France’s Sports Minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, has announced that French Muslim athletes will be barred from wearing hijabs at the Olympics. The decision is a gross violation of the religious freedom of Muslim athletes and should be condemned throughout the world.
I have long been critical of the French crackdown on Muslim head coverings and swimwear. Officials insist that such religious clothing is inconsistent with the secular laws of the country.
The denial of basic religious freedom in France is consistent with the French denial of free speech protections. As discussed in my new book, free expression is in tatters in France.
France has been a leader in the rollback on free speech in the West with ever widening laws curtailing free speech. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
The freedoms of speech and religion are co-existent and co-dependent. Religious speech is the leading target of government crackdowns under blasphemy laws and censorship systems. The freedom of speech sustains all other rights, which is why it is accurately called “the indispensable right.”
It is little surprise that a nation that criminalizes speech would also deny religious expression and observances.
There should be global outrage over the refusal to allow French Muslim women to adhere to their religious values in sporting events. These women want to compete for their nation but their nation will not allow them to do so in a way that is consistent with their faith.
Word is that the Obama people are warning the Biden people that Biden may be too far behind to cheat their way to victory.
I agree totally with the ban on the shameful hijab. It’s a symbol of oppression for Muslim women. Any “religion” that demands that women wear clothing that affirms and promotes the submission of women to men is not a religion worth defending.
P.S. Now, if Muslim men were forced to wear them as well, then I would rethink my position
“Any “religion” that demands that women wear clothing that affirms and promotes the submission of women to men is not a religion worth defending.
P.S. Now, if Muslim men were forced to wear them as well, then I would rethink my position” And how do you feel about the shameless objectification of female sexuality by such performers as beyonce and cardib? The cults of fans that worship on the alter of over-sexualized women in performances are far worse in that there is, at base, at least a moral code intertwined in a religion such a islam whereas the current cult of sex has no moral core and will lead to the downfall of a culture in general.
How about just accepting, at face value, what I stated, s’il vous plait?
Is clothing really “free speech”? The First Amendment does not refer to “free expression” or “free wardrobe” or “free singing”, etc. We should concnetrate on the freedom to discuss ideas.
Edward- “Is clothing really “free speech ”
Yes. See the 1969 Tinker decision holding that students wearing peace symbols were protected by the First Amendment.
I dissent from Tinker.
Edward,
Here for example is a clearly wrong decision by an indoctrinated or stupid state judge. Bound to be overturned on appeal and the school employees should be found personally liable under 42 USC Sec 1983.
https://pjmedia.com/kevindowneyjr/2024/07/18/seven-year-old-girl-too-young-for-first-amendment-rights-punished-for-a-drawing-n4930832
France has always been overly protective of their language and culture etc., it is a marvel that they would allow such rampant un-assimulation of so many islamists. Now their foolish progressivism is coming back to bite them on the behind.
Speaking of France, I remember reading one of the Foucault type crowd saying something like, “we dismissed religion and nationalism, and now we have nothing.”
Does anybody remember who this was, and the exact quote?
Wear whatever you want, as your religion prescribes, just don’t ask for a handicap!
Choice.
Religious freedom for insane and savage mass murderers or life?
Why take a chance?
The Israeli concert attendees took a chance.
Turley- “There should be global outrage over the refusal to allow French Muslim women to adhere to their religious values in sporting events. These women want to compete for their nation but their nation will not allow them to do so in a way that is consistent with their faith.”
Okay, I am on with this program. I want to see women of their faith swimming in the Seine in their Burqas. should solve one problem.
Pole vaulting will be a hoot too.
Too bad about my lack of outrage. All of my supplies of outrage were used on Oct 7.
Young,
Thank you for the laugh!
Free speech in Islam? There are only Allah’s words. Islamic women love their hijab? Stockholm syndrome. It’s the 21st century and what do nations do as the 5th century goatherder invades with mutilated shrouded women? You set secular laws as always with the conscience provided by reason and with regard to the nation’s culture.
Historically religions have been used to acquire land and money. Consider the Romans? Mankind is way passed goatherders.
Islam has no place in Europe. France is right in this subject, and the other European nations should follow the example.
Great Biden stuff comes out every day.
In Las Vegas he was protected by big men rather than sorority girls. So they do know the difference! Perhaps they can tell Ketanji Brown Jackson.
He said “We’re make sure there’s access to affordable internet, just like in in Roosevelt’s time, you know, back in, earlier than that, making sure there was electricity in agriculture in the rural areas.” I suspect his memory is a little faulty. I am a little younger than he and I don’t remember having internet, or television, or microwaves, or phones, or, sometimes, indoor plumbing. Or maybe it is my memory that is faulty.
