Marine Le Pen the Trump of France?
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It is of course not true that "Jews and Catholics apply these rules without making a fuss." The 1905 secularism law is deeply loathed by many communities in France, and also ignored by many. But the law is also selectively applied: Jews who wear a kippah or Sikhs who wear a turban are not targeted for discrimination in France in the same way that women who wear the hijab are.
because the above statement is so untrue, I'm afraid you have no idea what you'r talking about hence end of discussion for me .sorry.
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Well please do take the time to educate me. I might return the favour. You must be aware, for instance, that the Law of 1905 was part of a war against the Catholic Church in France waged by a virulently anti-Catholic National Assembly,that it has repeatedly been condemned by the Vatican, and that it remains a battleground between Church and State - or at least, it was until very recently, when French politicians found it more expedient to turn the law against Muslims.
You must also be aware the the 2004 law banning religious symbols in public schools is enforced selectively, and overwhelmingly to the disadvantage of Muslim students. French Muslims perceive it as a calculated assault against their rights to be full members of the national community, and so far as I can see they are entirely correct. That is indeed what the law is intended to achieve: not to protect French secularism, but to force French Muslims to choose between being French and being Muslim.
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I spent two weeks in France this year. Shockingly, the gay community is split there on Marine. It's almost a 50/50 split from those I talked to, and polling seems to confirm that Marine is scoring very will with the French gay community. Many opposed to Marine still oppose her father's views of homosexuality, while those who support her are frightened to death of Islam in France, as many gays are being openly harassed and beaten in France by Muslims, at the behest of Imams who openly preach violence against gays. Quite frankly, it's a weird situation, but many gays view that if Islam is allowed to continue to flourish in France that it'll lead to a gay Holocaust in France, while the other side believes Islam will moderate with time, and the Marines of French politics will lead them on a slow road to a gay Holocaust.
It's not an easy situation for gays in France right now, and yes, Muslim violence in France is a very serious issue. I got to meet several gays who were beaten by Muslims, the French government had to install barriers around the Eiffel Tower to prevent terrorism, and on my last night there, just a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower, several hundred Muslims lined the street, and made women run a gauntlet to get home, groping, assaulting, and robbing women there.
I haven't spent enough time in France to understand the full political dynamic, but the French clearly need to have an open conversation regarding secularism versus Islam, and like most Western countries with Christianity, demand that Islam, like all other religions, respect basic human rights. As an American, we're not perfect, but Christianity may not agree with gay rights, but they at least respect the human rights we've won. You won't see a social media post resulting in several hundred lining the streets to assault women here in the states as I did in France.
It's a very dangerous situation there right now, and honestly because this conversation isn't happening, I would not be shocked if France were to enter a state of Civil War in a decade. As for who to back in the French election, neither really appeals to me. Macron is more of the same as Hollande, which is deny the problem, don't have the conversation, while Marine is just deport Islam. Personally, I would lean slightly towards Marine, only because out of those two awful choices, Marine is the only choice where the conversation must happen.
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the women Trump of France :cheers:
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Without doubting the basic truth of your story, the obvious question that springs to mind is: "how do you know you've just been groped/beaten up/threatened by a Muslim? Are they carrying prayer-mats and showing off their circumcision-scars?"
This isn't just a frivolous question, because the French state's commitment to extreme secularism means that people are, officially, without religion for virtually all public purposes. The French state doesn't collect information about religious populations. It doesn't register members of religions. And at a time when certain religious communities are under extreme scrutiny and suffering systematic discrimination, this official "see-no-evil" attitude to all religious identities is ludicrously out of touch with what is actually going on.
It also means that "Muslims" tend to be conflated with "Arabs" in French public discourse. The two terms are interchangeable - and so racial prejudice and religious prejudice form a toxic combination in France in a way that they don't in most other Western European countries.
