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By Smaktakula
Recently, France has escalated its ongoing assault on religious displays and symbols, most recently manifested in the official denunciation of the burqa worn by some muslim women. The French government is winning the war of forced secularization, outward signs of religion–the crucifix, turbans, the burqa and more–are quickly becoming anathema in French culture.
Recently the French government has decided not to award citizenship to a Moroccan man whose wife wears a burqa. Regarding the decision, Immigration Minister Eric Besson offered this explanation:
This is only the latest outbreak in this contentious issue. Several months ago French President Nicolas Sarkozy floated the issue of banning the burqa from all areas of public French society. France has a long and shameful history of religious discrimination and inequality, but this latest push for secularism has manifested itself into an assault on religious expression.
Why does it matter to the United States that France has its collective tête jammed at least ten centimetres up its own Citroën with regard to religious freedom? It is certainly important as a cautionary example. Despite the long-held mantra that “It Can’t Happen Here,” recent anti-religious trends should give Americans pause.
Unlike France, which is an explicitly secular nation, the United States is not. The First Amendment precludes the government from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another. This is not a rejection of religion or religiosity. In fact, by preventing the government from interfering with the free worship of its citizens, the Bill of Rights affirms the importance of religion in many people’s lives. The United States may no longer be a specifically judeo-christian nation, but it is a religious one.
There is the temptation to regard this religiosity as a flaw or weakness in our national character, an adherence to superstition over science that paralyzes our intellectual development. While not without some merit, this characterization is simplistic and, I believe, largely mistaken. Our national religiosity is one of the primary reasons why the US doesn’t suffer the religious ghettoization and integration woes currently plaguing Western Europe. It is our long-standing and varied religious traditions–and the necessary tolerance which accompanies those variegated beliefs–that allow our citizenry to proudly display their religious affiliation, be it a cross, yarmulke, veil or platter of spaghetti.
This tolerance doesn’t manifest itself in such a way that a spaghetti adherent must believe what a Jewish person believes, nor does it mandate that members of differing religious groups even like one another. Our creed demands only mutual respect, in that ideally, Americans of all faiths recognize the right of peoples of different faith to practice and express their respective religions, no matter how ridiculous or bizarre. This delicate balance puts American culture somewhere between the European extremes: France, striving to gut religious expression entirely; and the United Kingdom, which has resurrected its long-dead policy of appeasement in dealing with its growing Muslim population.
It is always naïve at best and foolish at worst to say that anything “Can’t Happen Here.” Nonetheless, our democratic traditions of religious liberty are long-standing and deeply ingrained. Can it happen here? Sure. Will it? I don’t believe so.
I was discussing this issue not long ago with a friend, who said to me, “Don’t you think the burqa represents repression against women, and only encourages a subordinate role? I’m all for liberté but not at liberté of treating someone in a sub-human fashion.”
The beauty of living in a country where every man, woman and child is free to express his or her religious beliefs, is that it doesn’t matter at all what I think.
Promethean Times 
Often visitors to France mistake the context of this sort of proposal—banning the burqa and so forth. Really a large part of the ancien regime still hangs on in France. The institutions can be very hide-bound, and this includes adherence to the ideal of one France, one nation, right down to the microcosm of local culture. Despite the country’s reputation for radical politics, there is another side, very conservative, almost petrified within its traditions. This is where calls for the ban on the burqa are really emanating from—my point being, that France, just like America, is a contradictory nation. The open religiosity of Americans doesn’t automatically make them oh so tolerant either. Protestants in America, for example, the dominant group there, can be enormously ignorant and disrepectful of others’ beliefs.
A lot of people in the US give France a hard time. Actually, from my personal experience in France the people like America. In fact, if it wasn’t for France, the United States might have lost the American Revolution against England. Seems that France also got way into debt helping the American Colonies fight the British. But that’s for another time and place to discuss.
Actually, in France there is a historical reason for this strong separation between “Church and State.” Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church owned, that’s right, owned 90% of the land in France. That’s 90%. The Church was also the mouth piece of the King as it is-was throughout Europe, save in those countries that had broken with the Catholic Church. Kings and Queens may have used other religions in these countries to be their mouth piece.
So, when the French Revolution took place, the Catholic Church lost it’s lands. It went to the people. Call it socialism, call it communism, call it what ever you want too, but the people once again owned “their” land.
That is why, to this day in France, there is such a strong separation between any religion and the State. Something we in America should take a lesson from.
These laws are pushing for more and more separation from church and state, the 2004 law banning the wearing of Muslim head scarves at public schools sparked fierce debate. That legislation also banned Jewish Yamakas and Christian crosses in public classrooms.
2009 :
40% of atheist
38% of catholic
14 % of agnostic catholic
5% of Muslim.
3% others religions.
In full disclosure, Smaktakula swore in the summer of 1989 that he would never go back to France unless it was in a tank.
Smaktakula returned to France in 1994 without incident. Which goes to show you how much a Smaktakulean “swear” counts.