Althouse: French secularism wins out over Muslim students' demand to wear headscarves.

December 4, 2008

French secularism wins out over Muslim students' demand to wear headscarves.

In the European human rights court.

32 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...: That's a shame, and a defeat for freedom. Headscarves are a lot more than just a religious indicator. My own mum, bless 'er, wears one on a bad hair day. And this is odd, French women look hawt with stylish headscarves.

And tell me, why has spellcheck suddenly become so sensitive to my contractions like "that's" ? It underlined my whole first line in green. Pffft.; 12/4/08, 9:19 PM
blake said...: Green means grammatical problem, doesn't it?

Not that I'm getting any green lines. Probably some browser "feature".; 12/4/08, 9:33 PM
Unknown said...: Chip, I think you're overstating this decision. This is about wearing overt religious symbols in state schools, not what your mom or anyone else wears in their own private life. Step off of the state school campus and you can dress any way you want.

I also think this is a victory for the rule of law as decided by representative government over judicial fiat.

Having said that I definitely prefer a different model and I'm glad that we generally don't have such rules here.; 12/4/08, 9:52 PM
Michael Ginda said...: Sometimes, I wish that my old elementary school would have banned overtly religious clothing. There is something sacrilegious about dressing a 4th grader in a shirt that display Jesus with a crown of thorns.

I was traveling in Spain a year ago, and I saw another American in Madrid's airport wearing this hideous t-shirt. My friend Maureen and I could hardly contain our laughter.; 12/4/08, 10:44 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Good!!!

I would be just as much against children, who are Catholic, wearing Nun's clothing to school in order to make a religious statement.

This has no place in the public square. Your religion is or SHOULD be free to be exercised on your own time and not forced upon the rest of the population. This is the problem with the radical Muslims that they want to cram their religion down our throats.

If your religion has value, worth, truth, merit, redemption, then it doesn't have to be forced upon us. If it is a true religion, people will gravitate without the threat of having their heads cut off.

Good for France!!; 12/4/08, 11:12 PM
Anonymous said...: I cringe whenever I see the word "Muslim" on a conservative blog like this one, knowing the festival of hate that will soon unfold in the comments. Ugh.

(Thankfully, it hasn't started yet, and hopefully I'm wrong to expect it will.)

I grew up in a community divided 50/50 between Roman Catholic (like my family) and Muslim. Muslims (most Arab) were my neighbors, teachers, and friends for as long as I've been alive. Muslims are not evil, and neither is Islam.

Are there dangerous Muslims? Are there perverted interpretations of Islam? Of course. Is it a problem that needs to be aggressively fought? Absolutely.

But the indiscriminate hate for all Muslims that is endemic on the right is deeply saddening.

For people who would sincerely like to understand the kind of pain created by this hatred should listen to the following program:

Shouting Across the Divide

A Muslim woman persuades her husband that their family would be happier if they left the West Bank and moved to America. They do, and things are good...until September 11. After that, the elementary school their daughter goes to begins using a textbook that says Muslims want to kill Christians. This and other stories of what happens when Muslims and non-Muslims try to communicate, and misfire.

Listen here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=322; 12/4/08, 11:16 PM
Anonymous said...: BTW: I expect (maybe I'm wrong) my post (above) to unleash torrents of furious responses. Please, if you're doing it for me, don't. I'm not going to read any responses on this thread and I don't want to debate the issue -- at least not this late on a Thursday evening. I'm sure someone even now is googling images of planes flying into the towers on 9/11 so they can link to them and say "here's pain created by hate," and that's a valid point, insofar as it's a condemnation of the actions of perverted individuals following a twisted, evil ideology.

But it's no excuse to hate over a billion innocent people who mean us no harm.; 12/4/08, 11:18 PM
Tibore said...: For a person telling people not to paint with a broad brush, Verso has the tendency to paint with a broad brush. As if "Conservative" = "Muslim hater".

Grow up.; 12/4/08, 11:36 PM
Anonymous said...: But the indiscriminate hate for all Muslims that is endemic on the right is deeply saddening.

Just curious....do you cast the millions of Muslims who want to kill Americans and destroy modern civilization as "on the right", too?

Or was your statement just another bit of nonsense?

As far as the "billion of innocent people who mean us no harm", please let us know when they will tell their violent co-religionists to let the rest of the world live peaceably. then maybe I'll pay attention, but until then, sorry, your argument finds deaf ears here.; 12/4/08, 11:53 PM
Michael Ginda said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/4/08, 11:56 PM
Palladian said...: "Muslims are not evil, and neither is Islam."

LOL. I love when nasty haters lecture us about not being nasty haters toward nasty haters.; 12/4/08, 11:59 PM
Michael Ginda said...: But the indiscriminate hate for all Muslims that is endemic on the right is deeply saddening.

Try being an atheist in certain parts of this country, you'll get a similar zealous reaction. Or look at how much of the LGBT community is painting all Mormons with a big red paint brush.

The problem is surface level readings of difference and blind faith. Both prevent people from treating each other with dignity.; 12/5/08, 12:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Being a Mormon atheist transgendered bisexual has to be rough, in most parts of the county. Worth a book deal in SoHo, though.

I wonder...if the vote on Prop 8 had gone the other way...could a transgendered person marry him/herself in California?

If they/it later divorced, who'd get the china?; 12/5/08, 12:19 AM
Michael Ginda said...: Michael H., I would imagine such a "coupling" would only add to the internal anguish and loathing by the transgendered individual.

