He also supported the teaching of religious facts and history in schools, which the leading teachers' unions argue would pollute the Republican ideal of secular education.

Dwell for a moment on the use of the word pollute. Not enhance, not educate with an aim to foster respect and tolerance, but pollute. However do they teach European history without factoring in religion? Or French history and literature? Explaining the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre could be somewhat tricky, not to mention that it leaves Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots and Dumas' The Three Musketeers without historical grounding. Sheesh, whatever do they make of Voltaire's Candide? (Pop culture preferrists may substitute Bernstein's Candide.) Seriously: do teachers in France refuse to teach Voltaire? One can't appreciate satire if one doesn't know what something is satirizing.

Immigrant groups in France have argued for many years that the fabled principle of equality was rarely applied in practice. M Chirac conceded this yesterday, saying: "It's by our ability to make equality of opportunity a reality that we will revive our sense of national unity."

Aha, Jacques Crow segregation and bigotry are the real culprits.

But he added that secularism was also a "crucial element in social peace and national unity" and that "glorifying particular identities", such as Islam, would lead to the break-up of France.

So lack of equality is not about skin colour, it's about religion. And if Muslim girls, Jewish boys and Christian children of both genders would hide their religious identities, everyone would be secularly unified.

Don't ask, don't tell French-style.

The French don't plan to confront and deal with the growing anti-Semitism in France.

The French don't plan to confront and deal with racism toward North Africans.

Seems to me that labeling the problem as people being too much religious is affirmation that France's failure to accept, integrate and assimilate its Muslim population is going to remain a failure, and teaching tolerance and respect for others is going to remain a failure, but the French government is determined that it will be a secular failure.

I always write under the assumption that people read the articles I reference and that will draw their own conclusions, so I didn't explore the crime rates because it seems self-evident that being excluded from jobs and opportunities for self-advancement would lead to crime, and banning head scarve is unlikely to impact on that.

What interests me about this is that the problems the French are having are similar is some respects to ones some fear may happen in North America (although I personally don't agree with that fear.) The fact that I think the French are dealing with the problem poorly is admittedly rooted in my views on the First Amendment and my belief in inherent freedoms as well as my distrust of passing regulations as an automatic reaction to any problem, but it will be interesting to see how this progresses (assuming it is implemented.)

Until we see concrete plans by the government which outline how they propose to end the segregtion of Muslim immigrants it will be hard to assess how the problems in France will play out and how attacking religion as the problem will interplay with those plans. If we don't see any real efforts to end discrimination and segregation, I think we can be pretty confident in declaring the school ban a total failure.

No brain cells were harmed in the making of this post, mostly because I only have a few left after my work marathon. I wanted to get some of these ideas out of my head and the process was painless (even with a liberal application of the delete key) but some transitions remain rough and instances of inadequately explained logic will probably strike me when I read this tomorrow or Saturday.

UPDATE: I'll have to write 100 times on the blackboard Don't publish until you've read Paul. He actually attended school in France, (CORRECTION: a French owned school in Spain) and has some comments about the proposed policy that shed a different light on things here, here which informs us that religious symbols have long been banned in French schools, and here which details the immigration patterns from Morocco and Algeria. Darren provides this link in Paul's comments from a Singapore source which tells of a similar situation there in which wearing headscarves not allowed because it is not in keeping with the "common uniform standard."

Ain't the blogosphere grand?

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon has just returned from a visit to France and reports some rather chilling observations from Behind Enemy Lines. I hadn't imagined that a Jewish school would be unidentifiable as such. I could say it was due to my naivete, but probably it was just dumbness.

I do regard anti-Semitism as a cover for anti-Westernism as it plays out in the Mid-East and other predominantly Muslim nations. (I saw the metaphor "Jews are the canaries in the mine" somewhere and I think it fits what we are seeing.) The Turkish reaction to terrorist attacks carried out against synagogues gives me hope, although, as usual, we don't know what the people who stayed at home think.

