WTF France Seriously?
stonespring
Shipmate
in Hell
This is disgusting. Arguments about face veils in different public setting aside (the lady in question was not wearing a face veil), no government should ever force anyone to touch or be touched by anyone else at a citizenship ceremony or risk having their citizenship revoked. This is not defense of a culture. This is paranoia.
Not sure if this thread belongs in Hell or Purgatory, but it really makes me angry, so I started it in Hell.
Not sure if this thread belongs in Hell or Purgatory, but it really makes me angry, so I started it in Hell.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Me too. Macron did a rather good job of reeling in a shark, patting his nose and then telling him off when speechifying to the USA legislatures.
I reckon the French attitude to Islam betrays their fear and weakness. I agree stonespring. The French attitude to Isalm and protecting their fragile culture disgusts me. Don't get me wrong. I love visiting France, and I love their culture, but this is despicable.
1. this story is a week old and it's the first I've heard of it, so it hasn't played big in the French media or attracted howls of protest from the Muslim community.
2. The linked article states that the woman was acquiring nationality through marriage, rather than an application in her own name on her own standing, which makes her standing in the matter slightly less strong.
3. It further says that she made a deliberate point of her refusal to shake more than one official's hand.
4. The Council of State took the view that refusal of this formal gesture in this formal setting to make a religious statement demonstrated a failure of integration, and I, not noted for my extreme anti-immigration views, would agree.
France is struggling to find a way for there to be "Islam of France" rather than "Islam in France", by which it means Islam that is compatible with French secularity and not coordinated and funded from Muslim states abroad, and this decision illustrates where that debate is at right now.
(My own naturalisation had nowhere near this level of ceremony, the official grudgingly handed over our naturalisation certificates as though they were dog licences, and the only dodgy moment was when one lady encouraged us all not to use our new-found status to vote for Sarkozy....).
Quite another is the marvellous way in which young Manu seems to be able be able to manipulate the strings when it comes to making POTUS dance....
Uncle Vlad, Uncle Xi, Uncle Kim - watch your backs! Little Manu is coming for you next.....
IJ
In his dealings with Trump as in other matters, it's always worth remembering that the subject of his thesis was Machiavelli.
IJ
It should be noted that in the case in the OP, it was the woman who believed she would be tainted by a touch, not the other way around, and made a point out of it.
IMVHO, speaking as a non-French person, treating the woman that way is ridiculous, rude, and a long list of other things.
Much worse than banning burkinis on various French beaches--and that was bad enough.
And women weren't necessarily expected to shake anyone's hand.
Question: is faith-based sexism okay?
Are there parallels? We have had quite of bit of discussion on the ship how it isn't okay for bakers to refuse to decorate cakes for gay couples because the bakers say their faith says so. Is this parallel at all? Why would it be thought okay for a woman to refuse handshakes and the bakers not to refuse cakes?
I see there are prior handshaking controversies in Europe. Which have gone both directions.
I also see controversy as to where exactly this male-female contact prohibition comes from, that it is "tradition" - the word used is "Hadith" which to my rudimentary understanding may mean the adoption of local Arab customs and cultural ideas into Islam versus actually instructed by the Quran and religion's founder Mohammed. I'm not versed in the Quran at all to know if this handshake thing is really religious discrimination or like the cake thing, an invention of rigid people with peculiar interpretations of things. Even if the majority of Muslims local to any particular country share the rigidity.
[tangent]
I don't also understand why we don't continue to spell it Koran which is much more intuitive than the Q spelling. I also see objections to even writing or saying "Mohammed" with doing a little prayer of "peace be upon him".
[/tangent]
This isn't really about religion for me - no one should be forced to touch someone or be touched by someone as part of a citizenship ceremony, in any country, in any culture. The right to give and/or reserve consent regarding who touches your body and when is fundamental and universal (through deliberate contact - I'm not talking about being brushed against accidentally in a crowd).
Valid exceptions for reasons of public and national security may exist when law enforcement has a judge-issued warrant to search someone's body, going through security to get on a flight, etc.
And choosing to become a citizen of another country is voluntary act - there, I said it -
- and I agree that respecting certain norms and values particular to a country are part of citizenship anywhere.
