#laicity

Take the word “race” for example. The USA has a very neutral, desensitized, common use of the word “race”. The USA made race a widespread word, not just of racism or science, but also of pride and of every day talks. It doesn’t surprise anyone to have surveys asking you your race. It isn’t shocking anyone to hear about “racial tensions” or “racial conflicts” in the USA today. But if in France you start speaking of “race” you come off as massively racist, because race never lost its scientific meaning of “a different species”, nor its racist meaning of “another type of human being”. Which is why I am a bit uncomfortable using “race” in my posts, even though the word is now neutral in the US-English. In France we speak of things such as descent or ethnicity or communities - but not “race”. 

The USA’s very different approach to ethnicity, historical descent and nationalities compared to France was perfectly illustrated by a famous incident (that I keep reusing myself as an example over and over, but that’s because of how telling it is). [Note: While I thought the man involved in this story was purely American, I just discovered today he was born and raised in South Africa, so the example isn’t perfect - but it is telling]. After France won the 2018 World Cup (FIFA of course), Trevor Noah celebrated how “Africa won the World Cup”, since most of the French team was made of black men. Problem, the French footballers immediately took offense to that and answered back that no, they were French, thank you very much. You see, from the “American” point of view here (and I don’t know much about South Africa I admit, so I’ll leave it aside), it is normal to have this sort of “bi-nationality” or “bi-racial” recognition as “Afro-American”. For the Black community of the USA, it is a question of allying their Americaness with their African origins to be “whole”. So Black Americans tend to refer to themselves as “African” commonly and pretty proudly. But in France? Oh boy, no. In France, only massive racists call Black French people “African”. Well not exclusively but here’s the problem: African-originated immigrants (or even just Black people that happened to be born French) had to fight for a very long time to be recognized as “French citizens”, or as “French” short. In France it is still a logic implanted in the far-right and other racist movements that if you have non-French origins, you will never be French, and that black people do not “belong” in France but in Africa. It took a long time for people to stop considering Black French men and Black French women actually “French” before all, French before their skin color, and black doctors, black artists, black politicians had to fight to have their full Frenchness recognized (especially since most of them were born, lived and raised in France). 

So, Trevor Noah’s comment came of to the French sportsmen as massively racist and denying them French status, while Noah thought the French footballers were basically denying or rejecting the origins of their parents or grandparents... 

Another big culture clash that happens between the USA and France - and which results in the USA calling often French with all sorts of “phobe” adjectives - is religion. Oh boys and girls and other critters... Americans, with their melting-pot culture, their deeply Christian history (and their very weird take on Christianity as a whole), their multiculturalism and their acceptance, tolerance and embrace of all religions, have established a mindset and a model which makes it hard for them to grasp one of the basis modern France was built over: laicity. Laicity is one of the main principles and laws of France, one of the key ideas the modern Republic and nation was built over, and it is something we try to teach each children - and recently the absence or failure of laicity in our society is causing all sorts of debate and threats. But what is laicity you might ask?

Laicity, French-flavor, is simple. There is an acceptance and a tolerance of all sorts of all sorts of religion in France, a bit like how in the USA you can have any religion you want - BUT to ensure that this equality and acceptance of all religions exists, France makes sure that no religion is above another by all relegating them to the background and ensuring there is no religion of state. So what does it mean exactly? It mean you can have any religion you want and practice any cult you want, AS LONG as it stays a personal, private matter. You can cover your house in religious symbols, you can walk down the street in religious outfits, these are your personal choices and no law can prevent you from belonging to a religion or showing you belong to this religion. Except if it is a truly mad endangering sectarian cult, or if you’re a terrorist... and EXCEPT if you are in a public position or a representant of the state. France, by the principal of laicity, is not a state or nation that has a religion. It means all those that represent it, serve it and embody it should not have any religion. France is supposed to be religion-neutral. 

