…this is the conversation I would be having tomorrow.
Ey, Layla, salut! On peut parler?
Listen, I think the law they just passed is really stupid. C’est vachement con, quoi. All my friends think so too.
No problem. Listen, we had an idea and I wanted to run it by you first, d’ac?
Okay. We’re going to all show up tomorrow wearing des foulards too. That way, if they tell us to take them off, we’ll say they’re not religious symbols since we’re not Muslim, right?
And then if they let us keep them, we’ll say how is it that we can keep them and you can’t?
And if they make us take them off, we’ll keep it up, because if they suspend us, they’ll have to suspend all of us.
That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it. It sounds like the French people involved don’t think they can quell the violence (or, more cynically, they think this will make it easier for them to “resolve” the issue), so they figure if they strip the religious of their religious identifying material, the problem will go away.
Bien sur, c’est absolument genial que les personnes Francais ici, avec les positions ou on peut faire une bonne difference dans les ecoles et les vies des etudiantes, ont chose au lieu de ca qu’ils vont faire quelque chose de folie.*
No, really, it’s great that instead of doing the right thing, they’re trying to do the easy thing.
*Free translation: Of course, it’s absolutely wonderful that the French people here, with the positions where they can make a good difference in the schools and the students’ lives, have chosen instead that they’re going to do something crazy.
I have a recollection that back in 2001, when some jerks decided that Muslim women here in the US wearing headscarves were somehow “the enemy.” There were American non-Muslims who took to wearing similar scarves just to make a point. Others started escorting their Muslim neighbors on their daily errands to do what they could to protect them from harassment. It would be nice if tolerant French women (and men) were to take just the actions suggested by the OP. Which country was it whose citizens, during WWII, started wearing the insignia that the Nazis decreed the Jews should wear?
I believe it was Denmark. I know it was Denmark where the occupation officials were told that if the Nazis insisted on introducing the Jewish star as a badge of shame into the country, the first to wear it would be the king. The badge was never introduced to Denmark, and the kingdom had the lowest Jewish casualties of any Nazi-occupied territory, mostly due to government collusion in keeping the Jewish population informed of planned raids and pogroms, as well as the determined effort to move as many Danish Jews across the straits to Sweden as possible.
Moi, j’ai habite a Strasbourg de 1989 a 1990, et meme la, cette question d’un loi contre des foulards apparait. Il me parait que cette fois, Parliament n’a pas pu justifier un loi seulement contre les foulards.
<Oh non, nous ne sont pas racistes! Nous aimons les africans, pas comme vous [les americans]. Mais les Arabes…>
A local newscaster said that the law was intended to ensure “the separation of church and state”.
I think the French parliament was ignorant and stupid in thinking that “the separation of church and state” meant that they could also separate the people from the church while dealing with the state.