Sarkozy defends Switzerland minaret ban

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Nicolas Sarkozy today voiced sympathy for Switzerland’s controversial decision to ban the building of Muslim minarets, calling on religious practitioners to avoid “ostentation” and “provocation” for fear of upsetting others.

The French president said he was surprised by the widespread criticism of the outcome of last week’s referendum in Switzerland when 57% voted to proscribe the building of new minarets in a country that has four, and is home to 400,000 Muslims.

Sarkozy’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, promptly denounced the Swiss decision last week, saying he was shocked and scandalised and calling for the ban to be reversed.

But writing in the Le Monde newspaper, Sarkozy defended the Swiss in arguing for the necessity of the contentious debate on national identity he has sponsored in France.

“How can you not be amazed at the reaction that this decision has produced in certain media and political circles in our own country,” Sarkozy said. “Instead of condemning the Swiss out of hand, we should try to understand what they meant to express and what so many people in Europe feel, including people in France.”

Guardian, 8 December 2009

France: chief rabbi urges more tolerance for Muslims in Europe

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Bob Pitt

GILLES BERNHEIM, GRAND RABBIN DE FRANCE, AU TALK ORANGE-LE FIGARO France’s chief rabbi said Europe must change its attitude about Islam.

Rabbi Gilles Bernheim said a Swiss vote Nov. 29 forbidding the construction of minarets alongside mosques was a clear sign that Western European leaders had “failed” at building tolerance toward Muslims, and he called on “all religions” as well as political leaders to increase interfaith dialogue.

“Today we need to act so that Europeans, and not just the Swiss, change their opinion about Islam,” he wrote in an editorial published Wednesday in the French daily Le Figaro.

He compared the law aimed at minarets to past sanctions against European Jews. “The problem” with the Swiss vote “is the discrimination that it introduces by authorizing the construction of church steeples and tall buildings by all other religions except Islam”. Bernheim noted that in the past, Jews were forbidden to construct synagogues taller than churches.

JTA, 3 December 2009

Tariq Ramadan addresses French ‘burqa’ inquiry

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Tariq Ramadan 5 One of Europe’s leading Muslim scholars, Tariq Ramadan, told French lawmakers Wednesday they were failing to address the real problems facing French Muslims by debating whether to ban the burqa. Swiss-born Ramadan told a parliamentary inquiry holding hearings on the wearing of the full Islamic veil that a law banning the practice would simply force Muslim women who cover themselves to “stay at home”.

“This debate surrounding the burqa bothers me,” Ramadan told the panel. “Because in the end, this is not the question that needs to be raised. The real problem is that when you have a name that is a bit Arab-sounding, or Muslim by affiliation, you are not going to get a job or you are not going to get an apartment.”

The decision to invite Ramadan to testify before the panel had stirred much controversy with some of the lawmakers opposed to his appearance and accusing him of promoting hardline Islam

A professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, Ramadan warned lawmakers that a law banning the burqa would be counter-productive and urged them to instead work with French Muslim leaders for change. “All of this commotion over the burqa does tell ordinary citizens that there is something wrong with Islam and leads to stigmatisation,” he said.

Khaleej Times, 2 December 2009

French right campaigns against Marseille mosque

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Notre Dame de la Garde, an elegant Roman Catholic basilica, has stood for 150 years on a promontory just south of Marseille’s Old Port, looking down protectively as fishermen push out to the sea and symbolizing the irrepressible spirit of this fabled Mediterranean city.

But a new and very different symbol is scheduled to rise soon on another promontory, this one on the north side of the Old Port. It is the $30 million Grand Mosque of Marseille, a place for the metropolitan region’s more than 200,000 Muslims to gather and worship and a dramatic reminder of the Islamic heritage that is grafting itself onto France’s cultural landscape.

The mosque, which at 92,500 square feet will be France’s largest, has become an emblem for the many native French people who feel uncomfortable with an immigrant population that, as its numbers rise, increasingly seeks to live by its own religious and cultural rules rather than assimilate into France’s long Christian tradition.

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Sarkozy repeats call for ban on veil

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Nicolas_Sarkozy President Nicolas Sarkozy has reiterated his belief that the burqa, the head-to-toe veil worn by some Muslim women, has no place in secular France.

“France is a country where there is no place for the burqa, where there is no place for the subservience of women,” he said in a speech on French national identity. He was speaking on Thursday in the Alpine town of La Chapelle en Vercors in his first intervention in a country-wide debate begun last month on what it means to be French.

Public meetings are due to take place in some 450 government offices around the country, involving campaigners, students, parents and teachers, unions, business leaders and French and European lawmakers. The debate will end with a conference early next year on the twin questions of “what it means to be French today” and “what immigration contributes to our national identity.”

The Socialist opposition has accused the government of pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment to shore up support on the Right ahead of regional elections in March. It has said the debate risks alienating France’s large immigrant communities. But Mr Sarkozy on Thursday defended the “noble debate” and said: “Those who do not want this debate are afraid of it.”

Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2009

Update: See “France will oppose but not ban burqas”, Reuters, 13 November 2009

Further update: See also Tom Heneghan’s piece, “France retreats from burqa ban plan amid burst of hot air”, at FaithWorld, 13 November 2009

Martin Sullivan | in

France,

Hijab,

Right Wing,

Secul

‘Jack Straw started all this’

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Bob Pitt

“Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP’s surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at least, he was successful.

