Many Westerners misunderstand France's headscarf ban. I have criticized it myself for being a cosmetic measure when a realistic confrontation with radical Islam's Sharia imperative is called for. However, it also may be just that: a sign that French officials are aware that sometimes a scarf is not just a scarf, but a first step in a plan to institute Islamic law in the nation. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- The French government has said it will not revoke a law banning Muslim headscarves in public schools, despite demands by a militant Islamic group holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq."The law will be applied," spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told Canal Plus television Monday.
Meanwhile Monday, France's Foreign Minister Michel Barnier visited Egyptian government officials and Arab leaders but said there was no new word on the journalists' fate.
Following a meeting with Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, Barnier said the journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were still missing.
"We have had no further contact, again no contact but we are making all efforts to attain their immediate freedom," said Barnier.
"Our embassy in Baghdad knows the region has sent representatives to the region to explore all routes, gather all information possible and make all contacts possible to secure their release, we have experience in these matters, it requires discretion, basically we are seeking a guarantee of their security."
On Sunday, French officials including President Jacques Chirac condemned the abduction of the two journalists.
Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin told reporters: "Today, the whole nation is united because the life of two Frenchmen is at stake as well as freedom of expression and the values of the republic."
He added: "From the first day, everything, let me repeat it, everything, has been done to obtain their release. The government is totally mobilized."
Aides to the minister said Barnier would visit several countries, but did not identify which.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin demanded the group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, release Radio France International's Chesnot and Le Figaro's Malbruno, who were reported missing August 21 on their way from Baghdad to Najaf.
"France is the country of the French revolution, of human rights," said de Villepin. "France has never stopped fighting for the freedom of all, for tolerance and the respect of the human being.
"The French people as a whole, all origins and religions together, are together behind our compatriots Christian and Georges. Together we demand that they be set free."
According to the Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera, the kidnappers are part of the same group that claimed to have kidnapped an Italian journalist and killed him after Italy refused to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
I agree with Robert - this could be a shot across the bow: Respect France's secular traditions and institutions.
The headscarf is a political symbol that is being used in Europe and here in North America as the beginnings of instituting Islamic law.
Along with the call to prayer, slaughter houses located in neighborhoods, school cafeteria lunch menus, billboard protests, removal of pork products from view in stores, and so on, the head scarf and veiling in identification photos show that we are under the onslaught of a slow, insidious application of Islamic religious restrictions that will affect us all. These must be reversed or we will find ourselves facing the same fate as that of Europe.
It is heartening to see that France is taking a stand. I hope that it holds and that they are able to reverse the damage to their culture.
While I'm sorry for the French journalist the French are correct Muslims should not be able to obtain at the point of a knife what they are unable to obtain politically.Experience shows a headscarf is not just a headscraf it's a political symbol.Muslims who wish to wear headscrafs could always opt for home schooling, to start (and pay for) their own private schools or for migration to Islamic countries. Instead they seek to force their traditions on non-Muslims.The problem is most people want no part of Islam or it's traditions.
I fear the Islamic fundamentalist movement as I fear the Christian fundamentalist movement here in the U.S.
May a god help us all !
It must be disturbing to be Jacques Chirac, or Dominique de Villepin, or a host of political figures who, over the past several decades, have promoted a view of Islam that does not have anything to do with reality, but everything to do with a certain hidden-from-view Euro-Arab Dialogue, in which the Arab states, using the vocabulary of "les deux rives" of the Mediterranean, or "the North and South" of ditto, have allowed not only the virtually complete takeover of the French official media by those who would steadily, drop by deadly drop, present a completely inaccurate picture of the Arab Jihad against Israel (including, of course, that recently-invented "Palestinian people" whose "identity was constructed" for a made-to-order phony nationalism), but also to rewrite the very history of the West so as to lead to the preposterous phrase, uttered by that crook and receiver of Arab money and Arab bejeweled gold falcons, Jacques Chirac, that "Europe owes as much to Islam as it does to Christianity." This is nonsense, and it is an assault on history itself. (The same impulse can be seen, in parvo, when the State Department announces, without a shred of evidence, none whatsoever, not in Madariaga, not in Samuel Eliot Morison, not in Paolo Emilio Tavgiani, nowhere, nowehre, the notion that "Muslims" formed part of Columbus' crew. Does history matter? This is not getting close to the Communists' rewriting of history -- it is exactly the Stalinist, or Nazi, rewriting of history. Who allowed this?).
