New Info Campaign Tells French Citizens How To Be Burqa Vigilantes

Thanks, Bruce. I hope you don’t see much vigilantism as feared. But do people realize a possible irony if compared to what happens in really restrictive Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. where similar vigilantism does exist to enforce local customs / laws …which the Western countries try to avoid? (okay, long sentence, sorry about that) No insult at French situation intended; the need to make everyone conform is universal, alas, wish it weren’t so. So kudos for your caution at how things can easily get out of hand. Hope you have local news links to share with more thoughts. Thanks for your thoughts.

As usually, Americanized people make a complete confusion about secularism in France . Religions have always supported the power and the wealth . Realizing this, French revolutionaries have tried by all means to maintain religions out of public sphere . It’s a political goal, not a religious one .
Looking what happens in mentally delayed countries, as Islamist states and USA, we all can see how extremist religious always support first money makers and second violence,.
In France, the church using Sarkozy is gaining more and more presence and cash . Catholic church opposes to burqa wearing BTW . It’s true the ban on burqa is annoying, but the actual extension of religion out of privare sphere is a lot more dangerous .

As an American, I take a small amount of offense to @PhilDange’s comment. We may be misunderstanding the intricacies of France’s need to separate religion and politics, but that doesn’t make us “confused as usual.” I’m starting to get the idea that the rest of the world thinks American’s are simple dullards that just thump bibles against our chests all day. This could not be further from the truth. May I remind all “foreigners” that dumb people exist in every country.

In any case, this law seems strange to me on a discriminatory basis, but after reading Phil’s comment it does seem to have thought behind it. It makes me wish America was not so prone to falling for rhetoric and that the separation of Church and State wasn’t just a catch phrase.

Well, thank God I’m not one of those 350 women in France who wears a burqa!

The basis of French republic, which are every year slowly destroyed by all our governments is the “Republic one and indivisble ” . It’s meant to ensure all citizens an equal treatment and equal rights, whatever their wealth, their birth, and in anecdotic fields, their race and religion .
This was done against aristocracy first, then ploutocracy .
As we noticed, the stock exchange thieves try by all means to destroy working class guarantees . This idea of communautarism is an open door to introduce different rights, or simply to destroy all rights guaranted by the nation and divide France in a multiplicity of groups and individuals .
On a philosophical point of view, it makes sense, but on a political level it’s meant to eliminate all the national regulations that allowed French working class to be treated better than in free market mafia lands . It’s easy for a boss to force a worker to accept any condition if there’s no law .
French working class has run a lot of fights from the XVIIIth century, and each time we’ve seen the church holding hand with the rich and the army . That’s why we kept this idea of strictly private affair concerning religions. Look what happens in the States, where so many people have no culture at all . Whom do the shouting religious ones support, if not extreme right, free market, military spendings, no taxes, no social welfare ?
This burqa thing is one of the many ways by which religious and money powers try to undo the French Republic . It’s not a surprise the criminal wealthy Catholic church support Muslims dullards in this matter . I know Islam well and this burqa bullshit is not in the Qoran, not more than inquisition was in the Gospels .
Religion today as yesterday is used as an opium for the uneducated .
PS Outside of America nobody gives a s… about this affair . In France nobody speaks about it . Religious questions are really seen as irrelevant in France, whereas pauperisation is not .

Thanks for your comment. Though I, too, tend to interpret phildange’s opening remark as suggesting outsiders somehow can’t fathom the reasoning and application of French secularism, I don’t contest its general thrust that many non-French observers–not just American–at some point become baffled with France’s strong stances on it. I’d add, however, that lots of French people themselves take issue with the manner secularism is currently being used as an excuse for public and state intervention into the affairs of Muslims–ie. the concern isn’t rooted in understanding France’s “laïcité”, but rather how it’s being used today, particularly vis-a-vis Muslims.

The ruling right, for example, is currently back-peddling from its earlier suggestion that the widely decried national debate on French identity that wrapped up last year be rehashed all over again in the more explicit form of a “debate on Islam in France”. But because that suggestion has been criticized as motivated by the political gains to be made by casting an accusing glance at France’s Muslims (Hi, Marine Le Pen!), French conservatives are now recasting the discussion as one “on secularism”. Fair enough, but what are the main points being advanced within that? A state role in training imams, and a requirement that prayers be conducted in French, rather than Arabic, among others. Nothing in it about the state having a say in how priests or rabbis should be schooled, or demanding Latin and Hebrew be scrapped from services. No bans on Buddhist monks traipsing around in public in their robes, or nuns having to lose their habits when they take the Métro. Why the focus on Muslims?