Biden: “Elect me. I’m in the 20th Century.” Yes, in the first half.
He calls his Secretary of Defense “the black man”. Oh well, just another DEI hire.
“According to the New York Times, a staffer gave Biden a note card with tips saying, “Stay positive, you are sounding defensive,” Biden then repeated the private note on the call, seemingly reading directly from his staffer’s missive.”
Perhaps the French are getting sick of the invasion and the destruction of their culture. Charles Martel did more than ban garments and it worked for quite awhile. Did we give free speech rights to Nazis during WWII? Sometimes you have to recognize you are in a fight for survival. Despite this ban, I don’t think the French globalists get it yet. Beirut used to be the Paris of the East and now Paris is the Beirut of the West. Wake up.
Breaking News! France is f*cked.
When HASN’T France been f*cked? — THAT would be news.
I think you might have to go back to before Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt, October 25, 1415.
France was nearly invincible under Napoleon [although he was actually an Italian and Italian was his first language]. They invented modern warfare in which nations grapple with nations and made significant scientific advances. During WWI nobody doubted their courage or resolve or sacrifice.
Unfortunately Rousseau poisoned the mind of French intellectuals and it was they, largely lawyers, who brought the horrific French Revolution into being. Now they, and much of the West, has been poisoned by multiculturalism, globalism and open borders. I am wondering if it will take another Napoleon or, preferably, a Washington to set things right again. First remember who you are. And, yes, some cultures are better, much better, than others.
Given the only reason the insurgents won their revolution against the British was because of the military intervention of the French, and the appalling blindness of your precious heroes such as Franklin and Madison to the horrors of the French Revolution (which imposed the secular laws) and the tyranny of Bonaparte, this whining is all a bit rich…. Let the French have their laws and constitutional norms. The US Constitution is not perfect by a long shot. Your obsession with free speech is not something to be inflicted on other nations, even if one accepts the flawed premise that abusive items such as burqahs, forced on women by intolerant religion, somehow equates to free speech. You have the right to bear arms, the French have the right to say burqahs have no place in their society.
Turlwy voted for Obama, Hillary, AND Joetard — and as a hardcore, unrepentent, lifelong Chicago democrat, he’d do it all a SECOND time if given the chance.
So you have to consider the source when he offers criticism or advice to France. It’s like when Moe calls Curly a Stooge.
What should Franklin and Madison have done about the horrors of the French Revolution?
Banning the wearing of hijabs as a personal choice equates to a violation of freedom of expression.
Not embraced the Revolutionary murderers. Not allowed their lingering disdain for Britain to cloud their view of the realities of the French Revolution. Not to have launched a wholly unnecessary war against Britain in 1812, hoping that they were too preoccupied with protecting Europe from Bonaparte’s tyranny to respond effectively. Shame it all but destroyed New England’s maritime trade, saw the USN severely depleted once first line RN ships were deployed, led to thousands of US sailors imprisoned in Canadian ports, and necessitated a heavy dose of paint on a charred presidential mansion. But hey, you got a national anthem out of it, so great…
“Not allowed . . .” “Not to have . . .”
Or your *own citizens* could have chosen better principles, better intellectuals to follow, better revolutionaries. And not cheered for Madame Guillotine.
I do not plan to do the protest over this. This is France, and the Muslims who wish to live here should live as we do in France. I am only apologetic that this is nearly to being the only thing we do protect France!
Unless I am mistaken, western women visiting a Muslim nation are required to wear head coverings. Think about that. They do not allow us to follow our religion in their country, we must follow theirs. But they require us to allow them to follow their religion in our country, regardless of how we feel about it.
You have to hand it it Thurly to take discrimination against woman and call it a right to religious freedom. They are forced to wear those garments in countries such as Iran and Saudi not given a choice which you conveniently left out. Get lost Thurly discriminating against women is not as right in any civilized country.
Jonathan Turley, the 2nd from last paragraph contains a glaring error.
@ David
What glaring error. I don’t doubt you spotted something but it isn’t glaring enough for me to notice.
Young, “their nation” twice.
Thanks and too true.
It’s a start.
I wonder if any women from Afghanistan will be in Paris for the Olympics.
Probably not. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban announced that women must wear an all-covering veil in public. To be clear, the Taliban prefers women to be at home, barefoot & pregnant.
And they have billions of dollars in state of the art military gifts to empower them.
While Progressives prefer women to remain affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, at the back of the bus, behind males who identify with the feminine gender, and under men in dresses.
I wonder if Amélie Oudéa-Castéra can define a woman.
Tally bon?
It needs to be legal for those women to castrate the raping men — and then be free.
They are free to wear such garments anywhere in the dar al-Islam, among the umah. France is France.