I will admit that, ZPG Zealot jokes aside, I’m a little taken aback by my own reaction to this article.
While I’m Catholic and accordingly pro-life, I vote pro-choice as a general political rule.
I’m pro- kosher and halal only markets, I’m pro- mainly-Chinese signs in Chinatown. I’m pro- gender-segregated ambulances (so long as the community assumes any difference in cost), I’m anti-gender-segregated buses. I think Tehrangeles is OK and Kiryas Joel is too much.
To be honest, pragmatically I’m for this decision, although it does kind of tickle at me as being juuuuuust on this side of OK.
I dunno if the foregoing is Great Debates material- as in “how much is too much?”
If so, could a passing mod please move, or could a friendly passerby report for forum change?
Nope. Clearly bigotry, and thus clearly wrong. She only didn’t shake his hand because of her religion. Not shaking people’s hands does not harm anyone, and thus it violates the very concept of freedom of religion to force them to do so.
There are many French Muslims, and this is a common Muslim belief. According to this guy, they are not really French. That’s no different than when people in American claim that Muslims aren’t really Americans.
This also unfortunately doesn’t surprise me. France seems to have a problem with legalized Islamophobia. What really sucks is that, based on what happened with the burqa ban, the EU also won’t stand up and fight for their rights of freedom of religion.
As for the ZPG, people seem to forget the problem. It was not that handshakes were wrong. It was that she accused people offering their hand as committing rape. Her idea that you should respect the culture of others and that you are not allowed to force physical contact is a good one. It’s just that offering isn’t the same thing as forcing.
This is forcing. It is announcing to all Muslim women that they have to forsake a completely harmless part of their religion in order to become a French citizen. That is religious discrimination and violates their freedom of religion.
It’s the opposite of the separation of Church and State, as the state is commanding the Church on what they have to allow.
There was a LITTLE more to her whole ideas than that, but I’m not going to get into them in this thread. Suffice to say, it wasn’t just that “you shouldn’t force people to shake hands if they don’t want to”.
Barring religious minorities from obtaining citizenship reinforces the dominant social and religious structure in the short term but seems potentially destabilizing over time. It would be less of an issue under US law, since their kids born in-country would be citizens regardless, but over there it could create a permanent outsider class.
Not me. I have some philosophical issues with the notion of assimilation to begin with, but even aside from that I can’t see the point of denying citizenship for something that doesn’t compromise public safety.
Refusing to remove a veil to be properly ID’ed by law enforcement? That’s a legitimate problem. Refusing to shake a hand? That is not.
France has been too far up their own ass on this issue of “Frenchness” for quite awhile( and I include the historic hostility to non-standard French dialects in this same category ). It’s not a good look IMHO.
Many thousands of Muslims (including Muslim women, even!) have achieved French citizenship without issue. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with ridiculous cultural norms that this particular woman wants to uphold. France is free to set normative cultural requirements for citizenship if they want.
It is bigotry, but France is not the United States. The French people are a people, not just a country named “France”, and citizenship in France means embracing French heritage and culture. France is entirely within it’s rights to expect that immigrants will become French. After all, are they not applying to BE French? Then they need to be French.
France doesn’t so much have the concept of “people can have any religion” as that of “whatever religion you have must not interfere in how you conduct business”. They’re secularists, not freedom-of-religionists.
But that’s OK, go on being an everybody-must-be-meist.
My current project is in Spain, for a French company, and several of the people at work are French Muslims (some by birth, some by naturalization); none of them has a problem shaking hands or going kiss-kiss with either gender. Then again the youngest ones will be perfectly happy to show off the pictures of their kids if anyone gives them an excuse. All of that fits perfectly with both French and Spanish customs. I wouldn’t go trying to shake hands with the men if I was in Argelia, but in France, I do expect handshakes.
Not just France. The BBC article linked to in the OP links to another BBC article from 2016 wherein a similar case (coming from the other side) happened in Switzerland.
In Switzerland it is customary for students to shake the hand of their teacher at the beginning and the end of the day’s classes as a mark of respect. Two Syrian pupils, 15 and 16, recently arrived as asylum-seekers, refused to shake the hand of their female teacher.
The local authorities decreed that they were obliged to do so, that if they still refused their parents would be fined the equivalent of $5000, and they also halted their citizenship process and launched extra investigations on the circumstances under which their father’s asylum request was granted.
Copy paste from the article in question:
«The [Swiss] authorities said in a statement on Wednesday that “the public interest concerning gender equality as well as integration of foreigners far outweighs that concerning the freedom of belief of students”.»
In Japan, you bow as a greeting rather than shaking hands. If you don’t like bowing, don’t go to Japan. The New World has different values, but the Old World still consists of nation states based on distinct peoples with a common culture. Those states are not obligated to let immigrants change their fundamental nature. France actually is for the French people, Japan actually is for the Japanese people. America, Canada, and Brazil, but contrast, are for anyone who comes and wants to call themselves Americans, Canadians, or Brazilians.
France is free to do whatever they want, but this is just stupid. If she made it this far in the process of becoming a French citizen, I assume they have determined she would be a productive member of society. And they’re willing to give ALL that up over a handshake.
I am curious though if her religious beliefs would allow her to wear gloves for the handshake.
If they let this go what other kinds of crazies are going to try to get French citizenship? Female refugees washing ashore, escaping their sinking boat, and they don’t even have the decency to take their tops off at the beach!
That alone is gonna be enough to deny them.