The other thing to note is that homophobic violence and sexual violence against women certainly aren't new phenomena in France, and they are certainly not the exclusive preserve of Muslims/Arabs/immigrants. France is a surprisingly conservative country, and the growing visibility of LGBT people (and a very bitter public debate over gay marriage) has led to an increase in homophobic violence that isn't directly related to Muslims or Arab immigrants. Or at least, it doesn't seem to be. If the French state gathered statistics on such matters, we might be able to tell for certain. Nor is sexual harassment of women a new phenomenon. The French government recently claimed that 100% of Parisian women who travel on public transport have experienced some form of unwelcome sexual behaviour from men. It is too easy simply to identify these kinds of crimes with visible minorities, when in fact they are deeply rooted in the culture of a country.
But I agree that France needs to have a sensible, adult debate about secularism and Islam. And it cannot do this while it tries to pretend that its minority communities don't exist, that the only identity that matters is French identity, and that radical secularism is necessary to keep the peace. The French state's attitude towards its own minorities needs to change, and the attitude of some minorities towards France needs to change too. This will have to happen sooner or later if the present deep divisions in French society are not to tear it apart. But voting for the Front national is not the way to bring those changes about. In my opinion, electing Marine Le Pen would be a very retrograde step that would exacerbate rather than relieve France's many very real problems.
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The gay movement is manipulated by the left.
But leftists love their pet terrorists who shout "Allahu Akbar".50 dead gays in Orlando. But the problem is a "oppressor" WASP…
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I hate politics. I'm gay, atheist and believe in science like climate change so I can't be accepted as a conservative. But I'm gay and refuse to support Muslims who gleefully slaughter our kind so I won't support liberals either. Can we scrap both movements and come up with some moderate party…one that believes in science and human rights but doesn't require you to support the people who want to slaughter you.
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one that believes in science
The party of Marine Lepen is not involved in religion. Catholics are mainly on Fillon side. you can't compare republicans from US to any party from France where as mention above is a secular country where most people are atheist.
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Look at the polls. Muslims don't support western life, like the SJWs want us to believe.
SJW's don't support Western thought either. Benefit from it, abuse it, yes, but support it…nope!
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The party of Marine Lepen is not involved in religion. Catholics are mainly on Fillon side. you can't compare republicans from US to any party from France where as mention above is a secular country where most people are atheist.
As mentioned above, the French state does not keep any official records of religious affiliation, so I have no idea what the basis is of your statement that most French people are atheists. My own impression is the opposite - that much of France is conservative and Catholic, culturally if not in terms of regular practice. A 2009 IFOP poll claims that almost two thirds of French people claim to be Catholic, though a much smaller percentage regularly go to church. Whatever that makes France, it certainly doesn't make it a nation of atheists. Religious identity is still an awful lot more important in France than the consciously-secular French state would like to pretend.
It is true that the FN does not have a good relationship with the Church, and has been criticised by Catholic leaders, despite the fact that Le Pen consciously plays on the imagery and identity of France as a white Christian nation. So it will be interesting to see whether conservative Catholic voters line up behind Le Pen or sit on their hands.
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I hate politics. I'm gay, atheist and believe in science like climate change so I can't be accepted as a conservative. But I'm gay and refuse to support Muslims who gleefully slaughter our kind so I won't support liberals either. Can we scrap both movements and come up with some moderate party…one that believes in science and human rights but doesn't require you to support the people who want to slaughter you.
And will you support the human rights of Muslims too, or merely the human rights of groups to which you happen to belong?
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Maybe you should go to a muslim country and see how will they protect your human rights.
Go to a muslim ghetto anywhere in Europe and make sure they know you're gay. I bet they treat you like you deserve.
The left is racist/islamophobic why excusing everything away that muslims do by saying they are too uncivilized to know better.
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Maybe you should go to a muslim country and see how will they protect your human rights.
Go to a muslim ghetto anywhere in Europe and make sure they know you're gay. I bet they treat you like you deserve.
The left is racist/islamophobic why excusing everything away that muslims do by saying they are too uncivilized to know better.
I have lived in Muslim countries. I have lived in predominantly Muslim countries where gay men are no less safe and accepted than they are in Europe (and rather safer than they are in France). Your sweeping assumptions about Islam and about Muslims are based entirely on ignorance.