In details, it means that no minister, no member of the government, no president can actively enforce or promote any religion, and cannot wear any religious symbol or outfit. Same thing with the police, which is the servant of the state and the enforcers of its law - policemen are not supposed to carry religious symbols or profess publically their religion. And same thing with public schools, public libraries and other public institutions directly funded, overseen and organized by the state or the government. The principle of laicity is that all religions are the same because they are, in theory, belonging to personal choices and personal life. But religion is not supposed to be a “public” thing, and so if you enter the state/government, or are supposed to represent it as a bureaucrat or agent, you are meant to erase all of your personal choices, all of your personal preferences, to represent the religious neutrality of the state - a state supposed to protect, defend and respect all religions by not choosing one, not taking one above the other, and not taking any part among the religious conflicts. 

Now, this is in theory. Again, this is the principle France was built over. And for Americans, this principle can lead to a lot of misunderstandings. For example today in France we discuss, with the rise of Islam-oriented terrorist threats and Islam-fanaticism, in front of rises of anti-Christian, antisemitic and anti-French manifestations, there is a lot of debates about the problem of Muslim communitarism, extremism and “overlap”. It is has been attested, certified and confirmed that a lot of Muslim youth today live in much more isolated and fanatical Muslim communities or families than before, and that a good chunk of them answer proudly that they consider that the law of the Coran is above the law of France. And for us this is a problem, because the model of the French citizenship and of France as a whole is the reverse - the law and principles of France as a nation go first, religious laws go second because they are of the private domain. This is also why for example teachers in public school or police officers are forbidden and criticized for wearing signs of appartenance to the Muslim religion, like a hijab. This is not “islamophobia” or “Muslim-hate” as Americans like to say (though I do not deny there’s a lot of far-right groups that are islamophobes and use this in their rhetoric). But originally it is rather a defence of laicity. 

And here’s the thing with laicity: it applies to all religions. Islam is currently under the fire due to its active terrorist threats and communitarism, but the same laws and critics apply to Jewish or Christian people. For example, this is one of the reasons extreme-right groups are criticized, rejected or disqualified from politics, when they break the principle of laicity by trying to actively promote Christianity and reject or forbid any other religion.  Because this is against the and against the principles of the Republic. Of course, France will always have a bias for Christianity because France is a deeply Christian country that built itself over Christianity and still has a lot of Christian elements in its culture - but the thing is that what modern France is supposed to be is a nation that has Christianity as part of its culture, but not as part of its government, institutions or nation. It is a nuance that can be hard to understand - especially for Americans, because the USA have a quite crazy model, where their culture is a mixture of all sorts of diverse religions, and technically there’s a freedom of religion and all that, but their nation and government still is based on Christianity, with the President still taking an oath over the Bible. In fact this is something French people like to mock Americans about, when people of the USA criticize French for being somehow not progressive and open-minded enough in terms of religion, we like to throw them back that their president literaly takes an oath on the Christian Bible. 

Anyway - as I said, Christianity doesn’t get any favor compared to Islam by the principle of laicity. This is why public schools teach nothing about Christianity outside of historical facts, and maybe a “religion class” which is obliged to cover all religions, dead or alive, not just Christianity. This is also why today there is a true “loss” of Christian culture in France because a good chunk of French citizens and youth are non-religious and so have no clue what some concepts of Christianity are. It seems that Christianity gets “favored”, but that’s just because it is part of the old French culture, but in terms of laicity, it isn’t supposed and shouldn’t and most of the time doesn’t have favors. There are religious schools yes, Christian schools, and Jewish schools and Muslim schools - but they are “private schools”, surviving on their own fundings, and not public schools depending from and organized by the state.

One side of my family was very conservative, the other side was more into laicity but still partly religious. I was lucky enough to be given the choice and didn't have a religious education. Which is relatively common for my generation and younger generations in France.

[But not giving a fuck doesn't mean you can't educate and inform yourself about the situation]

And here are the last points you must kow to fully understand the situation!

