A salve, or a grenade? From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
PARIS – Farida Verhaeghe-Amiri believes, with missionary zeal, that the Arabic version she has penned and recorded of France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise, will be a salve on the open wounds of French society.
With dozens of ghetto-like enclaves in Paris” suburbs “” inhabited mainly by immigrants from Muslim north Africa “” literally aflame with ethnic and class tension, the impulse to promote unifying civic values is surely welcome.
If for no other reason, the improbable fact that her Algerian grandfather carried to safety a wounded soldier in World War I named Charles de Gaulle “” founder of France’s Fifth Republic “” should earn her a hearing.
But Verhaeghe-Amiri’s dogged efforts to get an Arabic rendition of France’s Republican rallying cry officially recognized by various state ministries, while endorsed in some quarters, is seen in others as sheer provocation.