The kind of headscarves that led to the ban are not just some ordinary pieces of cloth. It's not the average scarve your ordinary, elderly North African immigrant woman wears. They're one step short of the full burqa. About 10 years ago, these kind of headscarves were nowhere to be seen in Europe. On the contrary, many girls of North African descent didn't wear much clothes at all.

Nowadays however, one can see even very young girls (6-year olds !) with headscarves that leave only their eyes (but not their eyebrows, as it is forbidden to show hair), nose and mouth uncovered. The reason for this is simple : it's fundamentalist politics or islamofascism. Those headscarves aren't a religious but a political statement and a very hostile at that. It basically means "we're friends of Osama and we're going to subject you to dhimmitude or worse". These headscarves are just as aggressive a symbol as the brown shirts of the SA once were.

And it's no coincidence that the islamofascists have chosen women as their prime propagandists : they're harder to radicalize, but once you've managed to do it, they're unstoppable.

No polity can tolerate such an open defiance, not even a serial surrenderer like France. If they (the islamofascists) have a right to openly say they want to get rid of us, we have a right to defend ourselves. If they want to parade through the streets wearing the equivalent of the brown shirt, we have the right to deal with them the way the brownshirts were dealt with.

They're banning crosses and Sikh turbans too. I agree you can crack down on people whose beliefs are antithetical to your society. You're arguing that this iteration of Islam is. Fine. But every form of religion apparently is, to judge by their actions.

History illustrates the point that religious tolerance is an oxymoron.

Jeff:

A surprising but welcome admission.

Why surprising, or welcome? It is only due to secularism that we have put paid to sectarian slaughter.

Orrin,

The ban on other religious symbols is caused by the need to avoid all discrimination. So because a bunch of extremist Wahabbi-loving fascists abuses the freedom we grant them, all other religious people are to be punished as well. It is one more example of the complete confusion that reigns among European political elites.

They sense that something is wrong, but they're either utterly clueless (the left), or they're too afraid of the consequences if they acknowledge the islamofascist menace for what it is (the center-right). The ban is a very small step toward recognizing the problem, but it's not even the beginning of a solution. If it's not followed by further steps against islamofascist subversion, it will be pointless.

So I agree with you that this ban is far from perfect. It forbids too much because the real enemy cannot be named (yet ?). It tries to stay within the boundaries of political correctness (aversion from religion is absolutely PC). But it marks the beginning of an awareness of the problem of islamofascism. It sends a signal that they're being watched.

Peter -- Isn't the problem that the French are trying to suppress the symptons, but not doing anything about the disease?

It is only due to secularism that we have put paid to sectarian slaughter.

Yeah, I agree the Soviet Union didn't have much sectarian religious strife. Come on Jeff, I'm an atheist too, but this argument sucks, and you're too smart to make it.

Ultimately there is no such thing as absolute toleration.

Agents of secularism in Russia were so tolerant that they turned this monastery into a concentration camp.

Ultimately there is no such thing as absolute toleration. Correct. We can make Tolerance our orthodoxy, as we are well on the road to doing, but it will emphatically be an orthodoxy, which must and will be protected by force. And, because Tolerance admits no higher truth than itself, there is logically no limitation on the means by which the orthodoxy should be enforced.

In short, by its logic Tolerance will become a very dreary and ferocious tyranny.

Jeff:

Because your point that putative tolerance is mere code for repression of all religion was bang on.

David,

The very fact that they're paying attention to the symptoms is already an improvement.

As I said, it's not a solution in itself, but if this ban forces the islamofascists to escalate their actions, it will further solidify the conviction that something has to be done about the disease itself.

I suppose that's just human nature : the US didn't take islamofascism seriously until it slammed planes into important buildings in both the biggest city and the capital of the country.

Peter:

What's the point of defeating islamofascism if you turn your society into France?

Brian:

Since when is Communism not a religion? According to "The Triumph of the West," a book giving near central position to Chrisianity in that triumph, Communism is every bit a religion.

Or, consider this from a recent essay by James Q. Wilson:

"Until the nineteenth century, religion was usually the only acceptable justification of terror. It is not hard to understand why: religion gives its true believers an account of the good life and a way of recognizing evil; if you believe that evil in the form of wrong beliefs and mistaken customs weakens or corrupts a life ordained by God, you are under a profound obligation to combat that evil. If you enjoy the companionship of like-minded believers, combating that evil can require that you commit violent, even suicidal, acts."

The preceding para is precisely what I meant by religious tolerance being an oxymoron.

You are right, there is no such thing as absolute toleration, but there sure as heck has been absolute intoleration.

There are some so rigidly orthodox that what you think is as important, and deserving of persecution, if required, as what you do.

Others would focus on what you do, and leave what you think alone.

The former is tyranny, the latter tolerance for differences of opinion.

If I were the French, I would mandate school uniforms, and those who didn't like it could leave. (We would probably be well advised to do the same thing here.)

Marxism, Darwinism and Freudianism are all rationalisms dressed up as religions to give y'all secularists faiths to believe in.

Jeff:

"Until the nineteenth century, religion was usually the only acceptable justification of terror."

Music to your ears, eh? Great, except when you think that, until about the nineteenth century and certainly the eighteenth, religion was pretty much the ONLY acceptable justification for any political legitimacy or behaviour. Kinda turns a lot of your arrows into tautologies and oxymorons.

And, again, if you consider communism to be a religion based upon fervancy alone, you are making up your own dictionary whatever that book you quote ad nauseum to us says.

I quite agree communism is a religion. Don't see where that changes my point, though. Secularism or toleration or whatever you would like to call it still is not absolutely tolerant.

