France’s New Burqa-Friendly Government

by Daniel Greenfield

Francois Hollande may be the first Muslim-elected president of France. With an estimated 93 percent of Muslim voters casting their ballots for Hollande, in a close election, their numbers may have made the difference between victory and defeat. The makeup of France’s new government reflects the debt that Hollande owes to his Muslim voters.

Hollande had said during the campaign that he would uphold the law on the burqa ban, with the caveat that he would apply it in the best ways possible—a statement which leaves plenty of wriggle room for minimizing enforcement. And his appointment of Christiane Taubira as Justice Minister suggests that soon enough Mademoiselle Liberty will don the burqa.

Taubira, a Guyanese radical leftist, who despite being appointed Justice Minister has no law degree, voted against the law banning hijabs in schools– one of only a handful of members of the National Assembly to do so. She did not cast a vote at all on the 2010 burqa ban, but this year she signed on to an MTE petition on behalf of “veiled mothers” which denounced the “endless series of offenses” against Muslims, a list which included the “anti-headscarf law” and “anti-niqab legislation.”

Appointing Taubira is a concession to the rioters and the burqa bandits. She wasn’t chosen for her degree in African-American Ethnology, but as a reward by the new government for those who burn cars and force women into burqas.

While Taubira has exploited the commemoration of the slave trade for political reasons, she has excluded the crimes of Muslim slave traders from discussion, saying that, the slave trade practiced by Arab-Muslims must not be brought up too often so that “young Arabs do not bear on their shoulders all the weight of the heritage of Arab misdeeds.” Naturally there is no similar restraint when it comes to the weight that young Europeans are told to bear on their shoulders.

The new government will have three Muslim members, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Kader Arif and Yamina Benguigui.

The Moroccan-born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who will serve in the cabinet as Minister of Women’s Rights and spokesperson for the French government, has come out against the Burqa ban, saying that “The Republic cannot spend its time making laws that exclude, prohibit and stigmatize.”

Appointing an opponent of the Burqa ban as Minister of Women’s Rights sends a clear message that the new government has no intention of defending women from Islamic repression. The Burqa ban came out of the work of a women’s rights delegation in the National Assembly. As the leading Muslim figure in the new government, with a portfolio that most directly relates to the subject, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has been positioned to sabotage any efforts made to protect women from Islam.

And that isn’t the only problem with Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who is a dual citizen of Morocco and France, and a former member of CCME, a council of émigré Moroccans appointed by the King of Morocco, whose goal is to strengthen the Moroccan identity of French Muslims and to advise on their Islamic education. This has led some in France to question her loyalties, especially as CCME has been described as a propaganda tool for the Moroccan government.

The end result of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem’s appointment is that a woman who had represented the Moroccan government in France will now speak for the government of France. And a woman who opposed banning the Burqa will hold the ministry of women’s rights.

Of Hollande’s other two Muslim ministers, Kader Arif, has been vocal in blaming Israel for France’s foreign affairs problems, claiming that Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Union was blocked by Israel’s actions in Gaza. He signed a petition demanding that Israel open its border with Hamas run Gaza, expressed his support for the terrorist flotilla, calling for a “firm response” against Israel for halting it, and even signed a petition calling for a French-backed flotilla to invade Israeli territory in support of Gaza.

Kader Arif’s new position is only indirectly related to foreign affairs, but he has shown a willingness to exploit developmental issues within his purview in order to attack Israel; that pattern will likely continue as he takes charge of veteran’s affairs and blames French wartime casualties on Israeli policies.

The third Muslim minister, Yamina Benguigui, has made several movies, some like Inshallah Sunday, seemingly critical of the burqa, but at the same time she has also allowed others, such as Women of Islam, to serve as a forum for those who promote the burqa. Yamina Benguigui has also worked to perpetuate the myth that the problems caused by Muslim immigrants are due to French racism, rather than due to Islam.

Yamina Benguigui was a signatory to the petition against France’s national debate on secularism and Islam. The signatories to that petition included leading Islamist Tariq Ramadan, leftist pedophile thug Daniel Cohn-Bendit, as well as Laurent Fabius, who is the current Foreign Minister.

But the most devastating impact of Hollande’s victory on France and on Europe may be elsewhere. While Sarkozy had blocked Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Hollande may be Turkey’s ticket into the EU. Turkey’s Islamist Foreign Minister has already expressed his hope that Hollande’s victory will open up Europe to Turkish membership, despite Turkey’s hostility to the West, its domestic political repression and its ongoing occupation of Cyprus.

Hollande certainly did not discourage the estimated 500,000 Turks in France from coming to such a conclusion. A few days before the runoff election he sent out a letter which stated that he was very attached to the relationship with Turkey and that if elected he would increase the closeness of that relationship.

“Europe,” he wrote, “which has agreed to begin negotiations for full membership of Turkey, remains true to its principles “to bring together different peoples, cultures and beliefs.”

Hollande, who lost the Catholic and Jewish vote, but won the Muslim vote, has not done that; instead his government reflects the Leftist-Islamic alliance that brought him to power. It is a government, that for all its assurances, is likely to turn a blind eye to the burqa, a knowing wink to the repression of women, and a blind eye to the preaching of Jihad on French soil. And it will do its part to open Europe’s door to Turkey, which will mean the end, not only of France, but of Europe.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/21/france%E2%80%99s-new-burqa-friendly-government/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.