Category Archives: Secular

Paris protest: campaigners demand repeal of Chatel circular

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sticker MTELe Figaro reports that the campaign has been stepped up for the withdrawal of the “Chatel circular” – the policy introduced in 2012 by the then UMP education minister Luc Chatel which proposed, in the name of defending secularism, that Muslim women who wear the hijab should not be allowed to accompany their children on school trips.

The policy has been maintained under the present Parti Socialiste government, despite a ruling by the Council of State last December that the ban was outside the law.

On Tuesday, for the first time, a delegation of Muslim women involved in the campaign against this oppressive policy met with a representative of current education minister Benoît Hamon to discuss the issue. And yesterday a demonstration was held near the ministry of education in support of the demand for an end to the ban.

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How the right exploits Christianity and secularism to attack Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The European right is advocating a Christian identity for Europe not because it wants to promote Christianity but because it wants to push back against Islam and the integration of Muslims – or what the National Front calls “the Islamization of Europe.”

Public spaces have become a major battleground. There are bans on “head scarves and other signs of religious affiliation” in schools (in France) and on full-face veils on the streets (in France and Belgium), and efforts to block the construction of mosques (throughout Europe) or just minarets (in Switzerland, mosques are allowed but without their distinctive towers, the latter being considered the “expression of an intolerant culture”). The pushback against Islam also concerns the individual body, with, for example, campaigns to prohibit circumcision and halal food in Norway.

Notably, these measures are being advocated in the name of protecting not Christianity but liberal secularism. The hijab is said to offend women’s rights; circumcision, children’s rights; ritual slaughter, animal rights. Oriana Fallaci and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, two radical spokespersons for the feminist resistance to Islam, became darlings of the conservative right in Italy (Fallaci) and the Netherlands and America (Hirsi Ali).

This anti-Islam rhetoric is spreading to the mainstream. The coalition government of the Netherlands requires would-be immigrants to accept progressive values before they are given a residency visa. Applicants are asked whether they tolerate the mixing of boys and girls in school, gender equality, nudity in public and gay rights. Although all applicants must take these tests, given the concerns revealed in these questions and the demographics of migration into Europe, there can be little doubt that the exams are designed to challenge adherents to Islam. Such measures are unfair to Muslims, and they violate European states’ professed commitment to multiculturalism and the separation of church and state.

Olivier Roy condemns the hijacking of Christianity and secularism by right-wing Islamophobes.

New York Times, 4 June 2014

Secularists assist right-wing anti-sharia hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLFA Law Society protest

The hysteria whipped up by the Sunday Telegraph over the Law Society’s guidelines for solicitors drawing up wills for Muslim clients (see here and here) has predictably been endorsed by the One Law for All Campaign, who organised a protest outside the Law Society headquarters.

OLFA, needless to say, denied that the protest was anti-Muslim. They issued a statement saying: “The fight against Sharia is clearly a defence of individual rights and freedoms, not an attack on Muslims. After all, Sharia Law is fundamentally the demand of Islamic states and the political movement to limit citizens’ rights.”

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French minister backs football headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thierry BraillardFrance’s new sports minister Thierry Braillard has backed the French Football Federation’s decision to uphold their ban on headscarves for players despite pressure from FIFA.

Last Sunday on beIN SPORTS, FIFA president Sepp Blatter declared the FFF had no choice other than to follow his organisation’s directive that women players should be allowed to wear head coverings during official games.

The FIFA ruling is contrary to French law, however, with all signs of religious affiliation, regardless of the denomination, banned in official state-connected institutions.

“The position taken by the FFF and its president Noel Le Graet has our wholehearted support, because it would be necessary to remind Mr Blatter that the French state has declared its attachment to the values of the Republic and that Republican principles, notably the principle of an entirely secular state, are in force in sporting arenas,” the freshly appointed Braillard told RTL.

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Quebec’s ruling party suffers crushing defeat – despite the anti-Muslim campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The lunacy which has dominated the discourse coming out of Quebec over the last year has finally been countered with a dose of sanity. In a historic vote this Monday, the ruling Parti Québécois (PQ) suffered a major defeat after just 19 months of taking office. Premier Pauline Marois organized an ugly campaign which centered on identity politics and secession from Canada. Her gross miscalculations resulted in a humiliating loss and allowed the federalist Liberal party to form a majority government in the Francophone province.

