As to the law being against aggression, it is. But in the USA most rapes go unpunished even if a claim is done at the police. I do not think that it is much better anywhere else, so if tghe aggression is of a lower degree, and mostly done by under-age minors, then the law is irrelevant, unless any 12 years old boy that say bitch to a girl should be sent to prison for a few years on a simple claim.

DSW

So why doesn’t the government prosecute such attackers, instead? How will banning these articles of clothing help the potential victims of such attacks? I suppose if fewer women wear them, the attackers have more victims to choose from, lowering the odds that any one woman or girl will get attacked, but that seems like an awfully inefficient way to reduce the occurance of such attacks.

If the goal is to help girls whose families won’t let them out of the house uncovered, won’t this law just make it harder for the girls to get out at all? If you want to assimilate these girls, it seems to me that the first step should be to get them out of the house, away from the influence of their families. Make it *easier* for them to come into contact with non-Muslims, not harder.

I don’t see how using government authority to further polarize the situation can be assumed to improve it.

I like belle noiseuse NY’s idea about the hijab as protection. Maybe what these girls need is *more* anonymity, not less, so they can experiment with assimilation without their family’s knowledge. Here’s an idea: someone needs to start a fashion trend for hijabs among non-Muslim youth. That way, young Muslim women can mingle with their peers undetected by their families! It robs the clothing of its power as a political symbol if everyone else is wearing it too.

Bob, well, there are a lot of factors. That is one way I see the ban, but it’s only one. One reason I mention it is because a lot of non-French opponents of the ban talk as if opposition to it is universal among Muslims and people of Muslim background and that therefore the ban is entirely an act of oppression or racial discrimination. But it’s not that simple.

You and I see this very differently even if we arrive at the same destination - or almost. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that but it could be worth exploring.

As I understand it, you see an official ban on wearing the hijab in schools as a way of protecting muslim girls from improper group or family pressures to conform with a dress code the girls may not want to adher to. The problem I have with that is the state is thereby claiming to know what it is that muslim girls in France really wish to do and I want to know on what basis the state is placed to know that.

My starting point is different. The wearing of hijabs is manifestly not the norm in France and, by accounts, many French people are disturbed by it, though for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, perhaps because I’m not steeped in French history and the nuanced ways of the French people. Whatever their reasons, they are entitled to a view and I don’t believe that I’m placed to tell them that they are wrong-headed about this. After all, France is their country, not mine and we Brits have often made issue in the EU of the principle of “subsidiarity” or the right of EU national governments to retain their autonomy except for matters which significantly affect the well-being of other EU member states. I don’t think we can claim hijab wearing comes into that elevated category so the French ought to be allowed to make their own decisions about this without being harried by rank outsiders.

What I’d conjecture is that many or most of the French regard the hijab as a potential threat, perhaps because it might become a symbol of Islamic radicalism with the goal of semi-autonomous neighbourhoods subject to Sharia law, and they see intrusion of hijabs into school life as a disruptive influence with unforeseeable downstream consequences for their traditions of universality and secularism in state affairs. Given France’s long and bloody history of religious conflicts, I can understand that. Since I doubt most of us here are aware of the political chemistry in and around localities in France where many muslims live, it seems to me presumptious for us to tell them what they must decide. Whichever way, they will have to live with the consequences.

You may be right that a ban wouldn’t help. But there are people who think it might - ‘Ni Putes ni Soumises’ for example. (Actually I think they think it would, rather than that it might.) Of course it’s always hard to be sure how such things work out in practice, whether helps outnumber harms, etc. But I don’t think the ban can be entirely irrelevant to peer pressure to wear the hijab, and attitudes to girls who don’t wear it.

“The increased role of the Catholic Church in an enlarged Europe is leading to calls for more light to be shone on its influence over policy making. . .” - at: http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=14065

There is no detectable lobby in Britain for the repeal of the sections of the Public Order Act 1936 banning political uniforms. Hardly any regard that ban as an important curtailment of civil liberties.

“I think that it is no more reasonable to ban politics in the schools than religion.”

For reasons that quickly become evident from the scale of religious persecution in France’s troubled history, the prevailing constitutional arrangements there insist on a rigid separation between the state and religion - on the scale of the persecution, I commend a google search on “Huguenots”. In principle, the US constitution also makes a separation between the state and religion. The chief justice of Arkansas was recently obliged to remove a stone outside his office inscribed with the Ten Commandments, as I recall.

On the evidence, I think it difficult to argue that France or America have suffered by enforcing the concept of a secular state. If anything, Britain is the curiosity by having an established church and laws precluding the head of state, the monarch, and the heir to the throne, from becoming a catholic or marrying a catholic. To understand why, you need to know our history. While parts of mainland Europe went in for anti-semitism, we persecuted catholics instead. Oliver Cromwell was instrumental in inviting jews to resettle in England in 1650, although jews were denied full citizenship rights until 1858.

“I don’t think Islam is more inherently a theocratic religion than Christianity”

Christ said: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. In its basic theology, Christianity is a personal, not a theocratic religion. Islam is fundamentally different, which is why the pressure for introducing Sharia law in countries with substantial minority or dominant muslim populations. Indeed, that is what seems to have provoked the periodic inter-communal massacres in Nigeria and Indonesia in recent years.

While true that the medieval Christian church had theocratic ambitions, Europe went through a painful Reformation from the 16th through the 18th centuries and beyond. In Italy, it took Mussolini to curb the pervasive influence of the Vatican.

“I don’t think Islam’s embrace of politics is necessarily a bad thing.”

Personal values should, of course, inform political decisions but integrating politics and religion inevitably leads some to claim divinely inspired imperatives for their particular politics and that, equally inevitably, leads to a powerful reaction. We had a thirty years war in Europe between states where ruling monarchies in each were intent on saving neighbouring states from eternal damnation because they subscribed to the wrong brand of Christianity. That ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which established the working principle in international affairs of non-interference in the internal affairs of internationally recognised states. Unwinding that is a sure recipe for trouble, which is one reason why some, like myself, are so resistant to including a Christian commitment in any future EU Constitution.

The reason that I’ve dodged the issue is that I actually have been putting together a post on it. Essentially, I don’t think Islam is more inherently a theocratic religion than Christianity, but it is possible that more of Islam’s current adherents are more theocratic than Christianity’s. The discussion of Marx’ On the Jewish Question puts me in mind of a rather novel approach - to me anyway - to this issue. The point I’m going to try to make in my post is that I don’t think Islam’s embrace of politics is necessarily a bad thing.