From the United Arab Emirates English language daily The National, comes this article about how a "deeply religious Moroccan woman has been denied citizenship because her radical practice of Islam has been judged by the highest court in the land to be incompatible with French values."
"The 32-year-old mother-of-three, identified in news reports as Faiza Mabchour, is the first person to be refused the right to become French on the grounds of cultural behaviour."
My first reaction to this is to shout "Way to go, France!" If an immigrant's religious beliefs put him or her firmly at odds with the values of the country to which he or she seeks to become a citizen of, it seems to be a matter of commonsense to deny the application.
My feelings about this are reinforced when compared to the way Belgium handles Malika El Aroud, an internet jihadist whom I blogged about here. As some of my readers may recall, "Malika El Aroud is allowed to advocate jihad against non-Muslims, including presumably the people of Belgium, while being subsidized by the Belgian taxpayers in her nefarious activities, all the while her identity in public being kept anonymous."
Again, my inclination is to support the decision of the French government with regard to Faiza Mabchour, though I think I need to give it further consideration. I would be interested to hear what you all think about this.
4 comments:
good for France, more countries should follow their example
Hi Anonymous. Thanks for visiting.
I plan to follow up on this. While my initial inclination is share your sentiment, I want to consider whether there are any slippery slope aspects of this.
One possible downside is that citizenship applicants like the woman described in The National article might try to fake their way through the citizenship process by casting off their hijabs for the interviews, and then once the citizenship is granted, they revert to the religious attire without consequences.
It looks like the French are regaining cultural confidence in the Sarkozy era. Good for them.
...might try to fake their way through the citizenship process by casting off their hijabs for the interviews...
Not really a whole lot anyone can do about that except hope the background checks will be thorough enough.
I can't really see any slippery slope. Do you even need to give a reason?
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