Point being, the 1905 law establishing state secularism (it had nothing to do with revolutionaries…) was conceived as a prophylactic between the state and its organs, on the one hand, and private religious matters on the other. The goal was to keep the state from diffusing one religious message or agenda over others (notably Catholicism via public schools), and prevent public policy from invading upon or even seeking to influence individual spiritual choice. Exactly the opposite is happening with the burqa law.

I agree with much of what phildange says (including his view that we’d probably all be a lot better off if private faith were kept as far from public debate and policy-making as possible. Is it even feaasible for an American presidential candidate to run for office without banging on about his or her religion at some point? Is it any surprise that the most ferocious opponent of Barack Obama continuing beginning onslaughts with suggestions he’s a Muslim–as if that’d be a problem? My complaint is I have to know he’s religious at all). However, I take issue with the contention the current drive in France to claw back Islam’s influence in particular is merely a consequence of wider, generic secularism. Instead, it’s actually the effort to break down the 106 year-old French wall be between state and private affairs in order to allow the former to regulate the latter in a way that mocks the 1905 law secularism is enshrined in.

A far more productive way of trying to all get along is identifying common points we can positively build on together, not squaring off and instructing people what they must stop doing–and right now–to be as we want them to be.

Don’t worry about dating yourself. Highlights uses the same tired Goofus and Gallant cartoons to this day. (And those stick people, too.)

Thanks for this enlightening and entertaining piece.

As you didn’t publish my previous post I guess all this is too much . Nevertheless Id like to ensure ” circuslzrd ” that Iknow all Americans are not Pallin’s followers . But I read so many lies and complete ignorant lines about the French I’m sort of angry .
To come back to the burqa bulls… we in France ( except 10% dumb ” fascist”) perfectly know it’s a gross diversion used by Sarkozy to create an event from nothing . That’s why I said we don’t care, and I’m sure no French ( except the 10% dumbasses ) will ever think to take a legal issue if they see a burqa .
It’s rather funny to see this ” government” acting in a secular way, when we remember Sarkozy’s declaration against laïcité after his election, when we see this ” government” recently increased again the amount of cash given to the Catholic school system .
But the burqa ban has another goal . The law forbides everything that could hide faces . And very often now in demonstations or riots, people wear balaclavas . This law authorizes policemen to arrest anybody from the very begining of such an event .
Once more under an Islamist pretext laws hampering a possible revolt are passed . Have I to mention the infamous ” Patriot Act “which deprives American citizens of fundamental rights though guaranted by the divine constituion ? Once more the Islamists are accomplices for the wealthy power. Have I to recall that Bush’s family and Ben Laden’s family have been friends for decades ? Ossama’s elder brother belongs to the dark and discret ” Carlyle” group, as well as the first President Bush ?
All religious are connected together, and curiously always with the rich . You can understand nearly nobody in France cares of those religious subjects that seem so vital to our American friends . We really have other things to worry about in those increasing poverty times .

Agree with virtually everything you say, and suspect we’re coming from the same place (even geographically). I’ll therefore hold off commenting on all the points on which we concur.

The one caveat I would make regardings the law banning all face covering (something my blog post note). As you know, that widened interdiction was a result of it having become obvious to the original law’s sponsors that banning the burqa alone (as first intended) would be deemed unconstitutional, and provoke international law suits for violating civil liberties and rights treaties France is a signatory to. It is, therefore, a legal Trojan horse the burqa ban was tucked away in. We won’t see cops (or anyone else) writing up people whose faces are obscured unless they’re in burqas, amid unruly protests, or in the banlieue. We won’t even see the law being applied in the kops of the Parc des Princes when neo-Nazi PSG fans cover their faces while giving Nazi salutes. I mean, the PSG is Sarkozy’s favorite club after all..

After some police acts amid demonstrations from last october, I see easily coming arrests for balaclava wearing . In Lyons they blocked peaceful teenagers in a large place, blocking all issues and they prevented them from going away for 8 hours . This is against the law and was obviously made to arouse violence and give a pretext . Many cops from the BAC are commonly disguised as strikers and create incidents . I watched footages taken on mobile phones following rioters who in the end climb quietly into police buses .
Such authorities won’t apply the law against football brainless skinheads, but they will use it IF the power is by anyway threatened . They want now set thousands of cameras in France’s streets, although many reports have shown this doesn’t help reducing criminality or terrorism We have official reports from England now about that, thanks to Whitehall bast…as my Welsh friend call them .
Another thing is the use of the word terrorist . In Nazi occupation, the Gestapo called the resistants terrorists .
Now our repressive system is very quick to call many forms of resistance terrorism . They started this in France, but of course in the States it’s commonly done, even against ecologists . Another example of the high utility of a bunch of Islamists for a totalitarian growing form of power . Specially when their people completely lack of political knowledge and history .