The Significant Handshake - France on Citizenship

[Errant Bard]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

You know you can read French plays from the time of Shakespeare but you need help translating Shakespeare. French control, baby!

Maybe you can, I cannot. Where did you get that ? (once upon a time I could read xenophon, though. does it count for greek control?)

eta: Heck, I got Plutarch's Lives translation from my grandfather's library and it's so dated it's barely understandable  at times.

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

For the last time, I'm not saying I don't understand it.  I'm saying it's wrong.  And when all people can do in defense is say "it's tradition," the argument begins to look like this:

 

Huh, on what are you basing yourself to declare that it's wrong, exactly? Is it some kind of declaration like a constitution, or on your cultural assumptions (what you seems to consider wrong tradition when it differs from your ideas, apparently).

You almost make me want to do something innocuous, like burning a piece of fabric*, in you honour.

 

(*with your national flag on it)

 

[DMC]

27 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I acknowledged that you were correct, that the case is technically a violation of human rights as understood throughout the world, and even that the entire "laïcité" tradition violates article 18 of the UN declaration. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I nonetheless stand behind my country's legal and constitutional principles, as well as my country's right to decide what are the requirements of citizenship (including cultural ones). I tried to explain all this, not to convince anyone it is necessarily right (I know better than to try).

Ok then.  Yeah, I did not get that from previous posts.  I apologize if I misunderstood.

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

Huh, on what are you basing yourself to declare that it's wrong, exactly?

Um, I'm basing it on my opinion, like anybody else.  Which, btw, I've backed up with pretty founding documents.

22 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

You almost make me want to do something innocuous, like burning a piece of fabric*, in you honour.

 

(*with your national flag on it)

By all means flame away!  Literally, figuratively, and internet-y (?).

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Errant Bard said:

Maybe you can, I cannot. Where did you get that ? (once upon a time I could read xenophon, though. does it count for greek control?)

eta: Heck, I got Plutarch's Lives translation from my grandfather's library and it's so dated it's barely understandable  at times.

Huh, on what are you basing yourself to declare that it's wrong, exactly? Is it some kind of declaration like a constitution, or on your cultural assumptions (what you seems to consider wrong tradition when it differs from your ideas, apparently).

You almost make me want to do something innocuous, like burning a piece of fabric*, in you honour.

 

(*with your national flag on it)

 

Dude all Americans love a good flag burning

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

Dude all Americans love a good flag burning

Did you see what they did when one black guy took a knee to protest* police brutality and racial injustice? 

*almost made that s a c. Oh how different that would be. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did you see what they did when one black guy took a knee to protest* police brutality and racial injustice? 

*almost made that s a c. Oh how different that would be. 

Yep.  In the US black people are held to a much higher and stricter standard, of, pretty much everything.  So, uh, yeah.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Yep.  In the US most of the world black people are held to a much higher and stricter standard, of, pretty much everything.  So, uh, yeah.  

FTFY. We're just way more violent about it. 

[Errant Bard]

8 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Um, I'm basing it on my opinion, like anybody else.  Which, btw, I've backed up with pretty founding documents.

By all means flame away!  Literally, figuratively, and internet-y (?).

So you do not see any contradiction in declaring one opinion backed by a constitution and a recent society-founding law wrong based on your opinion and backed by another set of documents?

 

I guess I can live with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, will always judge us to be wrong.

 

I don't like flame but props for not caring about that symbolic action though.

 

[DMC]

54 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

So you do not see any contradiction in declaring one opinion backed by a constitution and a recent society-founding law wrong based on your opinion and backed by another set of documents?

I'm more concerned with the structure of that sentence.  Seriously, I am not clear what you are trying to express here.

[Errant Bard]

15 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

I'm more concerned with the structure of that sentence.  Seriously, I am not clear what you are trying to express here.

Right. I was trying to say that you had no high ground to declare us wrong, and I wondered if you acknowledged it, I guess.

 

Sorry about that, it's true that my English is not as good as it should be.

[DMC]

25 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

Sorry about that, it's true that my English is not as good as it should be.

No worries.  Didn't know, and didn't mean to make fun.

[ants]

I’m with the French here. And I think their position is pretty consistent with modern views on religious rights. Which is that they can be restricted for the greater good and don’t protect an individual’s religious right to be a dick. 

The christian baker can’t refuse service to a gay couple. 

This candidate can’t announce they put their religion before public social norms and be accepted as a citizen of France. 

