"Islamization" of Paris a Warning to the West

Politics International Politics
41

Charlie Jack: You’re probably right, except that my feeling regarding the French legal system is that public sentiment and culture play much greater roles than they do in the average legal system in English speaking countries and so laws are far more fuzzy.

The basis for this seems to be that society is relatively homogenous in France with everyone being a stakeholder in the Republic (or so the perception seems to be amongst those who self-identify with these beliefs). However, this could very well come back to bite France on its arse if and when those who currently feel disenfranchised have significant enough numbers (or even a majority) that they can say, “Our turn now! We are the ‘society at large’”. I’m not sure that given the precedent up until that point, the rest of society could rightly claim some sort of rigid, universal laws free from cultural/religious chauvanism. This might eventually cause a crisis right at the very heart of French culture because they still seem to wrongly believe that it is self-evident that everyone in France would want to be “French” (as perceived by those who are already part of the cultural establishment).

What to do about those who don’t though? I think it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous to go from “Frenchness” to accomodation. That’s why I think that as flawed as multi-culturalism is, or has been, in other nations, it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as much of a problem in other nations, but maybe I’m misinterpreting that. It does seem to me that Americans and French are both equally as patriotic, yet the American notion of “American” seems more inclusive, and thus, less fragile, than the French notion of “French”. (I realise there are plenty of disenfranchised people in the U.S., and that there’s a fair segment of the population that doesn’t like Muslims, but it still seems like the notion of national identity is rather different to that in France.)

Certainly I think the notion of being “Australian” is far more fluid and inclusive than “French” and there’s far less tension with “outsiders” there as a result, though this undoubtably has something to do with history and the fact that Australia is very much an immigrant country.

42

Yeah, it’s hard to figure out. There’s a vestigial sense of the ideals of the French Revolution, but France is also an ancient, settled sort of society.

Regarding everybody being a generic American, Australian, etc., I sympathize with people who think immigrants should forget about, or at least de-emphasize, where they came from. But there are two problems with that: (1) many people seem to have something like a natural urge to know about their origins; and (2) other people sometimes don’t allow the person in question to forget about where he or she came from. :laughing:

Still it would be nice if we could manage that. Heck, it would be nice if we could all be citizens of the world. But I’m not gonna wait up nights for that one. For one thing, I don’t think we’ve even got the nation-state thing fully down yet.

43

Charlie: I don’t think we have the nation state down yet either. I don’t feel a huge attachment to where I’m from as such, although I do cower in the shadows of great men who lived before me, a disproportionate number of whom came from my own culture, though, of course, I had nothing to do with their greatness. I usually feel I have more in common with people from a similar general background than the average Australian, for instance.

You’re also right on your two other points, though I do find it odd at times that people have such an intense curiosity to know about their ancestors. It’s not like they had any part in their lives. I was watching a current affairs piece about a Polish woman who went to Katyn (where the Russians massacred a whole lot of Polish in WW2, and where there was a plane crash earlier this year that killed many Polish politicians and other officials) and she was right into the whole thing because her great grandfather died at Katyn. My father had a great uncle who died at Gallipoli, and yet I feel nothing about the man or indeed Gallipoli itself, other than how senseless the whole thing was, and I certainly feel nothing towards the Turks (then or now) or the Japanese, Germans or anyone else Australians have fought in the past. When I went to Turkey, I had absolutely zero interest in visiting Gallipoli.

While I was watching the piece about the Polish woman, I felt what a terrible burden it must be to be so burdened by the distant history of one’s ancestors, let alone one’s countrymen. I also felt how terribly pathetic it must be to so strongly identify with events one neither played a part in nor had any control over. It almost seems to me that such people lack the imagination or ability to create a world in and of their own vision, and instead must buy one “off the shelf”, so to speak. It’s kind of like buying a cake mix or painting by numbers and then passing the finished product off as one’s own.

I find the whole thing rather contrived and mawkish, to be honest.