Personally, I think it would be harder to be a Mormon.; 12/5/08, 1:55 AM
Anonymous said...: Michael----have you ever tested positive for a sense of humor?; 12/5/08, 6:38 AM
KCFleming said...: This is France's minor salvo against the islamification of their culture and country.

Only half of their Muslims, mostly from North africa, are citizens. They live separated from the French (and never integrated), in the "suburbs of Islam" surrounding the major cities. But the rioting by Muslim "youths" to chants of Allahu Akbar that began in October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois, on the outskirts of Paris, soon spread to 300 French cities and towns, and then to Belgium and Germany. In that year, over 9,000 police cars were stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars were torched.”

It's severity meant the jihad could no longer be ignored.

The scarf rule is meant to draw a line in the sand about who's in charge in France. France shares the general demographic collapse and unsupportable cradle-to-grave welfare system common across the EU. it has imported North Africans for employment, for jobs undone by the French, but they have since been unable to control their borders or assimilate the immigrants, who clearly do not want France to remain French.

The justification for the scarf rule is a cover for the true intent: a feeble response to an insurgency long neglected.

Theodore Dalrymple has put it best: "the sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict."; 12/5/08, 6:48 AM
vet66 said...: Don't you just love verso who becomes part of the support system for "good" muslims? Then verso proves the negative by refusing to accept any points made by the rest of us that might be disparaging to the muslims of good cheer.

It is this very refusal to address the negative realities of Islamic faith by both the poster and muslims who remain silent in the face of Islamic atrocities. I would submit that the silence of the lambs, peaceful muslims, so to speak, is akin to the silence of gays/lesbians/transgendered in the face of radicals of that group storming churces in the U.S. because Prop. 8 in California passed.

Sometimes silence is not golden. Sometimes that silence is construed as tacit approval.; 12/5/08, 7:24 AM
Unknown said...: I was traveling in Spain a year ago, and I saw another American in Madrid's airport wearing this hideous t-shirt. My friend Maureen and I could hardly contain our laughter.

Why contain it? It was meant to be funny. I see funny Christian shirts like this all the time.; 12/5/08, 7:31 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I eagerly await the day Verso can provide a link to a million Muslim March demanding an end to violence committed in the name of Islam.

That should be around the time Satan builds his first snowman.; 12/5/08, 8:22 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I wonder if anyone else finds it ironic that liberals fall all over themselves to defend Islam yet always took great joy in disparaging Catholocism and painted every priest as a pedofile.; 12/5/08, 8:24 AM
MadisonMan said...: I'm never eating French Toast again without thinking about this decision.; 12/5/08, 8:40 AM
KCFleming said...: When covered in syrup, French toast surrenders to my gullet as quickly as Paris yields to the Hun in June.; 12/5/08, 8:48 AM
AllenS said...: I had to give up French kissing, not that I wanted to.; 12/5/08, 9:02 AM
Roger J. said...: Interestingly, Verso somehow expects his comments to be significant enough to require response as to their substance, what little there was of it. Wallow much in your own preconceptions and misplaced sense of importance, Verso?; 12/5/08, 9:17 AM
MadisonMan said...: It has to be maple syrup though. None of this Mrs. butterworth crap.; 12/5/08, 9:18 AM
Bob W. said...: Verso,

DO you have a widget on your desktop that pings when an ignorant conservative writes something offensive about another human being, or are you just sitting there at your computer hitting the "refresh" button every 15 seconds, waiting for an ignorant commenter at Althouse?

If you do have the widget (which allows you to spend your valuable time at more tolerant websites like Kos or something), does it misfire when people write sentences like "I hate to say it, but I don't think this law discriminates against Muslims any worse than against the Catholics who cannot wear crucifixes to class"? I hope not, that would be a bummer.

I for one hope you do have said widget, that it is highly functional, and that the next time a right wing whack job says something ignorant or hateful, you are there to elevate the discourse.; 12/5/08, 9:19 AM
paul a'barge said...: Good.

Someone needs to make a stand with the mutts.; 12/5/08, 10:27 AM
knox said...: Verso's whole story sounds apocryphal to me, made up to give a political point "heart." To wit: the nastiness directed at conservatives has a lot more passion and sincerity behind it than the words about Muslims.; 12/5/08, 10:43 AM
knox said...: And everything Daryl says about the headscarves is pretty accurate. "Cover yourselves up, ladies, or someone might justifiably rape you. And don't blame us if we justifiably stone you to death."

The multi-culti tolerance, and even romanticization of stuff like this is disgusting. If we've learned anything, it's that women come out at the bottom when multiculturalism rears its ugly head.; 12/5/08, 10:50 AM
Shanna said...: But it's no excuse to hate over a billion innocent people who mean us no harm.

Can I hate the how ever many who do wish us harm? Or the ones who have actually done harm? Otherwise, I don’t particularly care what religion anyone wants to practice. There is a reason nobody hates Buddhists.; 12/5/08, 1:59 PM
dick said...: I wonder if they have anything to say about yarmulkes. Are Jewish men allowed to wear yarmulkes to class or the prayer fringe?; 12/5/08, 4:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Verso seems to have a love/hate relationship with the loves/hates of "conservatives."

Hopefully he/she is out at a movie with friends or something by now to take his his/her mind off the whole sorry lot of us.; 12/5/08, 10:11 PM