Now, despite the transparent attempts of some local Muslims to distance themselves from the demands in Iraq (and the only reason for that it is too early to make the move, as will happen eventually), it is clear that the Jihad is worldwide. American foreign policy did not require France to ban the hijab; the French state, and French culture, insofar as it still exists, did. American foreign policy did not require the murderous attacks on Christians in northern Nigeria, southern Philippines, East Timor, the Moluccas, Pakistan, or Iraq itself. American foreign policy does not explain the murder of Buddhists in Thailand and Indonesia. American foreign policy does not explain the disrupted plans to blow up a Christmas fair in Strasbourg four or five years ago. No, eventually the obvious answer will be impossible to deny, and then where will the French elite be, and how will they explain to their population, the terrible dangber they have allowed in to their country, even as they continued to strike silly attitudes against the entirely well-wishing, benevolent, and even protective Americans. Every generation, every century, brings its fresh idiocy. Those who thought it would have ended with the inability early on to see what was wrong with Bolshevism, and Stalin's mass murders, or with the Nazis -- for both the Communists and the Nazis could have been stopped in their bloody tracks early on -- now see that they were wrong. Along comes the wherewithal to revive, and make potent, a world-wide Jihad (the ideology was always there), and presto, magic, the same stupidity, the same bovine refusal to see what is right in front of your face, the same tongue-tied inability to clearly articulate the problem, the same fear and paralysis, can be seen everywhere. It won't make the Jihad go away. It will do nothing to make us safer. It will only increase the long-run danger.
Whoa...the French stood up to somebody besides America? Maybe the Clue-Batting is sinking in.
epg:
The headscarf is a political symbol that is being used in Europe and here in North America as the beginnings of instituting Islamic law.
Quite agree.
I have posted several times on LGF for over a year, that this hijab issue is not a trivial one. The hijab ban hits Islam where it hurts most ie the control of women's minds. Without this control of women, Islam is dead in the water.
The most important and valuable soldiers of Islam are not the male Jihadis, but women. Muslim women are the frontline soldiers of Islam in the West, as they were in Bosnia. However, women are also the Achilles heel of Islam. Give young Muslim girls in the West, the legal power that they do not have to, or cannot wear the hijab in school and you start a chain reaction that continues into the home and community. The elders or enforcers of Islam then have no choice, then leave with the young girl for a Muslim country, as is happening now, or do the 'honourable thing' ie kill her. In the first case, good riddance and in the second they find themselves in the sights of the Law.
The French hijab ban in school is really hitting where it hurts most; ie at the Islamic control of the minds of young Muslim girls. That is why there is so much Islamic anger throughout the world with France. Th French have effectively handed an instrument or keys to freedom from Islam, to the very people ie women, that Islam wishes to keep in chains.
I sincerely hope that France will not give in to this blackmail. In fact I will be surprised if it does. France as a nation is far obstinate when it comes to what it considers as French.
Now I would like to see the UK and US also come up with some restrictions on Islamic rituals, that are dissonant with the foundings of the Secular state. But they are busy fighting externally, while the real war is at home.
There are a couple of issues that Islam is really vulnerable on
1. Women's emancipation- if Islam really does go for it, Islam is dead. If it doesnt then its dead in the lonbg run.
2. Gay and lesbian rights.
Both these are issues that can destroy Islam.
The Muslims will say that the hijab is a show of a woman's independence. This is bullshit. This is to cover them up, and the liars that say otherwise are simply doing what they're told.
Who would want to wear those hot, sweaty hoods anyway? After much trash, I commend France.
I fear the Islamic fundamentalist movement as I fear the Christian fundamentalist movement here in the U.S.
May a god help us all !
Moshegirl...what is it exactly you fear about Fundamentalist Christians?? I know what is to be feared from Fundamentalist Muslims, but I have heard this about "fearing Fundamentalist Chrisitans" before.....Like what?
Can you point to some examples, incidents, Sermons,Threats? I would like to know, since in my whole 20 years of reading the Bible A fundamentalist Christian lives on the principle of "love thy neighbour", but a Fundamentalist Muslim seems to live on the principle of "Jihad".
So I would like to know exactly what you fear about Fundamentalist Christians?? Please.
Perhaps moshegirl read Nicholas Kristof NYT editorial comparing the Left Behind readers to Jihadists? Yes those pesky re-born Christians, a danger to society.
