I’m Back
The recent gap in posting was due to my 17-day belated honeymoon in Italy. Very nice trip.
Here’s a thought I had over there while hearing some news about the head-scarf ban in France’s public schools. If I were in France, and if I had a daughter, then despite my not being muslim, I would organize as many of the fellow parents whose children were willing to all wear head scarfs. Not a sit-in, but a “scarf-in.” It would be my child’s decision ultimately, but I’d encourage her to refuse to remove the head-scarf and force the school to send her home. If a significant portion of the children in the school were sent home, perhaps we’d get some traction here. Oh, and I’d send the kids back to school, every day, still wearing the scarfs, to make this a problem the school has to deal with every single day.
This ban is outrageous. I’m a staunch supporter of the separation of church and state, but this ban is idiotic. State-sponsored or state-coerced displays of religion are problematic, not voluntary, freely chosen modes of dress. If the mode of dress were somehow clearly disruptive to the purposes of classroom instruction, that would be different. But, head-scarfs, skull-caps, normal-sized crosses and the like do not strike me as disruptive to the classroom. Consequently, it’s hard not to see this as simply discrimination fueled by drummed-up fear of terrorism, which has been erroneously equated with any display of Islamic beliefs.
I expected better from the French.
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