Word: frenchness
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...Nicolas Sarkozy The French leader's rightist party won 27% of the Euro vote despite low turnout...
Meanwhile, French and U.S. experts continue to listen for the elusive pinging of Flight 447's black boxes, sitting somewhere on the floor of the Atlantic. If they are never found, a theory may be the closest we ever get to the truth...
...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...
...this point, no Muslim defenders of the rare French burqa have emerged. Indeed, Dounia Bouzar, a specialist on Muslim affairs, notes that while she and many fellow Muslims opposed the headscarf ban as meddling in private matters of choice, she is relieved at action taken on the burqa. "Imposition of this garment on women is one manner Salafists get individuals to renounce their individuality and submit to the extremist cult thinking that masquerades as Islam - but which is an abomination of it," Bouzar says. "That Salafist influence and activity is spreading, and if it takes political action to prevent their...