The banning of the abaya was quite a special event in terms of French school legislation. It was a special event, because for the first fuckin' time in a long time, they actually bothered to be CLEAR AND PRECISE. You see, there are already a lot of laws and rules and circulars when it comes to school legislation, but the thing that school teachers, school directors and school students keep complaining about is how vague and unprecie they are. France is a grand land of ideas, principles and concepts - but when it comes time for practical applications, things tend to get much more obscure. Everybody knows how a public school is supposed to work, and what principles it should follow, but nobody was ever exactly said HOW to do it, and most of the time, individual school and school directions have to just deal in their own way with what the government and the state requires of them. With the abaya ban, what everybody praised was that a specific and easy to follow protocol was given. If a student arrives at school with an abaya A) Let her inside the school. You cannot just leave a student in the street just because she wears a forbidden piece of clothing. B) Do not let her in class however. While an abaya-wearing student can stay within the school, she cannot attend classes until she removed her abaya. C) If such a case happens, ask for the student to remove her abaya, and if she refuses, have a complete, thorough and calm talk with her about why this ban was installed and the reasons behind the abaya problematic nature. D) If the student still refuses to remove her abaya, even after being explained why she should do it, call for the parents and see about sanctions.

A point that should be kept in mind is that, the backlash against the ban of the abaya mostly came from... foreign countries. I said before that the great imams and the Council of the Muslim Cult did criticize and debate the ban of the abaya, but they did not create any backlash or true opposition to it. If you see my previous post, you'll see they simply pointed out how it is a situation based on deep misunderstandings and that it will not solve the deeper problem behind it. There was on social media a true backlash and infuriated posts by the same influencers that promoted the abaya - but we'll see more about them below. And the rest? Outside influences, foreign influences. I opened this series of posts talking about the heavy anti-France campaign that came from Turkey and flooded the social media with accusations of France being islamophobic, racist and colonialists. But no need to go that far for seeing those interferences: just take a look at England. A British woman openly declared and made a whole case about her opposition to the abaya ban in France, and even went as far as to publicly promise to pay the fees that would be inflicted on the family of girls that refused to remove their abayas. Why would she do that? Not because she is an activist, oh no. Because she is a fashion designer, and she is about to release in England a line of abayas, and she used the ban in France as a marketing communication tool, to promote her own line of clothing.

To conclude this whole situation and put it all behind us, I will simply end with what is actually going on, with the first day of school under the abaya-ban. I evoked the outraged influencers before - French young women and French teenage girls that were furious about the ban of the abaya, and on TikTok and Instagram an Snapchat and the like openly expressed their disdain and anger at such a decision. And they all incited and demanded for their followers to all arrive at school wearing abayas. Their plan was for a massive, France-wide protest against this "hateful law", and they wanted to flood French schools with abayas, that you had to wear whether you were Muslim or not, in sign of support for your fellow Muslim women, to truly "break down the system". Well we have the numbers today. In total, upon the millions of students in France, only roughly three hundred girls arrived to school with abayas - and a good part of them actually never wore abayas before, and just wore one for the first time in their life as a sign of protest. All these three hundred girls, by the protocol described above, were let inside and talked to, asked to remove their abaya with all the explanations that came with it. On the three hundred girls, only sixty-seven refused to take off their abayas, all the others did and went to class. And on the sixty-seven girls that had their parents summoned and (maybe) received sanctions, only one case resulted in a particular negative result. It is currently talked about on every news channel in France: the father of this one girl threatened the headmaster of the school because he wanted his daughter to remove her abaya. It wasn't just any random threat, oh no, it was a death-threat involving cutting off the man's neck. Given the case of Samuel Patti's murder had been evoked by the president earlier this week, and the Turkish diffamation campaign online has also been reusing this case, let's just say that hearing a man threaten to cut off a headmaster's head has been very badly received.

[But not giving a fuck doesn't mean you can't educate and inform yourself about the situation]

Let's continue:

So, social media. One of the reasons abaya became such a big thing in France is because they became a new trend, a true fashion, on social media. You have lots of influencers promoting the abaya, the same way in French youth there is a true passion and fashion of all things coming from the Muslim countries, and it has been a phenomenon not unique to France or these recent years (already in 2016, Dolce and Gabbana had created a luxury line of abayas and hijabs). The problem however lies within the fusion the social medias created between pure fashion and religious influencing. A lot of the same young influencers and socila-media-teenage stars that promote the abaya will do so invoking wrong arguments such as "This is what a true Muslim woman shall wear" or "This is a piece of clothing that is part of Islam". Many social media accounts and so-called "teenage experts" will claim that the abaya is a perfect replacement of actual "religious clothing" for Muslim people, and this fueled an entire warped view by French youth of the abaya as a symbol of their faith.