I certainly don't want to 'excuse' anything Muslims do. But I don't want to let LGBT people off with open bigotry and prejudice either. The contemptible fact is that since gays have become part of the liberal political establishment in much of the West, they have lost any interest they might once have had in a politics that liberates other marginal groups. Having exploited liberational rhetoric for our own ends, we have now drifted to comfortable complacency on the right wing of the political spectrum. This is why so many gays in France support Le Pen: because it is now safe for gay men to be racist and xenophobic, and indeed to utilise gay identity politics to justify racism and xenophobia.
And frankly, I think this is revolting. It is appallingly hypocritical to insist on the importance of 'human rights' for gay people while denying the same rights to other groups that suffer from far greater marginalisation.
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Extremely well put. It never ceases to amaze me how easy some gays find it to marginalize and discriminate against others.
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In what muslim countries do out gays have just as much rights as anyone else?!
I want to know where these gay havens in the musliim world are so we can tell gay muslim asylum seekers to go there.
1,400+ young white girls were raped in 1 UK town by muslim men, mostly from Pakistan, for about a decade because the police, government and press didn't want to seem racist. Now tell me whose the most marginalized group.
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When Europe becomes a caliphate, human rights will cease to exist.
The only gay right will be to choose whether to continue living, but cutting off his penis.
Communism was not able to dominate Western Europe. However with the help of the new left, Islam will win.
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First, I've traveled to France every 2-3 years for the past two decades. The incident in question was on my second to last day in France, occurred a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower, a nice avenue of coffee shops, which, compared to past visits is now extremely run down, of course, relative comparison to previous visits of the same neighborhood.
Several hundred Arab looking men literally lined the streets, were checking their smart phones after dark, and anytime a woman approach, completely surrounded her, and she would be at their mercy. It was truly a gauntlet. I paid the cafe owner 100 euros to get me out safely, and he explained this is a new norm. BTW, he had to take me out a back way, and walk me four blocks to my hotel. He further explained that the police are too intimidated to stand up, and that most of these men in question are migrants. Considering he owned the place and had been there for years, I'll take his word at face value. Plus, I always stop by his cafe once or twice when visiting. Finally, I've traveled enough to know.
At the various gay bars and places within the gay community in France that one would normally visit, both older and younger gays were petrified of the Muslim influx because radical Imams who preach violence against gays are permitted to do so openly, and the authorities basically stand down to both the Imams and large groups that organize, which by the way is supposed to be criminalized in France.
The real divide in France is not French law targeting Muslim communities. Most laws that are cited in the papers about French secularism targeting Islamic communities are never actually enforced, and law enforcement is afraid to confront Islamic areas of France, let alone enforce not wearing hijabs in public in Islamic areas. It's like old 1800's laws in the US prohibiting purchasing milk on Sundays in rural American counties; they're on the books, but not enforced.
The real divide in the gay community over who to support is between younger and older. Both are petrified of the migration wave, because the authorities are doing nothing to preserve what they believe French secularism brought them in terms of rights, and because most of the migrants that are coming are young, unaccompanied men, and according to the gays there very militant and radicalizing French Arabs. The vast majority of the gay community does not want any more migrants, want Islam to agree to secularization or be outlawed.
The divide comes between the young and the old on politics. They younger crowd tends to like Marine's positions on Islam, and there are many who believe Marine does not go far enough. The older crowd views Islam and Marine both with suspicion, primarily because Marine's father has said some very harsh stuff about gays, as the apple cannot fall far from the tree. Honestly, if Marine did not come with her father's baggage, from all the gays that I spoke to in France, should would be the landslide choice for French gays, and still is with the younger crowd.
The real problem in all of this from those I've spoken to while there is that Muslims were small in number in France, but never really integrated. But two decades of mass migration, zero assimilation, has led to two separate groups, Muslim and French, and the recent migrations have brought a militant brand of Islam that seems, judging from their Imams, unwilling to assimilate, and a French public that has grown weary of the militant nature of Islam in a secular country. This militancy is can probably be attributed to France's lack of integrating Islam into French society by getting some level of assimilation over the decades, but it's reached the point that there are two clear groups, both of which want something different and will not respect each other.
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The real problem in all of this from those I've spoken to while there is that Muslims were small in number in France, but never really integrated. But two decades of mass migration, zero assimilation, has led to two separate groups, Muslim and French, and the recent migrations have brought a militant brand of Islam that seems …
you are so so right ! ( I'm french btw ).