But saying that to fully assimilate into a country and fully participate in its political life you have to submit to being touched by a stranger - or by anyone, for that matter - is basically saying that a "true" member of that society has to let someone violate her/his rights over her/his body if the state considers it a matter of etiquette.
A non-Muslim, even an atheist, of any gender, even a native of a country where hand-shaking is customary, has just as much right to refuse to touch or be touched by anyone else as a condition of citizenship in any country.
What if an autistic person who is deeply uncomfortable with bodily contact did not want to shake hands as part of a citizenship ceremony? What if someone who has suffered horrific sexual and/or physical abuse and has difficulty with bodily contact with others, especially with strangers, did not want to shake hands as part of the ceremony? If these are understandable exceptions, why not the lady in question?
A handshake may seem innocent enough, but once you say that refusing to let someone touch you is showing insufficient assimilation at a citizenship ceremony, what really is stopping a different country with a different culture from requiring any other form of bodily contact as evidence of assimilation? This is not about sexual vs. non-sexual touching or customary gestures of goodwill vs. more idiosyncratic forms of bodily contact. It is about the basic human right of bodily autonomy.
Furthermore, the person threatening consequences for not submitting to unwanted touching is an authority figure, a representative of the power of the state - a power that all too often in history has been used to enslave, subjugate, devalue, and commodify the bodies of countless groups. This makes a person's right to refuse bodily contact in a public ceremonial setting even more important.
Even if most of the French - or even most French Muslims - do not think this is important or agree with the court, that does not make this less of an issue of human rights. I actually find this worse than the burkini ban, the face veil ban, or the ban on veils in schools. I think a person's right to self-police the boundaries of one's own body is more fundamental than freedom of religion, almost more fundamental than any other right.
Hand gestures were common at my school.
It is clearly a socially important matter in the way it is not so much in the UK.
MMM
As far as I understand, this specific ceremony was unusual and special because the President himself was attending. So there was more attention and pomp than is normal. Am I wrong in thinking that?
Most of these ceremonies happen out of the limelight, and therefore someone who objected to something (such as touching by a state official) would not normally be a major conversation issue. Is that correct?
My question is therefore whether one can normally pass on a "special" ceremony in favour of a normal everyday one. Perhaps one doesn't like the President or doesn't want to be in the national papers shaking his hand.
If you can, it looks like this woman has been publicly shamed for embarrassing the President in a way that a political opponent which was able to find a way to avoid the pomp might not be.
'British values' are (so to speak) a posteriori - a value is British if it is one that most British people hold. 'French values' are much more a priori - French people hold them because they are French values. I would imagine they would be understandable exceptions because they are not based on a difference of values.
It's quite an interesting question to what extent a culture should relax itself to accommodate others, and to what extent it is legitimate to say that those who seek to join a culture should be expected either to join it on its terms rather than their own or remain an alien.
We do not shake hands here as much as the French do, but I think most of us would construe refusing to shake a proffered hand as a rejection of the offer of friendship and amity that it represents.
I suspect here, in our context, which often attaches quite a lot of cultural effort into politeness and papering over the potential cracks, people might try to find a female official she could have shaken hands with. But I don't know, and the French are entitled to do things their way, just as we are entitled to do things ours and you are entitled to do things yours. After all, it was France's ceremony.
It is an important moment and I think it's absolutely right and proper that some ceremony be attached to it, and wholly reasonable for recipients of nationality (especially solely through marriage not on the basis of their own qualifications) to conform to protocol, and decidedly asking for trouble not only not to conform to protocol but try to make a point in doing so.
That's my impression as well.
The French attitude to citizenship seems to be that if you want to become a French citizen then you have to actually become French. Where that concerns religion one would have to become French first, [Religion] second, and where it concerns culture one would have to become French first, [Culture] second. By refusing to shake hands for religious or cultural reasons this woman has confirmed that she is [Religion/Culture] first and French second, which means she is not French enough to be a French citizen.
Personally I think there is much to admire with this take on citizenship. Noting, of course, that citizenship is not necessarily the same thing as right of residency or permission to work.
Edit: it looks like the photos are from a different ceremony.
I ask because groups--any group--often don't really accept outsiders, even if they've jumped through all the requisite hoops to officially join. The existing group may go through the motions, but never really want the outsiders there.
