Posted on 07/29/2005 8:35:32 PM PDT by quesney
It's a start...
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France ejects 12 Islamic 'preachers of hate'
By Colin Randall in Paris
(Filed: 30/07/2005)
The gulf between British and French treatment of preachers of hatred and violence was thrown sharply into focus yesterday when France announced the summary expulsion of a dozen Islamists between now and the end of August.
A tough new anti-terrorism package was unveiled by Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and a popular centre-Right politician.
Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Sarkozy: 'We have to act against radical preachers'
His proposals reflect French determination to act swiftly against extremists in defiance of the human rights lobby, which is noticeably less vocal in France than in Britain.
Imams and their followers who fuel anti-western feeling among impressionable young French Muslims will be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin, most commonly in France's case to its former north African colonies.
Mr Sarkozy also revealed that as many as 12 French mosques associated with provocative anti-western preaching were under surveillance. Imams indulging in inflammatory rhetoric will be expelled even if their religious status is recognised by mainstream Muslim bodies.
Those who have assumed French citizenship will not be protected from deportation. Mr Sarkozy said he will reactivate measures, "already available in our penal code but simply not used", to strip undesirables of their adopted nationality. "We have to act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded," Mr Sarkozy told the French daily Le Parisien.
The first to be caught in the new round of expulsions is an Algerian, Rena Ameuroud, whose brother Abderraham was jailed in France earlier this year for his part in a jihadist training exercise in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris. He faces immediate deportation for allegedly urging fellow-worshippers at a Parisian mosque to engage in "holy war".
At least seven French nationals are now known to have been killed while fighting with anti-coalition insurgents in Iraq, in some cases as suicide bombers, the minister said. A further 10 are believed still to be there. France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population with estimates varying from five to nine million out of a population of 60 million, has long prided itself on its stern approach to terrorism.
Mr Sarkozy's crackdown on those "promoting radical Islamist polemic" was disclosed at the end of a week that began with French anger at Britain's failure to extradite the alleged financier of Islamist bombings in Paris in the mid-1990s. Rachid Ramda, 35, an Algerian, has been held for 10 years while fighting attempts to return him to stand trial. Survivors and victims' relatives who gathered this week at the St Michel station in the heart of Paris to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the worst attack, which killed eight, called on Britain to "stop protecting" Ramda.
They are unimpressed by his supporters' claims that he is a "gentle and peaceful" man who devotes his time in the Belmarsh top-security jail in south-east London to learning the Koran by heart, studying English literature and comforting other Muslim prisoners. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has approved Ramda's extradition - as did his predecessor David Blunkett - but his removal depends on High Court proceedings.
French ministers and commentators have long expressed exasperation at British handling of individuals who support terrorism, arguing that greater emphasis is being placed on their human rights rather than on security interests.
Not sure. I thought he was born there. You can bet somebody here will know!!
Just checked. He is the son of a Hungarian immigrant.
Tough talk is about all I expect out of the frogs.
Do NOT relocate your problem into someone else's backyard.
If you have a snake, wolf, cougar, or rabid imam, CAGE or KILL the pest; else it remains a breeding pest to cause more trouble elsewhere in the future.
Just because you send it away, doesn't mean that it is neutralized; it is still what it is...a DANGEROUS, predatory PEST.
Virginia.
Was it from 10,000 feet?
Dearborn, Michigan
seriously, where will these clerics go if France won't tolerate them anymore?
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Back somewhere where RADICAL MUSLIMS are supported...anywhere but in the free world. Has France actually gotten something right here?? Pinch me - I must be dreaming!!!
"I dont get this. Remember, this is the country that got in a tizzy about whether muslim girls could wear head scarves with their school uniforms, Chirac had to make a national speech about it. He tried to look like he was a tough guy over a foolish issue while doing nothing to stop the epidemic of crime from muslims in France. Sort of surprising that he found the stones to do this if saying "you must stick to the dress code" resulted in a national crisis."
Let me attempt to assist your understanding.
The headscarf is a symbol of the submission of women in Islamiste religion. That is its purpose. It is an overt religious symbol.
France is a secular republic. There is freedom of conscience, but there is no right to form associations and to advocate belief systems that are opposed to the belief system and morality of the public. This is why religions in France must be registered and licensed, and why radical Islamiste imams are deported: either they are preaching in unregistered associations, which they do not have the legal right to do, or they are preaching in the legal, registered mosques, but the content of what they are preaching is contrary to the legal standards of the Republic.
The head scarf is contrary to the moral principles of the Republic, because it asserts the submissive inferiority of women to men, girls to boys. It teaches them, even at school age, that they are of second status.
Now, if women want to wear headscarves in private or while walking the streets, this is their business.
But in institutions of the Republic, such as the public schools or government offices, the overt religious symbol is inappropriate in any event, and the direct assertion of female subordination is completely intolerable.
Therefore, France enforced a regulation that there be no headscarves OR OTHER CONSPICUOUS RELIGIOUS OBJECTS worn in the public schools. Muslims may not wear head scarves, Jews may not war yarmulkas, and Christians may not wear large crosses. The schools are part of the secular state, and exist to teach the values and morals of the secular state. People have the right to practice legal forms of religion in their private homes (radical, violent Islam is not a recognized religion in France, therefore it is illegal to practice it and those who attempt to do so break the law and can be expelled, and are being expelled). They do not have the right to bring religion into the public schools.
