The French Burqa Ban

August Pointneuf gives his view

The French ban on the burqa will be enforced from 11 April 2011. The result will be catastrophic.

If attempts are made to enforce this law these Muslims will become martyrs on behalf of their religion. Those who believe God is behind them are unstoppable in their intent. Therefore these women will be fined, and will predictably refuse to pay their fines. They will then be imprisoned en masse and the stage will be set for a blood soaked reprisal.

On the other hand, if it is not enforced, the Muslim defiance of French law will be demonstrated and emblazoned on every street. Indeed burqa wearing will likely increase as a gesture of Muslim defiance and assertion. The universal message will then become that Muslims are exempt from French law, and by extension the French law will be progressively regarded as unenforceable. Muslims will have good cause to believe that they are beyond French law. The nation will become ungovernable and uncontrollable.

Many, including the author, will say that people are entitled to dress as they like. Whether it is decorative, protective or symbolic is irrelevant. Social and cultural pressures are the mechanisms which have so effectively governed given groups since time immemorial, with an inherent regulation and conformal orderliness.

If the burqa wearers in France were aliens, perhaps the French community could complain on the grounds of provocative symbolism. But most of these women are not aliens. They are legitimate French citizens. They have fulfilled all the requirements requested of them to become nationals. They were not admitted to France with any conditionality, and it is now immensely unfair to produce conditions retrospectively.

So why enforce the burqa ban? It is because a large proportion of the French feel that their culture is being annulled. They are right. And it makes political capital to agree with the proletariat.

Hollow and fatuous reasons will be used to push this political capital: One is that the burqa prevents identification. This is correct in a Western society, but is traditional, usual and frequent in Muslim societies. So this enforcement is an imposition of a culture – Western culture. Even hollower and more irrational is that legislating against the burqa “frees women from oppression”. This is demented rubbish of course, a childish attempt at professing morality. But it is also an attempt to force a cultural change. Who do politicians think they are and where did they get a mandate to change traditions evolved over millennia?

This problem arose, and should have been stopped, decades ago, when self-serving European politicians in their ignorance, stupidity, and selfish political gamesmanship, began to inveigling a political tenure for themselves, insensitive to the fragility of their own nation’s culture. This is a result of the clumsy self opinionating of those arrogant enough to believe their own delusions that they had a superior intellect. They believed that they could engineer gullible societies. They believed that cultures were disposable and people malleable. They believed that cultural immigration was theirs to manipulate and was within their control.

There is now only one possible exit from calamity, and that is the geographical division of France with autonomous Muslim areas, likely governed by Muslim law. Separate development, if one likes. Cultures, laws and traditions would be allowed natural and inherent expression, and cultural conflict resolved.

There is also a strong message here, to other political cabals in Europe. Face your primarily obligation to protect the evolved cultures in your individual lands and firmly restrict ingress of alien culture immediately, if these blood baths are to be avoided. Most nations will inevitably be forced – sooner (with less blood) or later (with more blood) - to devise strategies of geographical separate development.