Category Archives: State Oppression

Secularism test for French citizenship

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Immigrants applying for French citizenship will have first to take a “secularism test” before being naturalized.

The exam is recommended by a new Guide for Rights and Duties of French Citizenship, which has been drawn up by the Ministry of Integration. “It outlines the values that shaped up our country,” the Minister of Integration Nelly Olin told Le Monde Tuesday, April 12.

The guide, unveiled by Olin Monday, says applicants should provide clear answers to questions like “can the French reveal religious symbols at workplace?, “Do you consider men and women equal?” and “what are the colors of the French flag?” Mastering the French language is also a citizenship must.

Booklets on the French culture and the three basic values of liberty, equality and freedom are available for applicants before answering the questions. They provide thorough information about the history of secularism in France and controversial issues that made headlines recently.

The new document puts into effect amendments made by former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy to the law of citizenship and residency issued November 26, 2003. It is the result of efforts made by the integration and interior ministries, and the supreme council for integration.

The guide underlines that religious symbols are banned at public institutions, particularly at schools and hospitals.

Islam Online, 12 April 2005

Muslim schoolgirl detention condemned

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The arrest of a 16-year-old Muslim schoolgirl in the United States on charges of planning to be a suicide bomber drew fire from her teachers and classmates, reported a leading American daily on Saturday, April 9.

“She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school,” Jessica Siegel, an English teacher at Heritage High School in East Harlem, told The New York Times. “She’s a wonderful, wonderful girl.”

The Guinean tenth-grader has been described by the FBI as “an imminent threat to the security of the United States” on allegation of planning to be a suicide bomber, according to a government document provided to the daily by a federal official.

She is being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania and her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation.

“She’s about the last person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber,” said Ms. Siegel, who was profiled in Samuel G. Freedman’s book Small Victories as an unsentimental but fiercely committed teacher who provoked and delighted her students.

Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist, was no less furious. “They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus,” she said.

“I feel like, how dare they? She’s a minor, and even if she’s not a citizen, she has rights as a human being,” said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the girl to her house daily and knows her family well.

Islam Online, 9 April, 2005

Muslims reject results of inquiry into stop and search

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Council of Britain rejected MPs’ claims yesterday that Asians were not being targeted by draconian police stop and search powers.

After an inquiry lasting five months, the home affairs select committee declared that “we do not believe that the Asian community is being unreasonably targeted by the police in their application of the Terrorism Act or of the other legislation enabling stops and searches”. However, it accepted that “there is a clear perception among all our Muslim witnesses that Muslims are being stigmatised” and called for “special efforts” by police and government to ensure that they are not singled out.

MCB secretary-general Iqbal Sacranie said that there was clear evidence that there was a disproportionate tendency to stop and search Muslims. “We believe that the problem is more than that of mere perception”, he said, accusing the committee’s report of being flawed because it only identified Muslims by race. Mr Sacranie said that a true picture could only be obtained if the statistics took account of non-Asian Muslims.

Morning Star, 7 April 2005

See also BLINK news report, 6 April 2005

Two girls held as US fears suicide bomb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two 16-year-old girls from New York City were arrested last month and charged with immigration violations after the FBI asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers, according to a government document. A spokesman for one of their families, however, said the accusation was false and said the government had probably misinterpreted a school essay written by one of the girls.

New York Times, 7 April 2005

Defence of hijab ban is backward thinking

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letter in Morning Star, 6 April 2005

Peter Duffy’s defence of the reactionary French law on religious symbols (Morning Star, April 2) merely shows how backward many parts of the left have become in relation to the rights of Muslims and other minorities in Europe.

In particular, he argues that there are “progressives” who support the headscarf ban.

Just because some people who regard themselves as being on the left support the law – perhaps even a majority – does not actually make it progressive.

Many people who regard themselves as progressive argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a cause to celebrate. Being on the left did not stop them from being wrong.

One’s position must be judged on whether it really is progressive. There is nothing progressive about banning a child from school because of the crime of wearing an under-turban, a hijab or a skull-cap. It is merely the subordination of genuine secularism to intolerance and prejudice.