Now, of course in the past there was always tolerance for the Jewish skullcap and Christian crosses. The particular problem with the headscarf is what it symbolizes: the submission of women to men. That aspect of Muslim religion has no right to exist in France, and its public expression is being explicitly banned by law. For consistency's sake, therefore, overt Jewish, Christian and other religious symbology needs to be checked at the door now.
So, you see, this was not a matter of dress code.
This aspect of the dress code has been imposed specifically to suppress an aspect of the Muslim religion, because that aspect of that religion is unacceptable in France. Muslims have the right to exist in France, but they must modify their religion to conform to French law, just like Catholics, Protestants and Jews must. If they will not, they will be deported.
The Islamiste radicals understand well what is at stake in the battle of the headscarf in France. That is why they threatened to behead captured French hostages if France did not revoke the headscarf ruling.
Of course France did no such thing.
So, you see, far from being trivial, the headscarf is at the heart of the symbolic battle between radical Islam and the ideals of France. Islamistes were determined that women of Muslim parents would overtly carry out the submissive aspects of the Muslim religion. The response of the French state has been to use the power of the mandatory education laws and the schools to enforce the rule that the daughters of Muslim parents are French children, perfectly equal with boys. That is the law in France, and Muslims in France will change their religion practices to conform to the law.
Most do, because most French of North African origin are not Muslim but secular. Most practicing Muslims are moderate and belong to the registered, licensed and supervised mosques.
And then there are those who are fanatics.
The headscarf ruling forces upon them a choice.
Their daughters WILL NOT wear badges of submission. Not in France, not in the schools.
These radicals are therefore flushed out.
If the issue is of primary importance to them, they will leave the country.
If it is not, they will submit to this rule, and thereby the primacy of the morality of the Republic over conflicting tenets of their religion is established. This is an important lesson to teach the young. The father and brother says that they are to submit. But the state says that they are equal, they are NOT to submit in public, and in the clash of authority between the state and the Islamist males, the Islamist males are forced to back down. This sets a powerful example for the children.
Those men who will NOT back down go nuts and are thereby easily arrested and deported.
And those who go underground and attempt to create a radical network and create religious associations that are not registered and licensed by the State: they are the reason France has the best counter-terrorism units in the West.
The headscarf was a crucial battle, and everyone in France including the Islamiste radicals knows who won it. So do all of those young women growing up in French society perhaps quite uninclined to submit to the bad old traditions of their parents. The state is a strong ally on their side.
Of course this battle is not over, but there is no real doubt who will win in the end. With French birth rates the highest in Europe now, and immigrants only making up a quarter of those numbers, things are turning the corner.
With the muscular policy of deporting radical Islamiste leaders (and followers) the goats are being separated from the sheep.
And the head scarf, far from being simply a dress code issue, is a way to force female equality on Islamistes, thereby either flushing them into radical activity - allowing their arrest and "interrogation" before deportation, or forcing them underground, demonstrating their weakness. Every day the Islamiste radical father's authority over his daughters is directly suppressed by the state, and every woman and man in that house knows it. The whole community knows it. And that is the POINT.
Islam is part of a fine culture heritage of nice art and good food, just like the Catholic and Jewish traditions. They are welcome things in France.
However, the notion that medieval attitudes are going to be imposed on French children because their parents' religion demands it? Well, this is part of the process of assimilating into French culture. Those strange and barbaric ideas of old cultures and religions must be abandonned and the ideals of the Republic adopted.
Unfortunately, radical Islamistes won't go without a fight, and the headscarf was a statement. The suppression of the headscarf is also a statement of what France is, who the French are as a people, and ultimately, who is in charge.
Beyond being a statement, it is a red flag waved in front of a bull. The true medievalists are proving unable to endure the challenge, and are lashing out...and getting caught and deported.
Elsewhere on this thread, there was a comment about Sarkozy being not French. This, of course, is incorrect. He was born in France, that makes him French. And he was educated in France. His language is French. "French" is not a race like "English" or "German" is. It is an idea.
Est anglais qui peut; est francais qui veut - this is an old saying and it is still true.
The headscarf confrontation is merely the latest front in that ongoing assertion of what it is to be French.
"Those who have assumed French citizenship will not be protected from deportation."
Frogs with cajones........Who'd a thought it possible
I can hardly wait until the USA tries that - anybody wanna take bets America will not be allowed to do that ..??
Its been a bad week for the goons.
To be a radical muslim in france you would have to be a Moonbat that lived in a burrow.. even then the french could rationalize the genius of it..
I know it is fashionable for Americans to bash the French, but as an Israeli, let me say that the French take terrorism more seriously than just about anybody. If I were an Al Qaeda terrorist, I'd rather be just about anywhere than in a French interrogation facility. They're methodical and they're ruthless. That doesn't mean they won't stab allies in the back, but when it comes to anti-terrorism efforts and law enforcement, they're as good as it gets.
Bump
During and after the Russian Revolution, many offshoot members of the royal family, the nobility and wealthy families escaped to France where they and their heirs have lived "in exile" for over eighty years.
Many descendants of the original Russian families remain in Paris and other cities, are involved in public affairs and remain fiercely proud of their lineage and family names.
Leni
Whoa!
Somebody in France must have grown half a testicle.
Right....must be a cold day in hell.
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