I would like to shake the recent trendy revisionist historians to take note: Virginia was first settled by Christians, so was Massachusetts, by the Puritans, whose only "sin" (in England) was to read the Bible in their living rooms, and share discussion, a very real threat to the English Church. The Puritans founded Harvard University in 1634, while bears still roamed the campus. Yale & Princeton, too were founded by Christians. Children learned Latin (Boston Latin School founded by Puritans in 1630) in order to interpret ancient texts and the Bible was part of standard curriculum.
The fruits of such beginnings? Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Abigail Adams, Paul Revere, George Washington, shall I go on?
I don't remember who said that every movement must begin with a first step. But that is what may have happened in France. Many in France must know that they have behaved cowardly in the face of the growing influence of Radical Islam in France. This was one reason they supported keeping Sadaam Hussein in power in Iraq at any cost.
But somehow the appeasing French politicans came up with the idea of banning the veil. The point being that they did something--anything. And now that is challenged by the Islamofascists in the way that they are accustomed to challenging things they don't like--by threatening to kill people.
This was posted in http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12358_French_Muslims_Whine#c0153
#151 livinginfrance
I watching the French TV news station LCI at this moment. Needless to say, they are very concerned about the reporters being held hostage. It's the USA's fault.
The headlines..
-The government has announced that they will not give in to the demands.
-French Arabs are being interviewed, expressing solidarity with the reporters who expose the American war crimes. (I swear it's true.) There's a lot of that going round.
-Demonstrations by "Arab and Islamic intellectuals" and "French intellectuals" are planned for this afternoon.
There's a debate going on "Irak : Pourquoi La France en Otage?"
-Some participants are agruing about the veil, non-denominationalism, role of Islam in France. The Arabs are especially long winded and defensive.
-French neutrality has been deemed lost. The Arab world hates the French for banning the veil from public schools.
Fretting and blaming extremists.
-The Americans waging war, France suffers the consequence, the middle east is just across the border (duh)
An admission that French didn't do Iraq because of its huge indigenous Arab population.
Sorry, I can't watch this crap any more, oh yea, lots of reports on the demonstrations in NYC.
I'm going back to listening to Queen The Platinum Collection.
It's pretty good.
I have to wonder if this time extension on killing them isn't a bit of desperation, seeing that the government they thought was in their hands, suddenly backed them down.
Moshegirl~ How about those fundamentalist Christian hate words? 'God Bless You!' 'Praise Jesus!' 'Merry Christmas!'
I think some of you are being a little hard on Moshegirl. Remember the rantings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the hours following the horror of 9/11? Saying it was God's will because we're such wicked people in America, blah blah blah? Those who saw things rationally suspected Islamic terrorists immediately.
"The French people as a whole, all origins and religions together, are together behind our compatriots Christian and Georges. Together we demand that they be set free."
Is that so? Take a guess at what the numbers would look like if an opinion poll were taken of the muslim and non-muslim French population asking where their sympathies lie?
The essential misunderstanding of the French government, and all who think similarly, is that they can integrate that which seeks to dominate and not be integrated. The hijab issue is but the tip of the iceberg.
If the French govt gives in to blackmail, a lot changes. But if it doesn't, nothing much changes, a couple of months down the line, it will all be back to business as usual.
Asia times at atimes.com reported recently that a large russian arms contingent is being sent to iraq to help the americans. Noqw thats good news which might change something. Now that the Russians are already getting the thicvk end of the jehadi stick, the have nothing to lose or fear from such deployment.
kafira;
Falwell & Robertson spoke of God allowing the happenings of 9/11/01. We've become a sleepy, pleasure-seeking generation. Perhaps this was a wake-up call to us becoming a nation without God's protection & blessings.
The God of Israel allowed Nebuchadnezzer to defeat Jerusalem and take Jewish captives to Babylon. Why? Complacency, materialism, pride, a list of sins...prophets were not popular thousands of years ago, and are not popular today.
We know who (Jihadists) attacked us. But are we aware as to why God allowed it? That is the question.
Daughter of Patriots:
If I did not know as much about Calvinism as I do, I'd swear you were a Muslim for saying that this is a "wake up call" for America to exist without God's blessing. To say that "God willed it" is to deny the Christian concepts of free will in favor of Calvinistic poison and the doctrines of predestination.
If I were in a clearer state of mind, I'd ask you to comment a little about Anne Hutchinson, the Puritan woman who challenged leaders of her faith and who was condemned to exile for her audacity. She was murdered by Indians in the wilderness, who did not know her philosophy was different from that of her kinsmen, (But, ah, I forget! You admire the Puritans! You should know that there are mullahs in Iran who, when searching for something good to say about the U.S., say "I admire the Puritans. Too bad the Americans have gone astray."