Muslims Second Class Citizen in France (Religion of Whine Alert)

Arab News ^ | Oct. 8, 2003 | Tom Heneghan

[Alouette]

PARIS, 8 October 2003 — France’s five million Muslims do not enjoy the same rights as the country’s other citizens and might need positive discrimination efforts to reach an equal footing, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.

French Muslims, mostly of North African Arab origin, face prejudice at work and a shortage of mosques and other religious services in comparison to other religions, he told an official committee reviewing the law separating church and state.

“If you’re named Mohammed, your resume isn’t the last to be thrown into the waste basket,” he remarked, adding there were almost no Muslims in any senior positions in France.

“It’s a fact that our compatriots of the Muslim faith do not have the same rights as believers in the other great religions.”

Sarkozy, who last year helped Muslim organizations found a national council to represent their interests, broke a French taboo by suggesting that positive discrimination might help integrate Muslims more fully into French life.

“The term ‘positive discrimination’ doesn’t scare me,” he said, arguing that favoring Muslims might be the only way to create role models for the community. France has traditionally shunned anything that smacks of ethnic profiling.

Paris created the commission to consider how to integrate Europe’s largest Islamic minority at a time when young Muslims — sometimes encouraged by fundamentalists — appear to identify more with their faith than their French citizenship.

Sarkozy said Muslims did not have enough mosques, places in public cemeteries and chaplains in schools, often because officials from the mostly Catholic majority in this country of 60 million used the law to discriminate against them.

Noting that many towns refused building permits for mosques on technical grounds, he remarked: “We’ve spent more energy using zoning laws to block the building of mosques than we have to protect our seashores.”

Muslims also had no schools in France to train imams, or prayer leaders, forcing congregations to recruit men abroad who often speak no French and sometimes preach extremism.

Sarkozy also criticized French intellectuals who single out Islam for discriminating against women, saying this was a problem in all religions. “I don’t see a lot of women in the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in France,” he observed.

The minister told the committee that a tougher law that would bar women and girls from wearing traditional Muslim headscarves when they attend school or work in a state office was “neither necessary nor useful nor opportune.”

The current law, which dates back to 1905, already rules out the wearing of religious symbols in public offices and schools, he said, and a tougher new one would only isolate Muslims and encourage them to take a more radical stand.

Police statistics showed there were now far fewer cases of girls refusing to take off their headscarves in state schools than a decade ago, he said, citing figures of 1,123 such cases in 1994 compared to only a few hundred now.

[Alouette]

FRmail me to be added or removed from this pro-Israel ping list.

[Lazamataz]

There is a determined effort at the highest levels of French government to turn the nation into an Islamic nation.

[samtheman]

I love your alert (Religion of Whine). Great!

[sticker]

"Sarkozy said Muslims did not have enough mosques, places in public cemeteries and chaplains in schools, often because officials from the mostly Catholic majority in this country of 60 million used the law to discriminate against them."

This must be changed, Muslims MUST be given more places in cemeteries worldwide.

[Steely Glint]

France needs to deport all 5 million of them.

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[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

France = old name for North Algeria.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I don't get it!?

Muslims discriminate against and kill non-Muslims in THEIR countries.

But when they move to some other country they expect full citizenship.

Religion of psychos alert.

[adx]

Religion of psychos alert.

Very ballsy ones too. Way I figure it, if the French are dumb enough to do this, the sand-demons are smart enough to take advantage of it. So who would really be to blame?

[A. Pole]

Sarkozy said Muslims did not have enough mosques, places in public cemeteries and chaplains in schools, often because officials from the mostly Catholic majority in this country of 60 million used the law to discriminate against them.

How many churches are in Saudi Arabia?

[knighthawk]

Let's talk about it after Christians and Jews have become first-class citizens in their countries.

Oh, wait. It's a part of their religion to see us as dhimmi's, second class people.

[TADSLOS]

The Arabs own the streets of Paris from what I could see when visiting there in 1999.

[malakhi]

How many churches are in Saudi Arabia?

Presumably sufficient for all the Christians they have allowed to immigrate there and publicly practice their faith. </sarcasm>

[HamiltonJay]

“It’s a fact that our compatriots of the Muslim faith do not have the same rights as believers in the other great religions.”

Might have something to do with fact Islam is not a great religion... practiced by numerous people yes, but there is nothing great about it.

[struwwelpeter]

But their business practices are 100% French.

[MissAmericanPie]

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, another sleezy politician gropeing around for a voting bloc at the expense of his nation. He must be taking a lesson from American politicians.

[HamiltonJay]

Well they'll definately have no problem raping you if you are woman and don't appear muslim in Paris... along with the rest of europe...

At least many of them won't have any problem with it... then their friends will burn down the courthouse after your convicted of the crime.

Islam is the world religion of Satan... I am more convinced of that daily.

[camas]

agree

[DonQ]

It is worth remembering that within living memory (about 40 years ago) France was fighting a terrorist revolt in Algeria and not everyone in France has forgiven the Arabs for it. As for the lack of mosques and Islamic academies ... is that the responsibility or the fault of the French government??