Dare to Speak: Islam vs Free Democracy and Free Enterprise (I)
Section 3.
The House of Islam’s Relationships with non-Islamic Nations France and Canada
France
France, which has long considered itself to be the cultural center of the world, is in the process of losing its own culture. The empire it created in North Africa during the 1800s and early 1900s encouraged Muslim immigration from an early date. This Islamic presence has grown to the point where it is strongly asserting its own identity. As described in the New York Times article, Muslims remaking old France:[1]
To enter the rue du Bon Pasteur in the heart of this Mediterranean port is to leave France. Or rather, it is to leave a France still fixed in the imagination of many, a land where French is spoken and the traditions of a secular society are enforced.
The rue du Bon Pasteur – the street of the Good Shepherd – is a haven that is owned, operated and populated by Arab Muslims. Arabic is spoken here. All the women cover their hair with scarves. Men in robes and sandals sit together in cafés where they reach out to Arabia via satellite television.
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The street reflects the political and social reality facing France. Demography has transformed the country, whose population is about 7 percent Arab and Muslim, the highest percentage in Western Europe. The figures are more striking in Marseille, where about 10 percent is Arab and about 17 percent Muslim.
“We are no longer a France of baguettes and berets, but a France of ‘Allah-hu Akbar’ and mosques,” said Mustapha Zergour, director of Radio Gazelle, a radio station geared to the Arab community…
Mustapha Zergour’s quote points out the distinction between “immigration” and “invasion.” When people immigrate, they want to become a part of their new country. When people invade, they want to take over.
What is the effect of Islam’s ascendancy in France? If Americans stopped bashing the French for a moment for not doing what Americans want, they would find that the proud French, loath to appear weak, are actually quite intimidated. In fact, as reported by United Press International, France has recently created an organization to help deal with its growing sense of fear:
France helps launch Muslim group
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI Religion Correspondent, December 19, 2002
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) — In France, where separation between religion and state is even more rigidly enforced than in the United States, a Muslim umbrella organization is about to be born with the active participation of the government.
Representatives of three leading Muslim groups — each linked to a foreign country — began a two-day seminar in the government-owned castle of Nainville-les-Roches, near Paris, in order to create a “French Muslim Council.”
If all goes well, this new institution will eventually act as interlocutor between French Islam and civil authorities on the national and regional levels.
Islam is France’s second-largest religion, with between 4 and 5 million adherents.
Should they succeed, an extraordinary and sometimes almost desperate effort by a succession of interior ministers…will finally come to an end.
…the current interior minister…expressed the hope that a “French Islam with French-speaking imams” would emerge and “support values commensurate with the values of the Republic.”
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The problem is that…there is no…indigenous French Muslim clergy…Islam does not even possess a school of theology in this country.
Hence, future clerics are trained abroad, where often anti-Western currents prevail. Of the approximately 1,000 imams in France, only 9 percent are French citizens.
Unfortunately, France’s interior minister appears to misunderstand the problem. Does he believe that, by training Islamic clerics in France, somehow the Koran will become compatible with the secular values of the French Republic? On the contrary, it is likely that, by opening Islamic religious schools in France, France could exacerbate its troubles.
France’s growing fear is betrayed by its behavior on the international scene. As a French professor told an American reporter during the reporter’s visit to France: [2]
“The reason President Chirac supported the U.S. in the 1991 Gulf War was because there were far fewer Arabs in France at that time. Twelve years later, with such a huge Arab population, it’s not politically feasible to support the U.S. over Iraq,” a professor of politics…explained to us …
“My students say Americans are only in Iraq for the oil, for financial interests. I ask them, ‘Who does the most business in Iraq? France! Don’t you think France has a financial interest in defending Iraq?’…
French Muslims sense this fear, and it emboldens them. A subtle way to assert Muslim power is to have schoolgirls begin a widespread practice of wearing headscarves to school, a practice which had formerly been unusual. The French, unnerved at this peaceful but visible display of power, decided to make a general rule, aimed at Muslims, which banned all displays of religious articles in public schools. [3] This action only further revealed French weakness, because it focused on fashion accessories but ignored the deeper issue of Islamic ascendancy.
The Islamic world’s reaction to this superficial law was as strong as it was extreme:
Thousands protest French ban on scarves[4]
By Masha MacPherson, Associated Press, February 14, 2004
PARIS — Thousands of people, many of them women wearing head scarves, marched in France Saturday to protest a law banning the Islamic coverings and other religious apparel in public schools.
Protesters said the law was discriminatory and would prevent Muslim girls from attending school.
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Police estimated that 2,600 people marched in the southern city of Lyon and another 1,300 in Paris, just two of a dozen cities where demonstrations were planned…
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Saturday’s protests were the latest in a series in France against the measure, which would also ban Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from public schools…
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French leaders hope the law will quell [the] debate over Islamic head scarves that has divided France since 1989, when two young girls were expelled from their school in Creil, outside Paris, for wearing the head coverings…
The bill stipulates that “signs and dress that conspicuously show the religious affiliation of students are forbidden” in public schools. It would not apply to students in private schools or in French schools abroad.
It is strange how a prohibition on head scarves could suddenly prevent Muslim girls from attending school when, for many years, Muslim girls had been attending school just fine without them.
