September 02, 2016
Source: Bigstock
I mean, the French are sort of permanently pissed off about a lot of things, but this particular issue has been festering at least since 2004, when they banned “religious apparel and displays” from public schools. That law was directed at the hijab, but in order to be fair, they had to discriminate against every religion, and so it also includes the Sikh turban, Christian crosses (all those schoolgirls who shop at Pandora must have been crushed), Stars of David, and the kippah, or skullcap, that some Jews pretty much have to wear all the time in order to be observant.
I don”t know what the French police would end up doing if they had to deal with high schools in the Deep South where kids routinely dress up in T-shirts with slogans like “Jesus Loves Y”all,” “Ask Me About Jesus,” and “JESUS” with the middle “S” formed into the Superman logo. I guess they would have to fill up the juvenile detention halls with children who just refuse to secularize.
Because that’s the key word here: secular.
The secular, in France, is the sacred. It’s been that way since 1905, when they passed their law separating church and state. As Article 1 of the French constitution states, La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale.
France is an indivisible, secular, democratic, and social republic. Laïque being the word for secular.
No big deal, right?
Same thing we have, right?
Not really. The first thing that happened after passage of the law was that all religious buildings in France became the property of city councils. I don”t know what would happen here if the Wildwood Free Will Pentecostal Church became the property of the Tuscaloosa City Council, but I don”t wanna find out. Not to mention the place in Houston where Joel Osteen preaches about how God wants you to be rich”that thing used to be a basketball arena!
For the past century the French have been building up their concept of laïcité, refining it, developing this idea that what the 1905 law really means is that religious people”priests, mullahs, rabbis”can”t participate in public life at all. Religion is for private matters. And if you try to bring that stuff into the public square, we”re gonna kick you out.
The First Amendment in America is the polar opposite of that. Everybody can use the public square, including priests, mullahs, rabbis, and even Hazel Motes, the crazy, wild-eyed preacher in Flannery O”Connor’s Wise Blood.
In other words, France developed a concept of “too religious.” You”re being too religious. You”re not secular. This is why they passed the 2011 law banning any Muslim garment that hides the face. This is why they”re now banning the burkini. I was surprised that so many Frenchmen got so outraged when a Muslim fanatic slit the throat of a French Catholic priest”because the nation historically has equal contempt for both religions. In fact, the original anti-Catholic crusaders didn”t stop at the throat.
At any rate, I think most Americans know that a burkini ban in America would be impossible, not because there wouldn”t be catty women making fun of the burkini-clad sunbathers”like the ones on the French beach who told the second-generation French Muslim woman to “go back where you came from””but that it just strikes people as wrong. It strikes fundamentalist Christians as wrong, and it strikes atheists as wrong.
There are people in the United States who want us to be more like France”they want us to start banning any religious influence from anything remotely related to government”and they always cite Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, which first used the words “wall of separation between Church & State.” What they forget is that Jefferson was saying this in order to reassure the Baptists that they would have a place in the public arena just like everyone else, and that the state would never interfere with their traditions. He said something similar two years later after he bought the Louisiana territories from Napoleon and the Ursuline nuns in New Orleans became panicked that all their property would be taken away by a mostly Protestant country, or that they would be forced to alter their forms of worship.
“Your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules,” Jefferson wrote to them, “without interference from the civil authority…. I salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect.”
In 1804 Catholic traditions in America were very alien. There were no Catholics in America in any numbers until the 1840s, when the Irish and Germans started arriving. Convents were thought of as a bizarre tradition held over from ancient times. The pope was extremely unpopular. The dress of Catholic women was considered odd as well”and that included the head coverings. It’s the same kind of weirdness we feel today when we see the hijab, or the burka, or the burkini. The French can”t deal with that. It’s not secular.
But I have an American message for the burkini-clad sunbathers, who must be feeling pretty lonely right now.
We salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect.