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Maybe, but it’s very old. I read that the Romans used to keep masks or (later, I guess) busts of their ancestors. In earlier Rome, men would wear these masks to certain gatherings. It must have been a strange sight. I also read that in earlier Rome, if there was a crisis or serious decision to be made about family matters, the head of the family would go into the room where the ancestors’ masks or busts were kept and “commune” with his ancestors there.

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I like the Romans, but they were still very much of antiquity and into some superstitious shit.

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Remember when it was the Communists who were going to take over?

We buried them.

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[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]Remember when it was the Communists who were going to take over?

We buried them.[/quote]

I was a communist at age 14 and 15, or I thought of myself as a communist. You’ve got to be careful on this board about saying you were a communist, because people will expect you to have gotten some kind of certification. And if you never got certification, they’ll refer to you as a “Komm-yaniss,” or something like that. And they’ll say you were taking work away from the real communists, and giving them a bad name, and lowering their salaries. And that you were stealing from the consumers, who deserved high-quality communism for their hard-earned NT Dollars.

But it was kind of fun being a communist, even though I didn’t have the proper training for it.

48

then check out these videos :laughing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRXywn3BJx8&feature=player_embedded#!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiHcSPE9Hnw&feature=player_embedded#!

It took about 4 hundreds years for the french to free themselves from religious grip, and now in matter of decades this secular society will loose what was so hard to acquire.
It is getting worse year after year, you will see it soon enough.

49

Seems pretty clear then.

As I originally wrote, at some point, someone will react to this and then it will be on. I can imagine there’d be quite a few French people who would be feeling increasingly edgy about such things.

50

Well, maybe my unequivocal assertion that religious gatherings were not banned might have been premature.

I spoke to someone in France about this on Saturday (my sister-in-law who is a Parisienne lawyer) and her opinion is that the law is a bit ambiguous on this. Nevertheless for the sake of balance, she says, the Parisian authorities allow the public ceremonies because there are plenty of Catholic ceremonies held in public throughout the year.

51

The 1881 law referenced earlier in the thread seems to ban all outdoor “street meetings,” whether religious or not. The 1935 law, also referenced earlier, seems to restrict all outdoor street gatherings by creating exceptions when people get a permit in advance or when the outdoor procession, gathering, etc., is in accordance with local custom.

But I didn’t see anything specifically banning outdoor religious gatherings. The law seems merely to forbid all outdoor gatherings for which the participants have not acquired a permit and are not engaged in a meeting that is in accordance with local custom. This restriction of course includes outdoor religious meetings which do not meet at least one of the two requirements mentioned in the previous sentence.

The 1881 law and the 1935 law use the phrase voie publique. I found the 1905 laïcité law–again, referenced in an earlier post in this thread–in French on the Internet. It’s a big law with a lot of words, and it looked as if it was too big for a machine translator to take all at once. So I typed publique in the “Find” box of my browser, and went down the page that the law was located on, using the “Find” function. Whenever I found the word publique, if I suspected that it might apply to outdoor public meetings, I copied and pasted it and the surrounding words into Google Translate.

I could have overlooked or misunderstood something, but I couldn’t find anything in that 1905 law that seemed to ban outdoor religious meetings.

To sum up, as far as I can tell:

(1) The law seems to say that everyone who wishes to have a street gathering of any kind must get a permit to do so unless the street gathering is in accordance with local custom; and outdoor religious gatherings, as well as other kinds of outdoor meetings, seem to be subject to these rules.

(2) The law does not seem to mention outdoor religious gatherings specifically; i. e., the law does not seem to single out outdoor religious gatherings, although obviously they are included in the law’s restrictions and requirements.

(3) Contrary to what Maxime Lepante reportedly said, the law concerning the separation of church and state does not seem to mention outdoor religious gatherings; that is, the 1905 law, together with its later amendments, seems to be silent on that issue.

In case anybody didn’t notice them in my previous posts:

Here’s the French text of the law of June 30, 1881, on the right to meet (look for Article 6).

Here’s the French text of the law of October 23, 1935 (look for Article 1).

Here’s the French text of the laïcité law, the Law of December 9, 1905, concerning the separation of Church and State (together with its later amendments).