In his long letter, Peter Duffy mentions Muslims many times but omits to mention the plight of the Sikhs. What am I to tell Sikhs in London? “Don’t worry, Sikh kids are banned from their schools in France for wearing their under-turbans, but it’s OK because ‘progressives’ support it”? I somehow doubt that they will be convinced.

It is our obligation as progressive people to tell them that we firmly oppose this law.

If there is not a place for an Asian person in France to have a full state education and also to continue to hold their religious beliefs, including wearing their religious dress, then forgive me as an Asian person in Britain for saying as clearly as I can that this is a reactionary state of affairs, regardless of the sensibilities of some rather prickly parts of the left.

Yasmin Qureshi
Human rights advisor to the Mayor of London

Hijab ban forces French Muslims out of state education system

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France’s ban on religious symbols in state schools, a move meant to check a feared spread of Islamist radicalism, is prompting some Muslims to pull out of the system and launch their own schools and tutoring services. Representatives of new projects around the country turned up at France’s largest Muslim convention at the weekend, canvassing for money and support to educate girls who have dropped out or been expelled from school for insisting on wearing headscarves.

Pro-Hijab, 31 March 2005

Robert Spencer has his own interpretation of this – he seems to think it is an example, not of resistance to state oppression, but of French Muslims’ rejection of “assimilation”.

Jihad Watch, 5 April 2005

It’s all French to Livingstone

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letter in Morning Star, 2 April 2005

I know that Yasmin Qureshi came to Paris on behalf of her boss, the Mayor of London (Morning Star, March 23), but I don’t know why she bothered to cross the Channel.

Convinced, like Mayor Livingstone, that the one-hundred-year-old ban on the wearing of religious clothing or symbols in state schools is a bad thing, she only talked, as far as one can deduce from her article, with those who share the same point of view.

But the law insisting on strict secularity in schools and public agencies has the support of the large majority of French people.

And before this is dismissed as an indication of racism amongst the French, it should be understood that the law is supported by a majority of French Muslims, many of whom, particularly women, are the most fervent supporters of secular education.

It seems clear that Ms Qureshi didn’t find it worth her while to talk to anyone from the French Socialist Party, the trade unions, anti-racist organisations, to teachers, representatives of parent-teacher organisations, or from French women’s organisations, in particular Ni Putes Ni Soumises, all of which overwhelmingly back the law.

If she had, she probably wouldn’t have agreed with them, but she would at least have understood the reasoning of French progressives, and have been able to explain in her article the cultural and historical differences which lead French anti-racists and feminists to regard the stance of those like Ken Livingstone as ignorant and reactionary.

Her visit would also have been more useful to mutual understanding if she had talked not only to those close to Tariq Ramadan, hardly representative of French Muslims, but to the Rector of the Paris Mosque, or from the French Council of Muslims, who, though unhappy with the law, advised students to comply with it.

If so, readers might in future be spared the shrill, confused, but smug article by her boss (Morning Star, March 19) which verges on xenophobia in its regard of the French.

The London approach is neither the only nor necessarily the best way to encourage and celebrate multiculturalism.

Peter Duffy
Choisy le Roi, France

Muslim girls unveil their fears

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“French education”, declares a trim man behind a big desk, “aims to allow each person, irrespective of their religion or their community, the chance to start on an equal footing and receive the same education.” This impassioned defence of French secularism comes from Raymond Scieux, headmaster of Lycee Eugene Delacroix in Drancy, a suburb northeast of Paris.

By Elizabeth C. Jones, director of “The Headmaster and the Headscarves”, BBC2, 9pm, Tuesday 29 March

BBC News, 28 March 2005

Adil Charkaoui joins Montreal protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL – Suspected Moroccan terrorist Adil Charkaoui joined several dozen people Saturday to protest national security certificates used to detain alleged terrorists without trial or charges.

“I had a normal life like everybody and then one day (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) decided I was a threat to national security,” said Charkaoui, 31, who was detained under a certificate for almost two years before being released under stringent bail conditions in February.

“They arrested me, they didn’t show any proof and they told me I was very dangerous,” he said, pulling up his pantleg to show the electronic ankle bracelet he must wear. “I am just asking for justice … I want the government to give me a fair trial to clear my name and show I’m not a terrorist.”

Canadian Press report, 26 March 2005