A rchive Date
[ 06-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ France ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/Columnists/leishman.html
Banning symbols of faith won't bring peace
RORY LEISHMAN, London Free Press
2004-01-06
In a nationally televised address on Dec. 17, French President Jacques Chirac warned that France was falling prey to sectarian strife.
He lamented: "The gulf that is opening up between the difficult areas and the rest of the country belies the principle of equality of opportunity and threatens to tear apart our republican pact."
Chirac's French auditors did not need to have him spell out what he meant by "difficult areas." They knew he was referring to the large, impoverished, crime-ridden Muslim ghettos that plague virtually every French city.
Over the past 40 years, there has been a massive influx of Muslim immigrants into France. Currently, there are about five million French Muslims. They comprise close to 10 per cent of the total population.
What worries Chirac and many other French men and women is that most of these Muslims are not assimilating into the predominant culture, but perpetuating their unique identity, by living apart in sectarian communities.
Chirac asked: "How can we ask the inhabitants of these communities to identify with the French nation and its values when they live in inhumane urban ghettos where the absence of law and the law of the strongest purport to reign?
"Sectarianism cannot be the choice of France," Chirac insisted. "It would be contrary to our history, to our traditions, to our culture. It would be contrary to our humanist principles."
To combat sectarianism, Chirac called for the zealous promotion of state-enforced secularism.
"We cannot tolerate opposition to the laws and the principles of the republic under the cover of religious liberty," he said. "Secularism is one of the great conquests of the republic. It is a crucial element of social peace and national cohesion."
With backing from the Socialist party, Chirac announced his centre-right government would undertake to strengthen secularism in France, by banning displays in the public schools of any "ostentatious sign of religious affiliation," including the wearing of Muslim head scarves, Jewish skull caps or large Christian crosses. He also expressed support for empowering business managers to ban employees from wearing religious emblems on the job and he indicated his government would forbid hospitals from catering to anyone -- Muslim or otherwise -- who refuses to be treated by a physician of the opposite sex.
According to opinion polls, the great majority of the French people support Chirac's plan to suppress religious symbols in government, business and the public schools.
However, there are noteworthy dissenters. In a joint statement, leaders of the Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches in France denounced Chirac's policy.
Joseph Sitruk, the grand rabbi of France, has asked what's next: Will a Jewish boy be arrested for putting a yarmulke on his head as he recites a silent prayer before an exam?
France is not the only Western country that is trying to promote social harmony through state-enforced secularism. Germany is taking much the same approach, and so is Canada.
However, in the Canadian case, it's not Muslim head scarves, but professions of the Christian faith that the courts and government have banned from the public square.
In keeping with this policy, Prime Minister Paul Martin, a professed Roman Catholic, did not invite any Christian cleric to bless the inauguration of his Liberal government. Instead, he marked the occasion by taking part in an Indian ceremony in which an Ojibway elder enveloped him in sage smoke and patted his head with ceremonial eagle feathers.
"It's cleaning the whole spirit and everything that surrounds him," the elder explained, "so his spirit is cleansed to begin work."
Can secularism work? Can the suppression of public expressions of religious faith maintain social peace in traditionally Christian countries such as France, Britain, Germany and Canada, which have large and rapidly growing Muslim minorities? That's unlikely.
For the better part of a century, Stalin and a succession of other Soviet dictators used the most brutal means to enforce godless secularism. Yet relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Chechnya and other areas of the former Soviet Union remain no less violent and bloody than ever.
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
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