The machinery of French legislative authority is going into motion to pass a law that will ban the full veil in public, with a vote scheduled for July 13.
Put forward by President Sarkozy, the ban was originally opposed by the Socialist Party. But the Socialists, who represent the main opposition of Sarkozy’s government, have signaled acquiescence, arguing only for narrowing the scope of the ban.
The popular support for a burqa ban does not surprise me. France has a more than 100-year-old tradition of a rigorously secularized public culture. A 1905 law strictly separated church and state, and achieving this separation involved a great struggle over the role of religious symbols in public. For example, clerics with academic appointments can not wear ecclesiastical clothing (clerical collars) while teaching. The goal of Laïcité, as the secularizing project is called, has been to insulate public culture from the overbearing influence of the Catholic Church.
To a large extent, the proposed burqa ban follows in the French tradition of enforcing a secular vision of public culture, with anxiety shifting away from Catholicism and toward the political and cultural power of Islam. Sarkozy has framed the ban in terms of the feminist issues, but the popularity of the ban among French voters stems from a desire to deal with Muslims as fellow citizens and not as a religious community that differentiates itself from the rest of French society.
That may be unrealistic. Religious convictions find their way into the public realm one way or another, and as Richard John Neuhaus argued again and again it’s best to grapple with the public significance of faith directly rather then trying to drive it underground.
But the impulse behind the ban is not silly. Our constitutional principles of separation of church and state and free exercise of religion remain unstable, as a reading of recent decades of Supreme Courts decisions on the First Amendment shows. The same holds for the French tradition, which tilts more strongly in the direction of separation. The proposed ban, which may end up being voided by French courts on constitutional grounds, is a small, largely symbolic part of a larger struggle to define the role for Islam in French public life.
July 6th, 2010 | 2:40 pm
The French idea of laicite is horrible. All it has succeeded in doing is creating unchurched existentialists who are easy prey to the nationalist or socialist political parties.
July 6th, 2010 | 4:07 pm
“But the impulse behind the ban is not silly.”
But the ban itself is worthless symbolism that will only antagonize France’s growing Muslim minority.
If the French were serious about preseving the “Frenchness” of France, they would start having a lot more children. Expecting a ban of the burqa to turn Muslim women into assimilated French women is, indeed, silly.
July 16th, 2010 | 9:01 pm
So here we are in a world of amazing equality that stems from brutally demolishing all differences. The world has tried long enough for peace. Now, it is time to have just one understanding of freedom. The mass murderers and colonizers of the 20th century are the leaders in this chest thumping bravado of superiority. The world must bow in respect. There is freedom only in certain postures of this confine but this is the new world. Where nations are hoodwinked in to sending their armies and now ever-growing mercenaries to countries to “liberate” people. At least the ones that manage to live. Hearts and minds were promised. The fine print was that they were referring to cadaveric samples. But no amount of words can reason with the hypocrisy that this new arrogant world order breeds essentially because they actually believe in it. At least the elites of their society.
There is no use trying to bring to their attention the convenient fluidity of their unshakable moral grounds. The similarity of a girl being denied education for not covering herself in Afghanistan and a girl being denied education in France for covering her head. The perplexing argument of the need to spread “goodness” in Afghanistan when the “state” forces a woman to wear a burqa and “goodness” of their hearts stripping a woman of her burqa in France. Who decides how we answer our questions about our curiosity about the universe. Who decides what is the way to please our “higher power”?
I am convinced today that the elites of this world are bent on leading nations in to conflicts. A fourth of humanity is dispensable to them. Planting hate for generations to come is accompanied by a mocking smirk conveying “there now that I have told you how much I hate you I feel good”
So President. Sarkozy claims to be the new god? Would only be fitting for a nation whose leaders are so convinced of the way we need to choose our eternity. Perhaps the French sisters who wear head scarves should look to the goddess – who else but Mrs. Sarkozy? Also known as Carla bruni. In addition to being a part time goddess she is also a wonderful “precision artist”. A recent nude portrait of her sold for $91,000 on which one “critic” complimented her on “covering her modesty with just one hand”. That is so liberated I think it will take us mortal beings a life time to be this comfortable with it. Some of us have been “trained” in Abu Ghraib” to be comfortable with our nudity but I guess our hearts and minds were elsewhere.
Muslims all over the world are expected to carry the guilt for the actions of a handful of individuals. With puppet democracies in place any rebuttal of this racism, let alone a demand for control of their own resources seems like a far cry to these arrogant elites. Mossadegh’s of Iran should act as deterrents. History starts when nations like the French want it to. The plundering of resources of other nations and their subjugation on their way to greatness is too remote a memory. Perhaps Ben J. Wattenberg in his book “the First Universal Nation” best summed up the insecurity of the European governments (not people – for public opinion is easily manipulated in today’s world) against Islam. After all the “spread by the sword” myth can hardly be applied to the peaceful growth and assimilation of Islam in recent times. Mr. Wattenberg in this book, written in 1991, long before 9/11, noted in a section titled “Islamic explosion”:
“In 1950, there are 375 million Moslem in the world. There are 983 million Moslems in the world today. By the year 2020, PRB projection show almost 2 billion”. He then goes on to write “The key question is: Is there are something about the growth of Islam that is seen as a potential threat to other nations and culture?” Furthermore, he writes “As Moslem immigration in Western Europe has increased, anti-Moslem sentiment has grown. Some European nations are not only trying to keep Moslems out, but are trying to oust those who are already there” and lest any one think he was referring to a lack of “integration” he also noted that “Most Moslems have moved quickly in to the American middle class”.
Muslims know as little about when the elusive peace that we all hope for is achieved as a French wondering what business of the state is their facial hair or clothing. Muslims are asked to bear collective guilt for the actions of a handful with deliberate and provocative misrepresentation of their scriptures when elected governments have destroyed countries and ruined millions of human lives. A fourth of humanity can not be wished away. Nor can it be robbed of dignity. I have no doubt in the abilities of human beings to make amends. It’s the delay of decades or even centuries before we acknowledge prejudices that I fear.
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