Our columnist Mathieu Bock Côte is currently based in France, where he follows French news from a Quebec perspective.
Every summer, it comes back in an episode, and each time with more massiveness: I’m talking about the burkini fight.
In recent days, it has returned to the fore from the city of Grenoble. The mayor, Eric Beul, has decided to allow this in municipal swimming pools.
It appears that a burkini ban would be discriminatory. What’s more: that licensing would be a social advance, and it seemed that public authorities would never have to interfere with the behavior of those who expose themselves in the city.
Eric Beul also says he is convinced that we should liberate the burkini and bare breasts.
Grenoble
All this in the name of dismantling the patriarchal system.
France raises the issue. On television, radio, and even in political debates, we wonder what to do in front of this symbol.
It is generally accepted that the burkini collides head-on with secularism. But how can we define secularism today? Is it just a principle regulating public space or an expression of French identity that should form the norms of everyone, especially those who are culturally affiliated with a foreign civilization?
Some accuse Eric Bueol of being naive. He was unaware that radical Islam, which struggles to delineate women, exploits the rights and freedoms proposed by Western civilization to impose certain cultural practices that, in the long run, will nullify or empty them of their meanings.
Basically, the neighborhood where the burkini is gradually taking over will sooner or later turn into a neighborhood where the burkini will prevail. For women who refuse to wear it will be intimidated, judged on the fringes of society, judged as immodest, and of a bad life.
This argument proves, if we remember that demography governs the history of societies. The neighborhoods that have become Muslim leave little room for French cultural norms. Hijabs are being normalized there, as are halal butchers, and French identity is doomed to survive.
These neighborhoods are more and more numerous.
And it goes even further: to his critics, the burkini is a symbol of a new Islamist attack to impose its demands on Western societies.
It is a matter of making Islam more visible than ever before, which, moreover, takes hostages of Muslims who wish to live out their faith in peace without being recruited in spite of themselves by an ideology fighting against the West.
resistance
If France is particularly interesting when we deal with such a debate, it is because she manages it at the level of principles. She is not satisfied to see in him a pragmatic brawl in the Anglo-Saxon style. She understands that with the burkini symbol, the idea of community and inclusion is at stake.
France, the country of great debates, does not allow itself to be intimidated by those who consider the slightest resistance to Islamism evidence of intolerance.
This debate will not go away, through thick and thin.
the first Minister
The false suspense of the past few days has recently fallen off: France will have a woman prime minister for the second time. Should we say prime minister or prime minister? Not everyone agrees! This is Elizabeth Bourne, who is said to be very knowledgeable about her profiles, but without the charisma. On the left, she is at the head of an environmental transitional government. However, his government will be short-lived: legislative elections will be held on June 9 and 16.
when I wake up prevail over meanti wake up
Jean-Michel Blanquer served as Minister of National Education for five years. Regarding the question of getting up, which had occupied a large space for two years, he was very resolute. He made no concessions with the American racial obsession, nor with Abolition of culture. His successor, Bab Ndiaye, represents a completely opposite line. Many, especially from the Republican left, but also from the right rallied in favor of Macron, and considered this appointment a betrayal. Wokism has just seized power in the field of education in France.
Wizard Kremlin
The great novel often makes it possible to understand the world better than a hundred books on sociology. This is how the book is Kremlin pond, By Giuliano da Empoli, just published by the Gallimard Foundation. What an extraordinary book, which allows us to get into the head of Vladimir Putin, to penetrate his worldview, which allows us to better understand the terrible events in Ukraine. We like to say: Long live literature!
