Posted on 07/18/2004 12:30:32 PM PDT by Starve The Beast
"Show up in the clothes you choose to wear."
In a direct challenge to the French government, that is the advice one prominent Muslim group in France is giving to young Muslim girls concerning the law, passed last March, prohibiting the wearing of any religious garb in French public schools.
In a letter "to the Muslims of France", the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, is promising to support Muslim female students legally and educationally in case of expulsion, if they show up back at school this September wearing their banned head scarves. In a case that became famous worldwide, two Turkish girls attending a French public school were expelled last June for refusing to remove their scarves, causing a furor in France on both sides of the religious argument.
For its part, the UIOF is made up of about 200 Muslim associations and is described as being one of the principal pillars of the French Council of the Muslim Religion, the national Muslim umbrella organization for France. By its uncompromising stance, the UIOF is directly challenging the French government's commitment to keep French public schools secular. In response to this challenge, the French Education Minister, Francois Fillon, said in a recent television interview he will personally keep watch on the situation.
"There will be no exception," he said. "The Republic will be firm."
And Fillon is going to need all the firmness he can muster. The UIOF is planning to take the law to the European court for human rights. The French Council of the Muslim Religion is also protesting, saying the law violates "the right and liberty of young Muslims to exercise their religious freedoms."
A member of the FCMR's commission, Thomas Milcent, a French convert to Islam, is advising dissenters to take more direct action against the prohibition, which officially comes into effect in September. A French report says he has proposed on a popular Muslim website he runs that when a student is expelled for disobeying the law, all parents in that student's area, religious or not, should, in defense of "the rights of man", withdraw their children from their schools for a week to register their disapproval.
But the furor over the wearing of religious dress in public schools may be the least of the French education establishment's problems, according to a recently published report. Compiled by the Inspection General for National Education, the report describes an alarming trend in French schools and neighborhoods that is "rapid and recent", and which will lead to "Islamisation in a few years" of entire areas. This disturbing development, the report points out, is not just occurring in the Muslim ghettos, the 'banlieues', surrounding French cities, but in the France's rural towns as well.
Tensions between schools and Muslim children and parents, the report points out, already begin in the primary grades. Some children, it says, refuse to sing, dance or draw a face, saying it is against their religion. In one school the administration even had to set up a screen without a window where the female school director, twice a day, can observe Muslim mothers without their veils for recognition purposes before she will release their children to them.
In physical education and sports, the report says, some Muslim students prefer a zero or a punishment rather than take part or wear the regulation outfit. The parents are also often against school outings when it involves their daughters. And in some schools, the report states that girls put on their coats whenever they have to go to the blackboard, not wanting to arouse sexual interest.
Such occurrences, the report continues, is creating an ethnic and social segregation in the schools. One school, it states, even has one set of washroom taps for Muslim students and another for the French, while one Muslim leader even wanted separate gym change rooms, since "a circumcised (Muslim boy) cannot get undressed beside an impure."
Moderate Muslims, it seems, also suffer from this Islamisation. In some schools, they have to take part in the Ramadan fast to avoid pressures from fellow Muslim students, while some non-Muslim students join in the fast simply to belong.
Academic subjects are also areas for fundamentalist intolerance. Literary works such as Cyrano de Bergerac are judged to be too licentious, while Madame Bovary is too favorable for liberation of women. However, according to the report, history, geography and civic education constitute the "heart of the offensive." History, it says, is opposed "at every turn" by a religious version.
The schools themselves may also be contributing to this fundamentalist proselytism, according to the report's compilers. They write that they regret the hiring of Muslim zealots as big brothers and youth workers, while citing positions as primary school teachers, education assistants and lycee professors as being of special interest to them.
But the report's most disturbing and frightening aspect concerns Jewish students. Simply put, anti-Semitism is so strong in some French public schools that Jewish children cannot receive an education there.
In a way, the head scarf controversy symbolizes the state of French schools. The Islamist offensive has gone so far in French educational establishment, the scarf issue is simply a distracting case of too little too late.
France is totally ridiculous. They have made the bed and somebody else is kicking them out. 10 years tops and France will be engaging Islamic “insurgents” within Frances own territory.
HA! Firm as Jello! And Fillon is going to need all the firmness he can muster. The UIOF is planning to take the law to the European court for human rights. The French Council of the Muslim Religion is also protesting, saying the law violates "the right and liberty of young Muslims to exercise their religious freedoms."
Ahhh, the irony
I feel sorry for the French children.
Unfortunately there will be no end until these zealots are eliminated. The next 2 decades is going to get really, really ugly and make what we are going through now look tranquil.
I agree that there will be big trouble in France in Septmeber. I hope Chirac has lots of uncomfortable days. I hope the Muslims don't start this nonsense over here. How do the kids keep straight all the rules when they are just little kids?
Sounds to me like they have a real mess on their hands. Political correctness has led to this and now the french are having their culture systematically destroyed right before their eyes. They are becoming second class citizens in their own country.
Coming soon to a voucher-supported school near you.
There is nothing that strengthes a group like a cause. This is an us versus them phenomenon that will be good for the Islamics.
Yes, against the like of Greenpeace...
By the same time next year Fillion himself will be wearing a turban.
An open letter to France:
La Belle France(or whatever the heck the greeting is)
You must either deport ALL of the muslims and kill the ones who won't go, or you must learn to live under Sharia.
It's that simple.
Now, lets talk about something else
The French are in deep dieu-dieu!
But doesn't that same advice go for the USA too?
Over hundreds of years, France has tended to swing from the
far right to the far left, back and forth, like a pendulum.
Hopefully, faced with national extintion or perpetual civil war, they will once again swing to the far right and revoke the current edict of nantes (toleration = political correctness) and kick the moslems out.
Tao, your comments on this thread are intriguing, given that you (apparently) live close to the issue.
Would you care to give a short rebuttal to this article? This isn't sarcasm, nor hostility... the more thoughtful FReepers are genuinely curious as to the state of things in your neck of the woods, and would be interested in a firsthand account.
If you want to, please give us your perspective on the Islam issue in France.
I understand there aren't many children in France.
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