Warm_blood:
Too bad it’s not a widely held opinion in the western world. You would be iced out of a lot of social and employment opportunities with such a mindset.
France isn’t part of that “large percentage of the world” . And no one was forced to do a handshake. She chose not to shake the immigration officer’s hand, she bore the consequences for it. Unless it can be proven only Muslims are held to that standard (and that remains to be determined) she doesn’t quite have a basis for claiming what happened to her was undue religious discrimination. If someone’s citizenship application gets denied because they rolled their eyes at the immigration officer, is that proof that the law tries to dictate what you do with your eyes? What if it’s because they don’t like what you wore to the interview with the immigration officer? Is the state dictating what you choose to wear too? If it can’t be ascertained that the denial is due in part to anti-religion, sexist or racial bias, you don’t really have grounds to moan about discrimination in the eyes of the law. Immigration officers aren’t required to prove that there is something objectively bad about you that makes you unworthy of citizenship in order to deny you. And if they feel you would fare poorly at integrating yourself in the culture of your new nationality, it’s considered fair grounds for denial of citizenship even if it’s a measure that is largely subjective. It isn’t fair, but that’s how it is.
It’s not really so “cut and dried” given the lack of details on both sides. Still, you have not answered the hypothetical of someone’s religion requiring no contact of any type with the opposite sex, even in important situations (like a naturalization ceremony) and they practice that belief in the absolute. Still an impenetrable right that shouldn’t be questioned? Suppose this form of self-segregation is racially-based instead of gender-based and still attributable to religion. Still not reasonable grounds to deny citizenship?
Refusing to eat pork discriminates against who exactly?
The actual etiquette in the Western world since men and women started interacting without chaperones has been that men of good manners did not extend their hands to women unless the woman did so first. I think the French official was hoping to either sexually humiliate the woman or use her refusal to deny her citizenship in the same country as her husband. He should be fired for his bigotry. In an ideal world he would be, and his male former co-workers would deliver a very severe beatdown for being so disrespectful to a woman.