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It's not hard to be right when you visit three weeks before French 1st round election & leave one week before. It's all anyone would talk about. I was really amazed how people would talk so openly in the bars, and some cafes with liquor, but in any public place where they thought they weren't with people who would tolerate their opinion, everyone zipped up, like my momma used to say, absolutely nothing to say.
That sort of attitude left me with the fact there's two very separate camps, and when folks aren't talking to one another, that's a very bad sign that the next step is some sort of Balkanization that could actually lead to a civil war a la Bosnia. Love to hear a Frenchman's opinion on that. It was the one subject that was absolutely taboo on my visit.
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I don't think this is true. I am ready to be corrected, but I am not aware of any reasonable public debate in France that has been "shut down" or labelled as racist and Islamophobic. In fact the public debate in France is extremely robust. This idea that people raising genuine and legitimate critiques of Islam are being oppressed and stifled just does not wash with me.
Aren't FN meetings under constant attack? Wasn't Le Pen herself a victim of censorship for posting a tweet showcasing ISIS crimes?
http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/nantes-un-bus-de-supporteurs-du-fn-attaque-26-02-2017-2107676_20.php
http://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-la-loire/orvault-44700/orvault-des-cocktails-molotov-lances-sur-la-permanence-du-front-national-4949119In fact, I think this claim is itself an attempt to distract attention from a much bigger and more pressing problem in France: genuine institutionalised racism and prejudice in French society.
It's hard to be accepting when Muslims are terrorizing, raping and murdering Europeans.
It is certainly true that second and third-generation Arabs are turning their backs on the liberalism of their parents, and questions need to be asked about why this is. It also needs to be asked why this is happening in France so much more than in other countries: radicalisation of young Muslims is not an exclusively French problem, but it seems to be a far more serious issue in France than in it is in - say - Britain or Germany or Scandinavia. France has a really serious problem with disaffected and marginalised young Muslims who were born in France but do not feel French, and feel they have no stake in their own country or in the values of the Republic. And it is of course perfectly legitimate to ask whether this problem is related to the nature of Islam. But it is also necessary to ask whether this problem has anything to do with the nature of France.
The typical European jihadist is not marginalized, they are often middle or upper class people. These people don't feel French and they don't want to, Islam is a supremacist religion and they believe Europeans are kafirs.
There are hundreds of marginalized groups in Western societies but only one is carrying out thousands of attacks every year in name of their religion. If the problem was French society, countries like India, Myanmar, China and the Philippines wouldn't be affected by Islamic terrorism.
Finally, yes, terrorism is a fact of life. But it's nothing new. In much of Europe (Spain, Britain, Italy), terrorism has been a fact of life for decades. France has suffered terrorism continuously throughout the twentieth century from all manner of political and religious groups. It's nothing new, but it is a fact of life and people live with it: like the posters say, we "keep calm and carry on." You are considerably more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist. You're more likely to slip and break your neck on a bathmat. So you might want to lower your umbrella when you go out in a storm, but avoiding French airports because of a negligible risk is just silly.
Terrorism is not a fact of life and should not be accepted as such. Terrorist activity was declining in Western Europe until Islamic terrorism became a problem due to uncontrolled migration. No terrorist group in Western Europe in recent history has engaged in the same type of mass murder, genocide and slavery that is daily practiced in the Middle East in name of religion.
And why should I support a country whose government is not very concerned about the security of its people and tourists?
I have lived in Muslim countries. I have lived in predominantly Muslim countries where gay men are no less safe and accepted than they are in Europe (and rather safer than they are in France). Your sweeping assumptions about Islam and about Muslims are based entirely on ignorance.
What Muslim majority country is accepting of gay people?
And frankly, I think this is revolting. It is appallingly hypocritical to insist on the importance of 'human rights' for gay people while denying the same rights to other groups that suffer from far greater marginalisation.
What rights are Muslims denied in Western countries? They are welcomed with open arms and even get to impose their supremacist religion on everyone else.
Look at the polls. Muslims don't support western life, like the SJWs want us to believe.
Muslims don't really support anything that's not rooted in Islamic theology. Look at what's happening to religious minorities in every Muslim majority country.
