Diana West expands on some points made here at Dhimmi Watch in further considerations of France's headscarf ban in today's Washington Times:
My e-mailbag was brimming with responses to last week's column about Jacques Chirac's proposed ban on Islamic head scarves — along with jumbo crucifixes and all yarmulkes — in France's public schools. "Good grief," one correspondent declared, concluding a negative critique, "it's just a scarf!"Good grief, it's anything but. And I say that not so much to reprise last week's arguments, but rather to consider intervening developments — such as the reaction of Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh to a newspaper photograph of a leading Saudi Arabian businesswoman without her head scarf.
"This," said the grand mufti, Saudi Arabia's leading religious authority, referring to the head-exposed Muslim woman, "is forbidden for all. I severely condemn this matter and warn of grave consequences. I am pained by such shameful behavior in the country of the two holy mosques. What was published in some newspapers about this being the start of liberating the Saudi woman ... such talk is null and void. One's duty is to obey sharia by complying with orders and shunning that which is forbidden." Not doing so, he said, will "cause the doors of evil to open before the people of Islam."
The doors of evil? This sounds like a melodramatic mouthful from an old Saturday serial, but then again, maybe the mufti has a point. That is, if women were ever to achieve equality throughout Islam — and that means achieving a range of extremely basic rights, from the vote to the driver's license — maybe the whole of Islam would unravel. Sharia, or Islamic law, which codifies the inequality of women and non-Muslims, would be shredded, and the hoary hierarchy would lurch, if not topple.
This is a big "if," but not inconceivable. This may explain something about the intensity of the opposition to France's hijab ban among Muslim activists, from France's officially recognized Council for the Muslim Faith to Britain's extremist group Al-Muhajiroun. The question is, in rejecting the Muslim head scarf, do Western governments affirm secular values — namely, Western civilization's highly evolved traditions of tolerance, equality and liberty? Last week, I wrote that given Islam's tradition of repressing women and non-Muslims, a result of the twin precepts of jihad and dhimmitude, the head scarf as a trapping of that tradition could well be banned from secular schools without sacrificing Western principles. I still think so. But to what end? This week, French education minister Luc Ferry noted that beards, too, if they were determined to be signs of faith, could be outlawed under the school ban on religious symbols. This prompted author and Islamic expert Robert Spencer to explain on his Web site www.jihadwatch.org why he believes the French approach — under consideration or in effect in Belgium and a large part of Germany — is way off the mark.
In an entry dubbed "A close shave for French Muslims?" Mr. Spencer writes: "Instead of going after the root of the problem, [the French] are targeting minutiae. They can't or won't get Muslims to renounce the sharia and accept Western principles of tolerance and equality; instead, European Muslim groups are loudly denouncing assimilation. So the French instead go against the outward manifestations of the Islamic rejection of those things. But does [the French government] really think that beardless, bareheaded Muslims will not try to institute an Islamic state?"
I still don't have a problem with the French ban on head scarves or even beards in their public schools. After all, my own secular school uniform, an LA-does-GB costume of blue blazers, pleated skirts and saddle oxfords, included a haircut code for boys that banned beards — as if — and stipulated sideburn length. But Mr. Spencer raises a thought-provoking point: That France's actions — and similar actions contemplated across Europe — are strictly cosmetic patches to mask the underlying conflict between the West and Islam, between a European Christianity that is contracting and a European Islam that is expanding.
And what of secularism? Also this week, an octogenarian French priest was fined nearly $1,000 for a letter to parishioners that railed against a Muslim "ideology that threatens the whole world" and called the Koran a "manual for the extension of the kingdom of the devil." Assuming that secular France wishes to police the religious speech of its priests, as Mr. Spencer notes, it should also police the religious speech of its imams. Will it? Should it? It would seem that the real battle over liberty, equality and fraternity has yet to begin.
