The purity of French schools preserved

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An example of what happens if the struggle against radical Islam is recast as a struggle against “fundamentalism” (that is, against every serious form of religion): French “headscarf” law bans priests from schools. Priests wear Roman collars, after all, and Roman collars are just like headscarves. The problem’s a general one. If you combine religious equality with radical diversity you necessarily get the equal suppression of all religion, except religion that reduces itself to a purely private indulgence and otherwise just repeats whatever the secular state says. As the word “tolerance” is used today, it just means accepting everything liberalism accepts and rejecting everything liberalism rejects. [UPDATE: It’s happening in Germany too: Teaching nuns hit by Muslim headscarf ban.]

4 thoughts on “The purity of French schools preserved”

  1. Why assimilation of Muslims is not desirable
    Most traditionalists believe that the assimilation of Muslims into our society is not possible. What this story shows is that the assimilation of Muslims, even if it were possible and successful, is not desirable. The very attempt to assimilate them can only harm our society further.

    This is because, in the effort to find common ground with Muslims, we must remove even more of the particularity of our society than we have already removed, specifically the religious aspect.

    Writers such as Mark Goldblatt at FrontPage Magazine, who blame jihad on a “return to the Middle Ages,” equate the West’s own Christian Middle Ages with the savagery of jihad. It follows that to protect ourselves from jihad, we must complete our own de-Christianization.

    http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002511.html

    Lawrence Auster

    Reply

    • It’s not really assimilation
      “[T]o protect ourselves from jihad, we must complete our own de-Christianization.”

      Just so. That’s the significance of defining the current struggle as a war against “fundamentalism,” which is what inclusiveness and tolerance require. The problem with “assimilation” is that today it has to go both ways, with the greater burden on the larger society to be forthcoming.

      Rem tene, verba sequentur.

      Reply

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