[Jo498]

I think the point is rather that it is not obviously right or wrong whether refusing to touch a non-related male via a handshake or refusing service for a gay wedding for religious reasons should lead to the consequences it led to in these cases. One can make a case for the secular law/custom overruling the religious in both cases, maybe because it does not touch "freedom of worship", i.e. the woman is free to pray, go to the mosque etc. as long as she follows the secular custom of handshaking as well or more generally sets the laws and customs of the nation in matters not explicitly connected to worship before her religion. One can also make a case that freedom of religion as a way of living should protect both christian baker and muslim woman in their refusals.

[Errant Bard]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

 One can also make a case that freedom of religion as a way of living should protect both christian baker and muslim woman in their refusals.

I think the examples are not that similar, a more salient comparison would be if you compared the French state with the baker and the woman with a gay client: the first are refusing a service to the second because what the second is does not please the first... but in that case you have to allow that the French baker welcomes the muslim woman, lets her buy cake, eat cake, cook cake, but refuses to hire her when she says her religion forbids her to sell cakes.

 

I don't think you can talk about protection in a case where the bouncer tells you you cannot enter the disco because you're wearing sneakers.

[Rippounet]

Funny how life works. Just last week I was defending French legal principles on religious issues and today I find myself personally involved in an obvious violation of these very principles.

So my son's nanny is a religious Muslim woman. She wears a veil in public and obviously won't touch any adult man that isn't part of her family. She works with a license granted by the local city council allowing her to work with kids up to 3 or 4 years old. Today she was trying the exam to get her national certification to work with kids up to 6 years old ; such a certification would allow her to apply for jobs in childcare centers throughout the country.
This exam happens to be a serious affair (France is quite bureaucratic). Not only does it involve recommendations from current employers (that is, me) and tests on childcare, but also tests in basic French, maths, history and geography. This morning she had an oral on history and geography. She expected to be able to choose her subject because one of her friends was yesterday. But the examiner playfully pretended to hesitate before demanding that she work on a historical subject: women's rights.
Now, this is an obvious case of discrimination, despite it being rather difficult to prove in a court of justice. As I explained earlier, while laïcité goes against religious freedom, any limits on religious freedom must be placed in a spirit of fairness and no individual can be discriminated against on the basis of a specific religion. In the case of a national exam, all candidates should face the tests in perfectly equal conditions. Not to mention that history isn't necessarily paramount to take care of children and that the examiner deliberately destabilized her.
I would encourage her to file a complaint, but she told me she isn't very political and being a shy woman I don't see her throwing herself in the spotlight, especially since this is the type of case that could get picked up by the media.
Of course she hasn't failed just yet, she still has other tests and I assume she can pass while having failed history/geography. But it does show that religious discrimination is common in France and can be very insidious. One might argue that it is important for people in childcare centers to conform to the standards of laïcité and be rather non-religious, because they can work with older kids and have to relate with many adult men. But the principle of equality having been violated, there is no question that she should be allowed to retake the test and the examiner be sacked.

 

[Errant Bard]

Hear hear!

The very basis of this laïcité thing is for everyone to be on an equal footing as citizen, that's why religious identity takes a backseat... An official going against this violates the principle worse than a muslim woman not wanting to shake hands does and should face worse consequences. I'd go as far as saying he doesn't deserve his citizenship.

 

[The Grey Wolf]

As a Muslim this topic pissed me off. Nowhere in the book does it say a woman can't shake a man's hand!

[mankytoes]

18 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

As a Muslim this topic pissed me off. Nowhere in the book does it say a woman can't shake a man's hand!

Exactly. I have a Pakistani friend who has recently got indefinite leave to remain in the UK (which is a hell of an effort, despite lots of factors in her favour). I'm sure she would happily shake anyone's hand for this, because it can be a matter of live and death. Even a religious person who might not be used to shaking men's hands most of the time would usually realise in the context of obtaining citizenship it was the appropriate thing to do.

These stories always obscure the fact that 90% of Muslims and 90% of non-Muslims manage to use common sense when these sorts of cultural issues come up, and thus have no issues when living and working together. 

[The Grey Wolf]

1 hour ago, mankytoes said:

Text

Exactly. That's culture masquerading as religion and I hate it. The way I've been taught if you're stranded in the desert and your only source of food is a pig you eat it and repent later (if at all).

[Errant Bard]

6 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

As a Muslim this topic pissed me off. Nowhere in the book does it say a woman can't shake a man's hand!

We do not have much details but it's a fact the woman justified her behaviour by bringing up a religious imperative. I do not think it matters if that religious imperative was "real" or not, what matters was her will to put what is religion for her before civility, and it did not help that the subject of the incident was gender equality, a touchy thing in the political sphere when allied with islam, currently.

 

Politicians are twitchy ever since some people decided to go and shoot random people in the street in the name of Islam even though the book supposedly tells them to not do that.