Who hates who?

by Feòrag

France: The ban on religious symbols in public schools has been controversial, and forces the liberal-minded to ask some important questions, as World on Fire notes:

So is it obvious that this legislation is merely state-sanctioned racism, an attempt by President Jacques Chirac to immunize himself from the right-wing anti-immigration appeals of Le Pen, the French Pat Buchanan? Or are there other issues, unique to French society, at work here? Are there legitimate reasons to enforce secularism in French public institutions? What does all this have to do with gang-rapes and family murders in the notorious slums of the cité in Paris? And, if this is obvious discrimination, how do we explain the incongruous fact that over 40% of French Muslim women support the ban?

Let's first listen to some of the Islamic women themselves. Across the street from an anti-secular demonstration organized by one of the imams of Paris, Sohaila Sharifa demonstrates for the new laws. The Islamic hijab is enslaving women, not freeing them, she told the Associated Press.

Anybody who says that it (the new law) is removing their religious freedoms, I say this: do you really believe a four-year-old is wearing the headscarf by choice? asks Rachida Ziouche, a journalist, and the daughter of an Algerian imam who has been living in exile in France since fleeing her homeland.

An essay from Open Democracy is quoted relating to an earlier decision not to ban the hijab:

It was on this basis that in 1989 the French Conseil d'Etat (supreme court) stated that the Muslim headscarf is not in itself an ostentatious symbol that could be banned from schools; it could only be forbidden if it were used as an instrument of pressure on girls who were reluctant to wear it.

(via The Sideshow).