Date:
Tue, 31/01/2012
On Tuesday, January 18th, a law was passed in the Senate on secularism in nurseries specifically concerning childminders. An act considered by the opposition, especially the group - Europe Ecologie, les Verts - a discriminatory law with intrusive aspects. The state tightens, once again, the grip of work discrimination against veiled women. While many of them had kept the possibility of working at home as a refuge to the general Islamophobic atmosphere, this bill has further hindered their chances to have a job, and a salary.
Politicians of this country, men and women, are in need of a shield to face the international economic and social crisis. But the remedies proposed by those same politicians are far from giving the desired effects. The 2012 presidential election has completely exhausted the groups which it was legitimate to target with “live ammunition”.
Indeed, how is it possible to win the presidential elections without concrete proposals to emerge from this crisis? By showing that we are the standard bearer of secularism, a concept so removed from its original values in order to serve the interests of the latest "greedy" policy.
The EMF (Muslim Students of France) deplores the new law that enforces, under the disguise of neutrality, the spread of certified, and openly approved Islamophobia, by dictating how an employee must dress in her own home. Beyond all expectations, this law goes as far as to violate the fundamental right to privacy and shamelessly interferes in the private homes of those woman. The new law requires a woman who wears a headscarf to remove her scarf in order to gain employment, which is in essence a form of blackmail which denigrates the reputation of human rights enjoyed by France in its glory years.
The EMF is appalled that the choice of childminders can be based on their personal beliefs, on the assumption that some are proselytizing. This is a particularly outrageous accusation against employees who have always respected the duty of neutrality and who now find themselves threatened in their activity and by extension, in their purchasing power, a power so dear to our President.
This law is intended to protect the children from untrustworthy people, explained Ms. Laborde, Senator of Haute-Garonne who pur forward this bill, during her speech in the Senate! It seems that Ms. Laborde based the confidence one can give a childminder directly on a piece of fabric she chooses to wear.
The only effect that this law is going to have in the short term will be to revive the attitudes of mistrust and suspicion between people of different religious or philosophical convictions. Therefore, this law is threatening once again the social cohesion which has already been endangered several times since the election of President Sarkozy, always with the aim of reelection.
Thw EMF requests that the entire French political class immediately cease taking France towards liberticidal and Islamophobic peril. We still remember how in 2007 the candidate Nicolas Sarkozy based his campaign on the escalation of hatred against Muslims.
A sense of déjà vu increases as the elections approach - it is clear that a party without a programme prefers to launch a witch hunt rather than responding to concrete and critical problems on an economic and international level. The question is whether the French will rise up against these diversions that will again raise the specter of fascism in France, which was thought to have been forgotten.
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