Reader Jim Herd passes along this story; I particularly like the quote I set in bold below:
Many of France’s more than 5 million Muslims have rallied surprisingly behind President Jacques Chirac in recent days, defending what most Muslims have bitterly opposed until now: a law prohibiting Muslim girls from wearing religious head scarves to school.
When students return to class today after the long summer recess, many Muslim schoolgirls will heed a strong message from their clerics — obey the law, even though it might violate your principles.
The striking change in mood is rooted not in local politics, but in a crisis unfolding thousands of miles away. The kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq has resulted in unexpected unity after more than a year of rising anxiety about the growing religious fervor among Muslims in France.
A militant Islamic group threatened to execute the hostages unless France dropped its head-scarf law. . . .
The crisis appears to be driving even devout French Muslims to back the new law, arguing that rejecting it now would be seen as support for the kidnappers’ demands.
“The government cannot repeal this law at this stage because they would immediately lose their credibility,” said Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. . . .
For French Muslims, there is a sense of outrage that the kidnappers have tried to dictate their behavior from across the world, assuming that allegiance would be to fellow Muslims rather than to France.
“Nobody coming from the desert or the bush in Iraq can tell us what to do in France,” said Abdallah Thomas Milcent, 45, a doctor who is the representative in Strasbourg in eastern France for the French Council for the Muslim Faith, an umbrella organization of Islamic groups. . . .
You got it, Doctor. Let’s hope that’s the view of most other Frenchmen, Muslim and not.
UPDATE: I’m pleased that Matt Yglesias agrees.
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