Religious tolerance is only possible when religion is removed as a justification or qualification for political rights and authority. This in itself is a form of intolerance, because many forms of religious belief, like Islam, require that religion is the justification for political authority. The state cannot be tolerant of other forms of political authority and legitimacy. A democracy cannot tolerate theocracy. Religions can be tolerated to the extent that they acquiesce to the source of political legitimacy for the state, and do not attempt to compete with it.

Which is intolerant, by definition.

And isn't that precisely why our founding fathers were prescient enough to separate church from state?

To demonstrate an equal "intolerance" for religion (for all religions) by shutting it (them)out of the political sphere? Religion, which in the continuous past had, by 1776, showed extraordinary intolerance and, in the continuous present, always has the potential (alas) to do so?

Isn't it about time to recognize that tolerance and freedom are not the same thing? A book on Scotland I am reading now shows somewhat surprisingly that there was much more political and religious freedom in 18th century Scotland than England. But tolerance, no way.

Tolerance is a virtue that can be recognized in its absence but not measured objectively. It springs from civil order, prosperity and big hearts more than political theories and constitutional arrangements. To see tolerance as the ultimate political objective is no different than seeing reverance or chastity in that light.

To enforce tolerance the way the French are doing may or may not lead to intolerance, but it certainly leads to authoritarianism.

In the US, the intolerance of any form of religion in the public sphere has led to unprecedented religious freedom, vibrancy, and immunity from sectarian slaughter, in the private sphere.

So intolerance of religion leads to religions that tolerate each other. I think that is a different sense of the word though. Tolerance as often used is not precisely the same as tolerate, which is more akin to "put up with".

I happen to think the results are as close to ideal as it is possible for humans to get.

Peter:
Do you think Islamic women should be allowed to wear a burqa when getting their driver's license photo taken?

I don't, either. If we have any sense, we make that the price of getting a license--and driving, for that matter. The French are making the absence of overt religious symbols the price of going to public schools. I can't find the logical difference betweent the two positions.

Regarding Communism as a religion. This historian actually used the term "major religion." And he is by far from the only one that does, he just happens to be the one I have at hand, and the only one I have read who views Christianity as being fundamental to the rise of the West. If you look at the characteristics of an organized religion, argument from authority, holy text, priesthood, and deity, Communism qualifies just as surely as Catholicism: Das Kapital, Communist Party, Marx/Engels/Dear Leader, etc.

Jeff:

By that definition, evolution is a religion too.

Jeff:

The Civil War was nothing but sectarian religious warfare and the 40 million dead from abortion are a result of trying to remove religion from the public sphere. We've just as many victims as anyplace else.

Barry:

They didn't separate church and state.

It is only due to secularism that we have put paid to sectarian slaughter.
Posted by Jeff Guinn at January 31, 2004 08:52 AM

Jeff, try to say that standing outside the National Holocaust Memorial, or better yet, the front gates at Auschwitz.

or an abortion clinic.

Abortion isn't sectarian slaughter, it is infanticide. Women are killing their own children, not the children of someone else's religion. Not that it makes it acceptable OJ, but it does not refute Jeff's argument.

You can't blame abortion on the removal of religion from government. America, as we are endlessly reminded, is an overwhelmingly Christian nation. Prior to Roe vs Wade, states were liberalizing their abortion laws based on the will of the voters. We have abortion because a Christian majority is willing to live with it. Establishing this majority religious view would not change the outcome.

Religious belief had to be replaced by secularism in order to make possible the murder of 40 million. They are victims of the intolerance of religion which masquerades as tolerance.

OJ, now you are making excuses for religion. Religous people are not deprived of the right to vote their conscience. There is nothing in the separation of Church & State that prevents Christians from deciding the matter of abortion in accordance with their religious views. Roe v Wade was not decided on Establishment grounds but on the 'right to privacy' grounds. Even so, a majority of Christian voters could override the Supreme Court with a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion. We don't need a religious establishment to do that.

Robert:

Since there is no right of privacy, what the Court did is to establish a secularist religion to overcome the traditional ones and stop Judeo-Christian morality from forbidding abortion.

OJ:

Abortion is neonaticide at a different time. Faithful Judeo-Christians, just like all pre-modern societies, have fully engaged in that practice. Further, you can't possibly believe that anywhere near a majority of those 40 million were the fetuses of atheist mothers, or secularists frog-marched perfectly religious women to the abortion mills.

Robert's point is spot-on. The Christian majority could, if it chose, impose an amendment upon everyone prohibiting abortion, or eliminating the right to privacy. It chooses not to. Don't pin the blame on some fictitious secular religion when it sits squarely on the 80+% of Americans who identify themselves as Christians.

Chris:
Nazism was an official state religion, and was carrying on a time-honored European tradition. Only this time the tools of the Industrial Revolution allowed grasp to equal reach.

Peter:
Evolution is a religion if you can identify an officially sanctioned priesthood, a holy text from which all authority flows, and dogmatic antagonism to skeptical inquiry.

Remember, the shortfalls of the famous Peppered Moth experiments came to light from within the community of evolutionary scientists, not from without.

The Christian majority did outlaw it, where such majorities still prevailed. And has repeatedly placed limitations on it. The Court took it out of the hands of the majority so that now a supermajority is required. Secularisms unwillingness to live under the moral majority is understandable but antidemocratic.

80+% isn't sufficient majority?

It is amazing how much power a minority can weild. The Jews control the world, and the Athiests set the moral agenda for America.

Not even a minority. Any time 5 Justices agree with one another they can do things that 90% oppose--Miranda rights, etc.

All it takes is for those 80+% to decide they have had enough, and pass an amendment.

But they haven't, which leads one to conclude there is far less a majority than you suppose.