And (speaking as a non-French person from a difficult country that doesn't always accept people who are different) France does have a stereotypical reputation for looking down on outsiders.
(This is apparent every time some icon of the 60s dies and the country goes into national mourning, and I'm like "huh?").
I certainly don't accept any notion that my country has a higher claim on me than God does. I would be either rather disgusted or very angry with anybody who suggested that any other view is compatible with classic Christian faith.
So if you choose to adopt a new nationality, it is entirely reasonable for the chosen state to expect you to demonstrate that you really mean it, rather than that you are just going through the process for some convenient reason of your own, with your fingers crossed behind your back.
Yes and no. If a French citizen wanted access to a state service that for some reason required shaking an official's hand, and refused to do so, then AIUI the state service would be refused. (Actually a more likely analogous case would involve not wearing a hijab.) There is no concept of a religious opt-out either for citizens or non-citizens. The difference in this case is that the state service requested is the acquisition of citizenship itself.
That said: from an outside perspective, it looks like French values are not in fact stuck in a 1789 stasis field, but are in fact capable of a degree of elasticity, but that elasticity is more likely to accommodate white people than brown people.
In what way are they not being 'allowed to have' their 'own cultural specificites' [and what do those even consist of ?] ?
The currently pertinent example is the cultural specificity that says you should shake someone's hand when being made a citizen of France.
I'd tend to agree that she had the right to decline physical contact.
And if an official were denying her something she had a right to - e.g. some state benefit that she qualified for - because she declined his touch, then I'd be agreeing with you that that's an abuse of power.
But rights don't come with an exemption from disapproval for exercising them. I may have a right of free speech, but that doesn't stop you from thinking I'm a twit for saying what you think I shouldn't.
She chooses not to shake hands, she has to live with the negative impression this makes on other people. Acting within one's rights does not come with any guarantee of esteem.
The article makes clear that legally she does not have French citizenship by right; it is at the discretion of the state, depending on factors that include level of assimilation into French culture.
You may or may not think that's a bad law. (If you say it's better for the law to set out a clear framework of rights than to give the executive branch of government discretionary power over people's lives, I might agree).
But ISTM that the French people have collectively the right to decide whom they give French citizenship to.
So where's the wrong ?
She said, in effect, I am not going to shake your hand because to do so will make me unclean because you are unclean. She has accused the person offering their hand of being dirty, contaminated in some way, and that shaking their hand will leave her dirty and contaminated.
How does that person who offered their hand feel? What gives that woman the right to offend someone in public by claiming they are unworthy and that the slightest touch will cause the woman to be contaminated with dirt?
The woman has, in effect, put herself as higher, more worthy person than the person who offered their hand. Why should that be allowed? What gives her the right to accuse someone of being dirty, and believing that the person holding out their hand is beneath her?
Is it her right to accuse someone of being a filthy low-life because the person holding out their hand was (a) white and (b) male perhaps, and that it is okay to call someone filthy and contaminated if they are a white man? He has rights and feelings as well, and should not be made to feel unworthy or dirty.
Back under your bridge, trollkins, until you have something better.
Perhaps you should have thought of that before you spat in his beer.
I know this is one incident, but it and the upthread explanations about how important handshakes are in France don't exactly help my opinion of France. There are many wonderful things about France, but not this.
I recommend that everybody ignore pretty much everything Thatherdeano posts, other than to reflect on the nature of purely parasitic trolling.
AFF
So her religion, tradition and culture are to override what appears to be almost a legal requirement? What if it were in fact a legal requirement?
Well presumably it would result in exactly what has happened. The French courts would have ruled her citizenship to be void.
The French courts have decided that shaking hands is so tightly woven into French culture and society, that someone not shaking hands is not able to be part of that society, and so her citizenship is void.
The French courts have drawn a line in the sand and said "this is who we are. This is our society." They have taken the decision to protect their culture, and the concept might spread to other countries in Europe who also have their own unique cultures.
I understand why some on the Ship are upset, especially those who oppose the very idea of nation states, because those nation states enable borders, behind which different cultures and societies grow. I wonder if some have the idea that if the cultures can be homogenised, then the borders can disappear. It is a legitimate notion, and one which has been used down the centuries to justify invasions and annexations.
Anyway, the courts have decided to protect French culture. A precedent that will, I'm sure be examined closely in other countries.