The French Ministre des Affaires is investigating Mohamed Latrèche, head of the extremist Parti des Musmalmans de France (Muslim Party of France) for anti-semitic comments he made at the protest against the hijab ban in France he help organize last weekend. This is a first step of the French government in tackling the issue of "hate speech" of Muslims. Since the protest and his remarks were filmed, I do hope that the Ministre des Affaires holds him to the French "hate speech" law.
jihan
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=386039&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1074745158943&p=1008596981749
links for articles in English about Mohamed Latrèche, head of the French Muslim Party, being investigated for anti-semitic remarks.
jihan
Like Mr. Spencer, I believe it may be that banning the hijab in public to be something akin to glossing over the actual problem, but I also believe it's a good first step, if for no other reason that it forces all to adhere to the rule of law. As for the "hate speech" issue, I'm generally against hate speech laws, but trying times call for extraordinary measures.
Well it seems the Europeans are waking up to their plight of Islam...The headscarf and beard is a start but they must go further to end the anti-semitism and hate of Jews. France, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, Canada and Australia are infested with Islam and these countries better wake up before it is too late. Islam demands Global Domination by their Quran...One must just read it to see their Modus Operandi...
I am against the ban because it can be used against all other faiths that have particular clothing and beard requirements. What about Sikhs? What about Hindu women with the dot on their forehead? What about religious married Jewish women who also keep their heads covered? And many religious Jewish men who have beards? The problem is not these outward manifestations of religious compliance but the fact that they are being made mandatory by Muslim clerics. In the Jewish world, women decide on their own if they want to cover their hair nor not after they get married. There are even Orthodox women who don't cover their heads. If the issue of terrorism were not part of all this, I don't think anyone would give a damn how Muslim women dressed.
Below you will find text from an article which is at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11445
about what France is currently facing with the large Muslim population in the country.
jihan
Taken from the article:
In certain cases, French Muslim families are paid 500 Euros (around 600 USD) per trimester by Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. In fact, a survey done last May found that 77% of girls wearing the hijab do so because of the physical threats received from Islamist groups. Liberation, a major French newspaper, recently showed how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected and often times physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead but there are looks and words that do kill." Muslim women who try to rebel are considered outcasts and "whores." Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work everywhere in France. For example, L’Humanite, the Communist French newspaper usually very much in sync with France’s Arab population, recently interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said that they converted to Islam after a methodical indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.
This extremist indoctrination also extends to French schools, where non-Muslim teachers are subject to daily insults and racist remarks. For instance, the principal of the Trappes’ primary school described how, "An 11-year-old kid insulted his female teacher because she was not wearing the hijab. Intolerant behaviors especially against teachers and other religions have skyrocketed in the past three years." These young children are taught from the time they can walk that Islam is the answer to everything the Ultimate Truth and that is why even six-year-olds are now fasting during Ramadan.
But school is not the only place in France where militant Islam is omnipresent. For example, in Avignon, Muslim extremists distribute loads of Koranic tapes in French and drive around town with their windows open and propaganda blasting through the speakers. In French hospitals, most Muslim women, sometimes under the family’s pressure, refuse to be examined by male doctors and many Muslim men by female doctors. Many Muslim defendants refuse to be tried by Jewish judges, and some municipal pools have different hours for women and men to accommodate the Muslim population. A number of supermarkets carrying non-Halaal products (food not permitted by the Koran), have been vandalized by Muslims and then surrendered to this violent blackmail by taking the products off their shelves. This is what France has become.
it is not a coincidence that the biggest wave of violent anti-Semitism in Europe is occurring in France, triggered by Muslims. This may only be a taste of things to come; the next victims could be French Christians and then moderate Muslims. Passing a law that forbids the hijab is not going to change anything. A very aggressive policy against the Wahhabi influence in the French Muslim community and the arrest of radical French imams would be a good start. But the Chirac administration is not ready for that; in fact, it does not even recognize that Muslims are responsible for most anti-Semitic incidents in France.
France has had its wake-up call; if it just hits the snooze button and goes back to sleep, then a Muslim Coup d’Etat is in the offing.
Just for the record. Israel, which more than any country, is under Muslim threat has no ban whatsover on any form of religious garments. Arab women their heads in hijab and bodies completely covered walk freely in every Israeli city.
Why does France feel more threatened than Israel?