“The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said ‘the veil is an invitation to rape’; the Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson said women who wear ‘nose bags on their faces … have no place on British streets’; the then shadow home secretary David Davis argued that Muslims were encouraging voluntary apartheid.

“And 16-year-old Daniel Coine insisted he felt threatened: ‘I’d go further than Jack Straw and say they should all take off their veils. You need to see people face to face. It’s weird not knowing who it is you’re passing in the street, specially late at night when someone might jump you.’

“And so Muslim women passed, in the public imagination, from being actually among the group most likely to be racially attacked to ostensibly being a primary cause of social strife – roaming the land in search of white teenagers to physically harass.”

Gary Younge in the Guardian, 22 October 2009

French immigration minister calls for ban on veil

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Bob Pitt

France’s hardline immigration minister has launched a fresh demand to ban the burkha – decribed by president Nicolas Sarkozy a sign of “subservience and debasement”. Eric Besson said the Islamic full head and body covers were “unacceptable” and not welcome in France.

His demand for a total ban comes after 58 French MPs called last June for a public inquiry on whether it should be illegal for women to hide their faces in public. Mr Sazkozy backed the move, saying at the time: “This garment makes women prisoners and deprives them of their identity. I say solemnly that they are not welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” Women’s rights groups and Left-wing MPs went even further, describing the item as a “walking coffin” and and a “mobile prison”.

Earlier this year Mr Besson said he though a law banning burkhas and niqabs would only “create tensions”. But he has now said he wants Islamic garments which cover the face – worn by an estimated 2,000 women in France – outlawed everywhere. He said yesterday: “I recognise that my views have now evolved. The burkha is unacceptable and contrary to the principles of national identity, of sexual equality and of the French Republic.”

Left-wing MP Andre Gerin, who is heading the government commission on burkhas and niqabs, added: “We find it intolerable to see images of these imprisoned women when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. They are totally unacceptable on the territory of the French Republic.”

Daily Mail, 14 September 2009

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French anti-Muslim backlash hurts Jews

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Bob Pitt

The backlash against Muslims in France demanding religious rights in the public sphere has also hit Jews, who feel that their own, similar requests are being treated increasingly negatively. “Things have got worse since more and more Muslims started pushing demands, sometimes with political motives. Now we’re compared to assertive pushy militants and our own requests are denied outright,” said Marc Djebali, vice president of the Jewish community of Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris.

Jewish Chronicle, 4 September 2009

Muslims shocked by mosque attack

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Toul mosque graffiti (1)

Muslims in a town in eastern France were shocked by a racist attack on their mosque which was sprayed with racist graffiti and defaced with pieces of pork.

The attack on the mosque in Toul is believed to have taken place in the early hours of Wednesday. It was daubed with inscriptions saying “France for the French”, “Here it’s Nazi” and “Don’t touch my pig,” along with Nazi swastikas.

“This is an act of cowardice,” said Nurdin Hamza, head of the local Maghrebi association. “Whether it is a mosque or a church, a synagogue, a Buddhist temple, or any other public place, we will always condemn this sort of act.”

Two youths in their 20s were arrested hours after the vandalism, French television said, giving no other information. According to the police, the youths were caught spraying swastikas onto the wall of a kebab restaurant in a nearby town.

RFI, 20 August 2009

See also “Mosquée taguée : trois skinheads mis en examen”, Le Nouvel Observateur, 21 August 2009

Three skinheads aged between 19 and 20 with alleged far-right links have been arrested in connection with the mosque desecration. Two of them were apprehended while spraying swastikas and other Nazi symbols on a kebab restaurant in the nearby town of Liverdun. A third individual has been charged with assisting in the preparation of the attacks.

Update: See “Mosquée profanée : dix-huit mois avec sursis”, La Républicain Lorrain, 17 May 2011

Maxime Rouvet and Sébastien Winwa each received 18-month suspended prison sentences for the attacks on the mosque and kebab restaurant, and were ordered to pay €25,000 in damages to the victims, of which €18,200 will go to the Muslim Association of Toul. A third man, Ludovic Bel, who bought paint used to spray the graffiti but did not participate in the actual attacks, was given a 6-month suspended sentence.

Toul mosque graffiti (2)

Toul mosque graffiti (3)

Research shows multiculturalism is working in the UK

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Bob Pitt

Children of International Migrants in Europe Muslim teenagers in the UK are much more assimilated with the nation than their counterparts growing up in other European countries, new research claims.

For the study, young second generation Pakistanis and Indians who were also Muslims living in Blackburn and Rochdale were compared with Moroccan and Algerian youngsters in France and Turks and former Yugoslavs in Germany.

The British “multicultural” approach of accommodating immigrants actually works better than the French or German approaches, it is claimed.

In France, where head coverings have been banned in schools, there is no allowance for ethnic and religious differences by the state. And the widespread ethnic tensions seen between North Africans and the police in France in 2007 were repeated this summer.

In Germany, unless you have a German ancestor you cannot legally become a German citizen no matter how long your family have settled in the country. Citizenship relies on a German blood line.

The research is to be published in a new book out tomorrow, titled Children of International Migrants in Europe. Professor Roger Penn, from Lancaster University, who co-authored the book said:

“Perceptions of discrimination were lowest in Britain and highest in Germany, reflecting the failure of the German model of exclusive ‘ethnic nationalism’. Britain’s model of multiculturalism is proving far more effective for the incorporation of ethnic minority groups than the French ‘assimilation’ or German ‘ethnic nationalist’ ones. There is simply a moral panic going on about young Muslims because of 7/7.”

Daily Mail, 20 August 2009

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