Reuters reports:
France will deport foreign-born imams and disband radical faith-based groups, including hardline traditionalist Catholics, if a new surveillance policy signals they suffer a “religious pathology” and could become violent.
Two days ago, President François Hollande announced the creation of l’Observatoire national de la laïcité (roughly, “National Observatory of Secularism”) in 2013. The official statement specifically mentions only the development of propositions for a “public morality” to be taught in schools (no doubt to the satisfaction of Education Minister Vincent Peillon), but Interior Minister Manuel Valls’s comments today expand on its role:
The aim is not to combat opinions by force, but to detect and understand when an opinion turns into a potentially violent and criminal excess. . . . The objective is to identify when it’s suitable to intervene to treat what has become a religious pathology.
Valls stressed that the agency will focus on extremists of all faiths, citing protests by the Catholic group Civitas as an example of Christian behavior that skirts “the limits of legality” (not to be confused with the E.U. sustainable transport initiative bearing the same name). According to Reuters, he also finds “creationists in the United States and the Muslim world, radical Islamists, ultra-traditionalist Catholics and ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to live separately from the modern world” dangerous examples of religious extremism.
December 12th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
What did Civitas do to get on the “bad list?”
December 12th, 2012 | 6:16 pm
“extremists of all faiths” will no doubt be those who won’t abandon their traditional beliefs in order to get along with the state and its official atheism.
Atheism is a faith-based belief system. It has to be as there is no way to prove that God isn’t there. That belief must be taken on faith. Contemporary secular states have made this particular faith-based belief system — atheism — the de facto state religion. Adherents of other faith-based belief systems will be tolerated if they abandon their traditional beliefs wherever they are in conflict with the policies of the state, and keep any practical application of their beliefs within their church walls. Those who resist this will be declared “extremists” by the state.
None of this should surprise us. It is all part of the process of abandoning the traditional Western ethic and replacing it with a new one. This process was discussed in A New Ethic for Medicine and Society, an editorial by Dr. Malcolm Watts that appeared in the September, 1970 issue of California Medicine.
December 12th, 2012 | 6:38 pm
Valls was DSK’s most loyal right-hand man, until the latter raped a hotel maid in a country where his influence and status couldn’t buy him total impunity like he counted on, being so very accustomed to it happening in France.
And that’s who the French were ready to have for President, and who belonged to the same Party that is in power now.
Then again, if Valls concentrated on French corrupt politician “extremists” instead of religious “extremists,” maybe there would not be enough jails in the world to hold them.
December 12th, 2012 | 11:57 pm
The Committee on Public Safety in different words. It’s going to be a blood bath when the Muslims rise up in their annual car-bbq-intifadah.
December 13th, 2012 | 3:25 am
Tito Edwards
many Muslims, and especially Muslim women, are manifesting their confidence in the Republic and proclaiming their adherence to its values.
The president of the Muslim women’s movement Ni Putes Ni Soumises [Neither Sluts nor Door-mats] Sihen Habchi, in a forceful attack on “multiculturalism” has demanded “No more justifications of our oppression in the name of the right to be different and of respect toward those who force us to bow our heads”
Rachida Dati, herself a Muslim and former French Minister of Justice told the National Assembly that “The Republic is alone capable of uniting men and women of different origins, colours and religions around the principles of tolerance, liberty, solidarity and laïcité making the Republic truly one and indivisible” Likewise, Fadela Amara, another Muslim and former Secretary of State for Urban Policies has declared that “For this generation, the crucial issues are laïcité, gender equality and gender desegregation, based upon living together in harmony throughout the world, and not only in France”
Anyone who knows France and the French press, across the political spectrum, will know that there is great concern about « communautarisme » by which they mean ethnic and religious solidarities and allegiances that threaten to override Republican unity. This concern is largely incomprehensible to Americans who have learned to embrace the realities of their multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society, but it is deeply rooted in French political culture, going back at least as far as Rousseau’s suspicion of particular interests that undermined the general will. Hence, the determination to keep the State and Civil Society, « l’espace public » and « l’espace privé » distinct and separate. Religious and cultural activities belong to « l’espace privé »
December 13th, 2012 | 10:21 am
Ah! Michael PS, that explains so so very much! (Eureka, in case you were wondering) Some groups have figured out that if one discloses their, what were previously keep under wraps, predilections publicly (move from from the private to the public) and renounce any claim to private interests, then they can claim to have only public lives. This is advantageous, in their estimation, because the purview of the state is the protection of the public realm. It is a renouncing of citizenship in favour of a new (as yet not fully disclosed) species of relation with the state, namely, as a type ward of the state.
A bureaucrat’s dream come true if ever there was, for it is a formidable wedge to use against those groups whom have no need (or desire) to submit to the tenured oversight of mandarins.
December 13th, 2012 | 10:50 am
Michael PS, I still find it profoundly creepy that there would be a government department explicitly devoted to the monitoring and permitting of thought and speech on the basis of potential future criminality.
December 13th, 2012 | 2:01 pm
Google up:
homeschooling site:lifesitenews.com
for stories about secular state harassment of those who want pass their own beliefs on to their children instead of letting the state indoctrinate them.
See also UNFPA Youth Conference Calls for Unfettered Abortion and Plenty of It
Here is an excerpt:
When will the Church mount an effort to preserve traditional values and the traditional understanding of the family that realistically has some chance of reversing the slide down the slippery slope to godless totalitarianism? Such an effort would require the Church to be much more outspoken on these matters to its own members than it has been in the past. What kind of world will our children and grandchildren have to work out their salvation in if the Church doesn’t ever address these matters in a realistic manner?
December 14th, 2012 | 9:44 am
Do people believe that there could be such a thing as ‘religious pathology’, though? Would, say, the Aztec religion of human sacrifice be an example?
(That’s a distinct question from how severe a problem it might be in this day and age, or whether a specific government agency would be the best way to handle such a problem.)
December 14th, 2012 | 5:38 pm
Radical secularism rearing its ugly head again. The radical secularists are violent (killing the pre-born in the name of choice; siding with dictators in the middle east in the name of stability (and oil); etc. The French Revolution was violent and the secularists lead Europe into both WWI and WWII. Haven’t they killed enough already.
Christian creationists, orthodox Catholics and Jews are not violent; but I know the extreme environmentalists, Hollywood actors, and as we’re recently seen in Michigan, union members need to be placed on the watch list.
December 15th, 2012 | 12:38 pm
Every President since the 1940′s was a radical secularist?
Amnesty International isn’t a secular organization?
I think maybe your classification scheme lacks a few categories…
December 16th, 2012 | 2:29 pm
I read in another article that he wanted “Fraternity” and Equality” to be among the major secular values. Hmm. Seems to me I read once that they were saying similar things in the earlier French Revolution, soon before the guillotines came out. I suppose that those who disagree with his ideas of healthy vs. pathological religion, will soon be on the chopping block
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