The Islamic tendency to paint any constraint, no matter how trivial, as a life-or-death struggle against oppression is apparent in the following Associated Press article, which reveals that Muslims are willing to kill over a school dress code that applies only to public schools:
French Head Scarf Ban Underway[5]
PARIS, October 20, 2004
(AP) France has quietly begun expelling Muslim girls for wearing head scarves to public schools in defiance of a new law banning conspicuous religious symbols, treading carefully for fear of endangering two French hostages in Iraq.
The expulsions of at least five girls since Tuesday were the first since the law went into effect at the start of the academic year on Sept. 2. They were kept low-key because the French journalists’ captors had demanded the measure be abolished.
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“They have just destroyed my life,” 12-year-old Khouloud told Le Monde newspaper after she and another girl were expelled Tuesday from the Jean Mace middle school in Mulhouse.
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The kidnapping in Iraq of journalists Christian Chesnot and Christian Malbrunot, who entered their third month in captivity Wednesday, forced education authorities to tread softly…
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The small Sikh community in France, estimated at 5,000-7,000, has learned that turbans can also pose a problem. Three Sikh boys with turbans at a school in Bobigny, outside Paris, have been kept out of class since Sept. 2…
At least two valuable lessons come from these articles:
Many Muslims, like the girl quoted, were more concerned about schoolgirls’ headscarves, claiming that their lives were being destroyed, than the French hostages being held on their behalf, whose lives were in genuine danger.
By not dealing directly with the real problem (that Muslims are not assimilating into French society and are hostile to it), French legislators have created unanticipated difficulties for members of their society who are not a threat, such as the Sikhs.
Despite obvious and widespread cases of Islamic hostility inside France, the weeks of Muslim rioting in November 2005 were almost completely misinterpreted in the U.S., thanks to the press’s apparent unwillingness to report that the rioters were primarily Muslim. In U.S. news coverage, reporters portrayed the riots in terms of American political agendas. They presented the riots as responses to racial prejudice against Africans, mistreatment of immigrants, unemployment, and ghetto poverty, and seasoned their reports with a healthy dose of antagonism toward the French. The fact that virtually all of the rioters were Muslim was scarcely mentioned.
Sadly, the American press corps encouraged readers to turn their backs on the French, with headlines such as Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition[6] and France burns for its sins.[7] They obscured a key element of this civil disorder and avoided alerting Americans to the possibility that France’s troubles with Islam may one day be their own.
The native French are afraid, and with good reason. Instead of bickering with them, perhaps the U.S. should seek ways to join with them to defend the freedoms we share and cherish.
Canada
Canada has always worked hard to encourage immigration to its chilly climes. In their efforts, Canadian policy makers encouraged a flood of Muslim immigration. As of February, 2005, there were about 579,600 Muslims in Canada, representing about 2% of the population. [8]
Despite this relatively low percentage, Islam has already begun to assert itself politically by trying to incorporate Shari’ah into Canada’s legal system. Surprisingly, this shocked and dismayed many female Muslims, as the following Toronto Star article relates:
Protest rises over Islamic law…Muslim women’s groups vow to stop sharia courts
Lynda Hurst, Feature Writer, June 8, 2004
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Until last fall, no Western jurisdiction allowed the 1,400-year-old body of religious law called sharia to take root inside its secular legal system.
Then the province of Ontario quietly approved its use. Under the 1991 Arbitration Act, sharia-based marriage, divorce and family tribunals run by the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice are expected to begin later this year. The move has so horrified many Muslim women that they’re vowing to stop the tribunals before they start.
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“When you come to Canada, you are a human being with full rights,” says Jonathan Schrieder, a Toronto civil litigation lawyer. Allowing sharia here — even a “Canadianized” version, as its proponents claim — “will subject Muslim women to a huge injustice.”
Many others are appalled that Ontario is setting a precedent that other secular nations will be pressured to follow.
To writer Sally Armstrong, whose work has taken her to several Muslim countries, Ontario’s move is a “human rights catastrophe.”
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“Sharia law doesn’t work as it is supposed to work in a single country,” says Armstrong. “Why does Ontario’s justice system think it will work here?”
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The National Association of Women and the Law is preparing a research paper on how sharia, by definition, undermines Canada’s equality rights.
This protest by female Muslims underscores the point that many people who call themselves Muslims are actually people who converted for the sake of marriage and did not understand what they got themselves into. It is inconceivable that a believing Muslim could be against Shari’ah.
Fortunately, Canada realized the danger of the precedent it set and rescinded the power of Shari’ah Courts in September 2005. This wise move does not, however, solve the problem that Islam presents; it only defers dealing with it until a later time when Muslims are a larger proportion of the population.
REFERENCES FOR SECTION 3:
[1] Muslims Remaking Old France, by Elaine Sciolino, The New York Times, April 10, 2003.
[2] Politics aside, they still love us in France, by Bernadette Malone, Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader, December 7, 2003.
[3] French Cabinet adopts bill banning Muslim head scarves in school, Associated Press, USA Today, January 28, 2004.
[4] Thousands protest French ban on scarves, by Masha McPhereson, Associated Press, Boston Globe, February 14, 2004.
[5] French Head Scarf Ban Underway, by Elaine Ganley, Associated Press, CBS News, October 20, 2004.
[6] Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition, by Molly Moore, Washington Post, November 6, 2005.
[7] France burns for its sins, by Carol Matlack, BusinessWeek, News Analysis, November 7, 2005.
[8] Muslims in America, National Geographic magazine, February 2005.
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