“The madness which characterized PQ’s odious agenda is best exemplified with their proposed secular ‘Charter of Values’. The notorious document, an affront to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, proposed banning all public employees from wearing religious symbols: hijabs, turban, skullcaps – anything ‘conspicuous’. This Charter paved way to a discourse which was perhaps the most jaw dropping display of xenophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric in recent history.”

Waleed Ahmed reports.

Muslim Matters, 11 April 2014

Front National bans halal school meals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen said on Friday it would prevent schools from offering special lunches to Muslim pupils in the 11 towns it won in local elections, saying such arrangements were contrary to France’s secular values.

France’s republic has a strict secular tradition enforceable by law, but faith-related demands have risen in recent years, especially from the country’s five-million-strong Muslim minority, the largest in Europe.

“We will not accept any religious demands in school menus,” Le Pen told RTL radio. “There is no reason for religion to enter the public sphere, that’s the law.”

The anti-immigrant National Front has consistently bemoaned the rising influence of Islam in French pubic life.

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Warsi plots Islamification of UK government, NSS warns

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yesterday the Huffington Post published an interesting and wide-ranging interview by Mehdi Hasan with Tory politician and government minister Sayeeda Warsi.

The interview opens with Warsi, who was in the middle of chairing a high-level international meeting of the prime minister’s Global Islamic Finance and Investment Group, explaining how she has persuaded David Cameron that it makes good business sense for the UK to become a world centre for sharia-compliant finance. This is the only reference to sharia in the entire article.

The National Secular Society website features a daily news round-up compiled by NSS president Terry Sanderson. Here is how Sanderson reports the HuffPo interview with Warsi:

NSS Warsi advancing sharia

Montreal protest against ‘racist’ charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Montreal anti-charter protest March 2014Hundreds of people marched in the streets of Montreal Friday evening to mark the International day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and denounce the Parti Québécois’s proposed secular charter.

While the protest stopped outside PQ Premier Pauline Marois’s offices downtown​, many were critical of Quebec’s other political parties for not taking a stronger stand against the charter. They say no government should decide what women get to wear. “We cannot let the other parties off the hook, when they say hijab is okay, but niqab is not,” said Delores Chew of the South Asian Women’s Association.

Though the march was taking place in the context of an election campaign, protesters say the issue is bigger than party politics.

“People assume that there is a legitimate debate to be had about how we – presumably white people – are going to decide how immigrant people are going to integrate or participate in society. That’s profoundly racist. It’s as simple as that,” said protest organizer Joël Pedneault.

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Lyon demonstration against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SONY DSC

On Saturday the Coordination contre le Racisme et l’Islamophobie organised a demonstration against Islamophobia in Lyon, to mark the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the hijab ban in French state schools.

The CRI points out that the law was the first in a series of legal restrictions on, and judicial and administrative rulings against Muslims, including the 2011 ban on the niqab, a 2013 court decision upholding the sacking of a childcare assistant who wore a headscarf to work, the adoption this year by the Senate of a bill that would extend the hijab ban to childcare workers who work at their own homes, and the prevention of hijab-wearing mothers from joining their children on school trips.

The demonstrators called for the cancellation of all Islamophobic laws.

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Montreal rally unites faiths against ‘secularism’ charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Canadians for Coexistence

With his fuchsia skullcap and sash, Catholic Bishop Thomas Dowd stood out in the crowd at Shaare Zedek Congregation on Sunday. Speaking to nearly 500 people at the synagogue in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Dowd said he purposely wore his most ostentatious outfit to the multi-faith rally against the Parti Québécois government’s proposed secular charter.

Bill 60, which would bar all public sector workers from wearing “ostentatious” religious symbols like the Muslim head scarf, Jewish skullcap or Sikh turban, died on the order paper last week when Premier Pauline Marois dissolved the National Assembly to call an election. But speakers, who included local politicians and representatives of six faiths, said that was no reason to stop protesting, since the PQ has vowed to adopt the charter if it wins a majority on April 7.

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