This is actually the result of a vague coupling with the rise of extreme Muslim beliefs and practices in France - it is no news that ever since the terrorist attacks of the 2010s in France, Muslim extremists, terrorists and fanatical groups have been gaining power and influence on French territory. Everybody heard about the case of a small town which got so controlled by Muslim religious figures that they managed to forbid toy shops from sellng dolls with faces, and enforced a "no-face dolls" policy. It was a religious ban, not a government one, and yet everybody acted as if it was the actual law. And the influence of this more extreme and sterner, more forceful form of Islam is very open on social media, especially when it comes to young teens. There is a lot of TikTik videos and Instagram accounts and Snapchat circles centered for around around "hacks" and "tips" designed for Muslim kids and teens to practice their religion inside a public school. This ranges from videos and tutorials telling you how to perform your prayers and rites hidden from view in remote corners of schools, to "hacks" and "tips" about hiding burkas inside your bags so you can put them on when inside the school's ground. Somehow, the idea of wearing your religion upon you is treated as a fashion, and a new trend for kids is to do what looks like here as a religious resistance or religious offensive against laicity and secularism. And that is the very sad thing with social-media fed youths. They do not understand laicity and secularism - they do not understand how it works or why it is here. They do not see that as a way to keep the government neutral and to prevent a religion from taking control and crushing all of the others, the way Catholicism massacred all Protestants back in Renaissance, or the way the collaborationist government of WW2 used "Catholic" religious arguments to help the Nazis kill Jews. No, they see laicity as a personal attack on their faith, and as a way to crush their religion and to ban Islam as a whole (and only Islam, because of course, those same influencers insist that only Islam is discriminated by laicity, and that Christians and Jews are in league with the oppressors). For them, to be able to show and practice their religion in their home, in their mosques, in the street is not enough - they need to have it everywhere, including school, hospital and government. A very revealing census made people discover recently that more than half of the underage Muslims today believed that the law of the Coran was above any law of the Republic, and that they had the right to do illegal things if it was within their "religious right". This is very worrying because France works on the very reverse system, where the law of the Republic is supposed to come above and before the law of any religious text. If the law says for example that gay marriage is legal or that abortion is legal, no Biblical, Talmudic or Coranic argument should be stronger than this. That's how France is supposed to work, but a lot of kids do not understand that anymore, and cannot get in their heads that you can have religious freedom assured by a government that refuses all religion.

Edit: I checked back the census, and it was 57 percent of the young Muslims of France.

As a side note before going forward: know that all I talk about applies to PUBLIC schools. There are private schools that are religious in nature, oh yes. You have Christian schools, and Jewish schools, and Muslim schools all around France. But they are PRIVATE schools, who do not receive money from the government, and are not provided with teachers by the state. If you want to become a religious institution you can, but you have to cut tie with all public oganizations and all government-affiliated bodies. Once more, this is the essence of laicity: you can have private schools belonging to any kind of friggin religion (including the Star Wars religion if you want), as long as you stay within the law and do not do any illegal thing.

Ultimately, I believe that the opinion and reaction of the French Council of the Muslim Cult, and the words of the great imams of the largest French cities ill speak for themselves enough. In a first time, they objected to the interdiction of the abaya on a very simple ground: the abaya is a cultural outfit, not a religious one. In fact, they were very keen on reminding people that, by the canonical Muslim law, there is no actual true religious sign or religious clothing. You do not need to wear anything to be a Muslim, and they insisted on presenting the abaya as a fashion and a trend that came from Africa, and more precisely from the Maghreb. They also pointed out that maybe some women wore it out of a misguided religious sense, but that most of the time it was because of their body complex and because of dysmorphic reasons - they saw a lot of young women who preferred large, covering clothes such as those worn in Muslim countries because they wanted to hide their bodies or their perceived "flaws". And these people are of course right on all that, and you cannot deny what they say. However, in a second time they added a concession that is a very needed and important nuance: some of the great imams publicly added on television that, indeed, a part of the problem of the abaya is those that wear them. They explained that the young people who wore and promoted the abaya as a symbol of Muslim faith or as an emblem of Islam were clearly people who had a very lacking knowledge or misguided appreciation of Islam, and that a lot of non-expert, non-practicing Muslims actually said a lot of nonsense when involving themselves within the abaya debate. Of course, for religious experts such as themselves, banning the abaya is idiotic because the abaya is not religious. But, in a second time, they had to admit that there was also a lot of ignorant Muslims who treated the abaya as religious, and thus added fuel to the fire, or more exactly were the symptom of a deeper and bigger problem which is the misunderstanding and misteaching of the Muslim religion.

