Chirac Shoots His Other Foot

The press is filled with stories over France's headscarf ban, such as this one in the BBC.

It quotes him as saying that Islam "has its full place among all the great religions" practised in France, and that the training of imams of French nationality would be "a new step" towards "the affirmation of a culturally French Islam".

No seperation of Church and State there! The French government has decided that it will be in charge of training Muslim clerics. Maybe the radical Imam's weren't sufficiently anti-American or something.

"In both cases, he wants to prevent the far-right from exploiting the increasing number of identity problems, which worsen as the failure of the policy of integration fuels the trend for minorities to turn inward."

Faced with social failure, he just crushes a religious freedom as a political move to maintain his hold on power.

He failed to mention "the government's inability" to pursue integration, or "what new means it intends to deploy to deal with the causes - and not just the effects - of social disintegration", adds Liberation.

Maybe they wouldn't be beset with social disintegration if they'd spend more time educating their minorities and less time hectoring the US about their supposed cultural superiority. Another paper says

"Saddam Hussein has been captured, the (European) Union has broken down, the world economy is slow to recover, unemployment is taking root, but France chooses to debate secularism!"

But in their attempt to bring the Muslim's to heel, they've used a blunt instrument.
This BBC story relates how the Sikhs are having to withdraw from public school. The Sikhs take their turbans very, very seriously.
Here's a tidbit on the Sikh turban

There have been times in the relatively short history of the Sikh nation that if one wore a turban, it was reason enough for his or head to be cut off by the tyrannical regimes of the time. The collective response of the Sikh Nation was "You may take off my head but not my turban."

I think Chirac must've skipped over that part in his comparative religion class.
Maybe he was too focused on all the world wide protests denouncing his ban, as related by The Globe and Mail and The Australian on protests in Paris, The Kaleej Times of the UAE - reporting on protest in Kashmir, Reuters reporting on protests at the French embassy in London, Australian Broadcasting reporting on protests in Indonesia, Haaretz reporting on protests in Gaza, Expatica reporting on protests at the French Embassy in Jordan, Iran News reporting on Rafsanjani calling France's move "a strategic mistake", and Iran Mania reporting

Thousands of Muslim worshippers shouted "death to France"

Islam Online opines on the subject, asking

In the eyes of the French government, to be a true French citizen you must be stripped of any milieu or identity and conform to the plea (prescription?) of the state in order to assimilate - can we call that fascist pluralism or secular fundamentalism?

and

What the French officials are failing miserably in, just like an unmotivated and below-average-intelligence student, is that one needs a personality even before being a citizen. It is simple: no enunciation, no personality; hence no identity, no citizenship.

I think that skewers them pretty well. Maybe Chirac should ask why the Muslim world hates France so much?