So I accept that one ruler for measuring the health of a democratic nation is the confidence Jewish citizens feel about their own safety. (I wouldn't regard Israel as an exception because most attacks emanate from without.)

American Digest links to a post from EuroPundits that makes some sharp points out of the recent conflict between Germany and Poland at the EU Constitution talks and closes with a grimmer point about Plan B. (I'm not going to paraphrase it because the clarity of that post is too elegant and concise, so read the whole thing.) I mention it here because it adds to Rumsfeld's designations of Old Europe and New Europe which have increasingly more layers than appear on the surface.

It seems even clearer that France may be an international concern for much different reasons than their obstructionism at the UN and their desire to reclaim their former place as a world power. It's not about flaunting their power any more, it's about their approaching doom from forces within. I'm too awestruck to try to make some sense of what impact it might have on Canada given the recent Weasel/Pissy alliance with France and some major business linkages between the leaders of the two nations, but there is a lot to digest and consider.

To think this all started with the question of whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear headscarves.

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Headscarf ban and former Western views of modesty

Dec. 12 - The French Presidential commission recommendation yesterday that religious symbols be banned in public schools initially brought home to me one of the underlying differences in how I understand religious tolerance as an American and how the French view it.

My immediate reaction was that the French federal government was prohibiting the "free expression" of religion. My immediate reaction was that it is highly desirable that members of different faiths realize that they can co-exist peacefully and tolerantly with one another. (This is not an attack on the French, but simply a comment on the difference in how the two countries view freedom of religion.)

But it's not that simple. IIRC, one of the reasons the commission looked at this issue - particularly the wearing of head scarves - was because of reports that Muslim girls who didn't want to wear head scarves were pressured to do so by members of their communities, so they are looking at tolerance within religions more than between religions.

But the article cites another reason:

Commission head Bernard Stasi said the proposed law was aimed at keeping France's strict secular underpinnings intact and at countering "forces that are trying to destabilize the country," a reference to Islamic fundamentalists.

Stasi said the panel was not discriminating against the Muslim community but sought to give all religions a more equal footing.

The panel recommended a ban from classrooms of all "obvious" political and religious symbols, including Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcap and large crucifixes. More discreet symbols such as small crosses would be acceptable, it said.

My inner historian yearns to speak! Until the 20th century, "decent" women in Western countries always covered their heads when they were out. In fact, the failure to cover her head was a clear signal that the woman was a prostitute. Unfortunately, none of my history books chronicles how that came to change, although I have to think that as hemlines grew shorter, culminating in the 20's, mandatory head coverings were also dropped.

When I was growing up, hats and scarves were worn as a matter of course, and even as wearing hats outdoors began to fade, no woman would ever enter a church with her head uncovered (that went for Protestants as well as Catholics.) Hair was considered a woman's chief vanity, and covering the hair was a sign of modesty before God (a concept better in theory than in practice, as witnessed by the flamboyance of many hats.)

I've always considered it a sign of God's wisdom and mercy that I only had boys, and was spared from confrontations that began with the words "You're not leaving the house dressed like that." The increasingly younger ages at which girls dress like sexual beings saddens me (in a none of my business way, admittedly) mostly because they left childhood so early and are physically pretending to be that which they are not emotionally.

Where are the lines to be drawn between the parents' right to protect and control their children, a young girl's desire to be very modest or less than modest, restrictions on religious symbols in publicly funded institutions, and banning traditional dress codes that might "destabilize the country?"

I doubt the answer lies in regulation, but the French experiment will be interesting.

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Tony Blankley

Dec. 4 - Tony Blankley has some fun at the expense of the French and the strike by French diplomats purporting to protest the lack of paper: A diplomatic strike which he describes as the AFL-CIO meets Monty Python.

But beyond the matter of their professional utility, it is odd that a profession whose raison d'etre is talk, not action, would snap quickly into action on its own behalf. Why didn't they negotiate, using all their vaunted diplomatic skills?

Why indeed?

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