Word: french
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Silence is hardly the word to characterize the matter of France and professions of religious piety. Last year the country's highest administrative court denied the naturalization request of an otherwise irreproachable Moroccan woman on the grounds that her wearing a burqa was incompatible with French secularist statutes. On Tuesday, French Scientologists raised complaints of religious intolerance when state prosecutors wrapped up their arguments against the church on charges of organized swindling by requesting that the organization be disbanded and barred in France. (Read an argument against the veil by Azadeh Moaveni...
...champions of French secularism note that the Scientology trial is based on fraud accusations, not religious practice. Meanwhile, the burqa offensive is aimed at protecting the rights of women forced to efface themselves by covering their bodies entirely. "The rights of women isn't an issue of a few centimeters of cloth, but the burqa is the symbol of the oppression women suffer, so this debate should be encouraged," says Siham Habchi, president of the Neither Whores Nor Submissive women's movement, referring to the parliamentary initiative. (Check out a story about Europe's "veil wars...
Probably because Catholicism has deep roots in French history and culture and is not viewed as a foreign faith the way Islam is, which, with about 6 million practitioners, is the second largest religion in France. Its practitioners are also growing at a faster rate than Catholics. Indeed, the expanding size of Islam and fears about spreading extremism seem to have emboldened pundits and policy-makers to wade in and legislate aspects of Muslim observance and life in ways that they would be wary of doing with Catholics, Protestants or Jews...
...market for decadent Western desserts, heart-shaped cookies, cayenne-pepper-espresso brownies and the like. But perhaps the most telling opening - in terms of the area's newfound cachet - is that of the Intercontinental West Lake, tel: (84-4) 6270 8888. The hotel has three smart restaurants - a French bistro, an Italian restaurant and one that serves Vietnamese-Chinese cuisine - as well as a bar set on its own island in the lake. Only the prices are hard to swallow...
Berger's eagerly anticipated new venture, Donald's, will be a four-story glass-and-open-air lakeside extravaganza, and is set to open later this summer with a wine room, oyster bar and multinational menu. It looks like the French Quarter's monopoly on fine dining has been lost. "Hanoi has grown so fast," agrees Berger. "We're now really the center...