(Réédition) ” L’école n’est pas la mosquée ou l’église, elle est le lieu du savoir et de l’esprit critique.” Élisabeth Badinter, née Bleustein-Blanchet, le 5 mars 1944 , est une femme de lettres, philosophe, féministe et femme d’affaires française. “The school is not the mosque or the church, it is the place of knowledge and critical thinking.” Élisabeth Badinter, née Bleustein-Blanchet, le 5…

1905 or freedom of thought

” L’école n’est pas la mosquée ou l’église, elle est le lieu du savoir et de l’esprit critique.” Élisabeth Badinter, née Bleustein-Blanchet, le 5 mars 1944 , est une femme de lettres, philosophe, féministe et femme d’affaires française. “The school is not the mosque or the church, it is the place of knowledge and critical thinking.” Élisabeth Badinter, née Bleustein-Blanchet, le 5 mars 1944 ,…

Last time I talked about the evils of secularism, however, at the time, I was conflating two types of secularism. Additionally, in light of relatively recent events - such as the murder of a French Catholic priest by ISIS in France, within France’s borders, and the forceful suspension of a Catholic congregation with the intent of bulldozing a Church, I feel the need to talk about the two types of secularism that are to be contrasted: the American model and the French model.

Exhibit A: American-style Secularism.

Although I call it “American-style Secularism”, ever since the forceful legalization of Gay “Marriage” in the USA, the USA has been converting towards the French model of secularism, with the fining of Christian bakers and all that.

But anyway, the American model of secularism is when the Church and the State coexist peacefully, each do their thing, and leave each other alone. The Church is given the role of spiritual guidance, which allows it to retain influence and exist in the public sphere.

Additionally, even though the Church and the State are separated and Freedom of Religion is guaranteed, the primacy of a certain religion may be recognized and lip-service may be paid to it.

Overall, it’s a working system: the State and the Church do their own things, and don’t try to force stuff down each other’s throats. Unfortunately, the USA has started abandoning American-style secularism in favor of French-style secularism with the advent of Gay Marriage and the suing of Christian bakers.

Exhibit B: French-style Secularism

The French model of secularism was born during the French Revolution, and has been refined until it gained its present shape in 1905.

During the French Revolution, there was widespread repression of religion (think of something akin to the Soviet repression of Christianity) in the name of “Equality, fraternity, liberty”, and religion was all but forced into the shadows and alleys.

After all the turmoil in the 19th century with France’s form of government constantly changing from Kingdom to Empire to Republic and back and forth, they finally decided to settle for a Republic in 1870, and in 1905, they put forth the uniquely French concept of Laïcité, which roughly translates to “laicity” in English.

But what does Laïcité really encompass?

We could debate the dictionary definition all day long and end up with nothing *cough* Feminazis *cough*, so I am just going to give a practical definition: in the French model of secularism, or Laïcité, the State makes it 100% clear that the Church is the State’s bitch. That’s all there is to it. The State does its thing, and the Church either likes it or gets to suffer from repression by the State.

The Church and the State do not coexist peacefully, because the paranoid State views the Church as its rival. Religion - especially the demographically dominant religion - is virtually banished from the public sphere and forced into the shadows of privacy. This may be followed by pandering to minority religions *cough* Islam *cough*, attempts to establish secular cults *cough* SJWism *cough*, and so on...

Basically, it’s the State constantly demonstrating the fact that the Church is the State’s bitch. And that’s no good.

A much lighter variant of Laïcité however exists in Turkey - or rather, historically existed in Turkey, no thanks to you Erdoǧan - where Islam was kept at bay, radical Islam was persecuted, but moderate Islam was not only accepted but in fact promoted (fun fact: during the 18-year reign of the secularist Atatürk, more mosques were built in Turkey than under the entire 600-year lifespan of the Ottoman Empire. No joke.).