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And why? Because the French don't have the courage to say that the threat they face comes from the Muslim jihadists who want to make France over into an Islamic state. They don't have the courage to say that Islam contains within itself something that is qualitatively different from Christianity, Judaism, and all other religions, precisely since it contains — inherent within it — specific directions for the governance of states as well as individual and collective piety. Thus they don't have the courage to ban the headscarf alone, as a symbol of this will to subvert their government and society, without banning also Christmas Santas and crosses and the like.
From AP, with thanks to BHall and Susan:
PARIS - They arrived as they do every December: gaily wrapped gifts destined for children at a kindergarten in rural northern France.But this year, teachers unwrapped a few, took a look and sent all 1,300 packages back to City Hall. The presents were innocent, but strictly speaking, illegal: seasonal chocolates shaped like Christian crosses and St. Nicholas.
As Christmas approaches, France is awakening to the realization that a new law banning conspicuous religious symbols at schools — a measure used mainly to keep Muslim girls from wearing traditional Islamic head scarves to class — can cut both ways.
“It’s an unhealthy political affair. Absolutely regrettable,” said Andre Delattre, mayor of the northern town of Coudekerque-Branche, which has shipped the traditional chocolates to local schools for 11 years.
“What’s the point? It’s the children who are being penalized for this difference of opinion,” he said. “They’ve been deprived of a festive moment.”
Challenge to Christian imagery
The law, which took effect in September, bans overt symbols such as Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses at public schools.
More than a dozen teenage Muslim girls have been expelled from high schools for refusing to remove their scarves, along with three Sikh boys kicked out of a Paris-area school for wearing turbans.
But last week’s dispute over the chocolates was the first time the law — France’s response to what many perceive as a rise in Muslim fundamentalism — has been used to challenge Christian imagery.
Posted by Robert at December 14, 2004 4:11 AM
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Apparently, they're trying to defeat Islamic radicalism, but refusing to admit the problem is Islam, not radicalism.. so they manage to annoy Christians and Atheists, but not much more.
Posted by: bastardos![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 14, 2004 4:57 AM
The Banning of Santa Claus always amazes me.
And yet there we have Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus)who was a Christian Bishop of Myra ,Turkey; A country made up of over 98 Pct. Muslim. And every year the Little city of Myra on the coast of the Mediteranean Sea celebrates the Life of Saint Nicholas with fanfare and parades.
Saint Nicholas remains where interned in Bari, Italy in the 11th century, but his generous call for giving as he practiced all his life is celebrated all over the world in a hundred different languages and in different religions.
Posted by: Mackie at December 14, 2004 9:22 AM
Since Turkey no longer has any Turks (they all intermarried), they are Greek. And that means that Saint Nick is their patron saint.
Posted by: Ibn Rushd at December 14, 2004 11:44 AM
Waleed Aly makes an interesting point about the PC anti-Christmas nonsense going around:
"This is where political correctness loses the plot; what purports to inspire tolerance instead inspires hostility and intolerance. Diverse, vibrant and tolerant societies are created by allowing eclectic cultural and religious expressions, celebrations included, to flourish. You don't achieve that by surrendering a culture, replacing it with bland meaninglessness.
Denying the Christianity in Christmas or, worse, doing away with it altogether helps no one. This is not multiculturalism. It is anti-culturalism."
Posted by: Mike at December 14, 2004 12:18 PM
The French law seems determined to be based on non-reality. The problem is not the Sikhs, nor the Jews. The problem is not that in a country with a culture and civilization that is bound up with Christianity, including those who attempted to find fault or even escape from it (so that Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert are all part of the Christian history of France) and with the "elder brother" (as the Pope called it) of Christianity, Judaism. If Islam's adherents were akin, say, from Hindu or Buddhist immmigrants, there would be no problem. But they are not. And they are not because Islam is a very different belief-system from all those that characterize those other sets of beliefs found in major religions. The shared monotheism, the business about the "three abrahamic faiths," is all trivial. You have far less to fear from, and far more in common with, a Hindu worshipper of, say, Ganesha the elephant-headed god, than you, as a Christian or a Jew, do with your Muslim "fellow monotheist." During all those Muslim-Jewish and Muslim-Christian dialoges, and all that interfaith racket business organized in order to soothe Infidels, and inveigle them, and use them, keep that clearly in mind.
But this is some baby being thrown out with the bathwater of Muslim symbols. The French, not knowing how to craft legislation which will frankly recognize not a general problem (there is no general problem) but the specific problem of Islam, seems hellbent on denying even such homely pleasures as Christmas cookies in the shape, not unsurprisingly, of Christian-connected images. This is denying one's own history, one's own beliefs or perhaps the gentle recognition of the beliefs of one's ancestors. Why should this be done? So that assorted imams shut up?
Why?
Posted by: Hugh at December 14, 2004 1:18 PM
The French law seems determined to be based on non-reality. The problem is not the Sikhs, nor the Jews. The problem is not that in a country with a culture and civilization that is bound up with Christianity, including those who attempted to find fault or even escape from it (so that Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert are all part of the Christian history of France) and with the "elder brother" (as the Pope called it) of Christianity, Judaism. If Islam's adherents were akin, say, from Hindu or Buddhist immmigrants, there would be no problem. But they are not. And they are not because Islam is a very different belief-system from all those that characterize those other sets of beliefs found in major religions. The shared monotheism, the business about the "three abrahamic faiths," is all trivial. You have far less to fear from, and far more in common with, a Hindu worshipper of, say, Ganesha the elephant-headed god, than you, as a Christian or a Jew, do with your Muslim "fellow monotheist." During all those Muslim-Jewish and Muslim-Christian dialogues, and all that interfaith racket business organized in order to soothe Infidels, and inveigle them, and use them, keep that clearly in mind.
But this is some baby being thrown out with the bathwater of Muslim symbols. The French, not knowing how to craft legislation which will frankly recognize not a general problem (there is no general problem) but the specific problem of Islam, seems hellbent on denying even such homely pleasures as Christmas cookies in the shape, not unsurprisingly, of Christian-connected images. This is denying one's own history, one's own beliefs or perhaps the gentle recognition of the beliefs of one's ancestors. Why should this be done? So that assorted imams shut up?
Why?
Posted by: Hugh at December 14, 2004 1:18 PM
Our culture going down the gurgler!
Wether you are atheist, nihilist, rationalist, commie or muzzie :
This is our culture, this is our tradition!
Don't mess with it, it is not negotiable!
This is the society you live in and these are our values!
If you can't respect that then why do you want to live here?
(If you can't respect that you shouln't be here....)
Posted by: Terminator at December 14, 2004 6:39 PM
Will the U. S. be summoned by the French to save their country, again? Would the U.S. try to help the French? The answer is no. The French are too blind to truth and too weak to fight.
Posted by: flameon1 at December 16, 2004 3:54 PM
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