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Comment by lldbg | Hacker News Reader

Religion is already banned in places such as France. Did not do them much good. A ban on free speech will be equally as effective.

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Religion is not banned in France, that's a great misunderstanding of the concept of laicity.

Laicity means that religion is kept away from the State, it has no impact whatsoever on private practice and definitely nothing to do with it being 'banned'

Indeed the less the state has to do with religion; the more religious freedom everyone has.

What do you mean Religion is banned in France? I'm curious about what sort of twisted broad exaggeration and misunderstanding do you have to believe to drop something like that?

To be fair, the NYT's reporting of Macron's limited and perfectly reasonable attempts to combat rampant fundamentalism might give an uninformed reader a reason to believe he was some authoritarian nutjob. But that's yet another symptom of the NYT's habit of lashing out at any perspective other than their very limited one.

Yeah, it's strange that Americans on the whole are not well versed in what secualrism means.

They think it's some sort state-enforced communist atheism or some anti-religious-freedom agenda, without understanding the pains the country went through in the past 300 years (sometimes to the brink of civil war) to remove religion from the State and ensure religious freedom and equality for all.

For most, religion is a personal matter. It starts becoming an issue when it is used as a political ideology that aims to destabilise the State.

It happened before with Catholicism and there are now some fringe Islamist movements that want the same.

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words considering HackerNews nitpicking, but in france display of religious symbols (such as wearing a cross) is banned in public places (mostly). I wrote it that way for effect, thinking that people would be familiar with the french laws.

I have no "twisted broad exaggeration and misunderstanding" of belief. I don't think this chain of comments has a good tone, and won't reply further.

> but in france display of religious symbols (such as wearing a cross) is banned in public places

That is not true; you're free to have religious symbols in public places. What you cannot do is wear them ostensibly if you're acting as an official for a public service. Teacher ? no cross/kippa/etc. while you're teaching. Cop ? same. Mayor in the process of marrying a couple ? same again.

Parent helping teachers during a school outing ? you're perfectly allowed to have such signs visible, you're not an official representative of the French republic. Same goes in public places in general.

And there's the ban on burqa and niqab. In public places. You conveniently did not mention that.

It's banned (not just in France) because there is are existing laws against face-covering and religion is not above that.

There is also a perfectly rational thinking behind a reciprocity of rights: if you can see me but I can't see you then we're not equal.

There are also fierce debates around the role of women, ensuring equal opportunities in society, and the fact that ideology (whether religious or not) should not remove citizens from their rights and duties.

Of course, any of this is always open for debatable, and it is debated, at length, politically, socially, philosophically and these issues are always in flux, between those who want more restrictions in the name of greater freedom for all, and those who want less in the name of greater freedom for all.

The french debate on the face-covering ban was well broadcasted internationally, and it was clear to me then that it was about burqas and niqabs. The law came in place when there were thousands of people wearing religious face coverings, not before. I do not agree with the sentiment of your first paragraph, in fact it seems to me that you are being either intentionally misleading or ignorant.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/22/islamic-veils-...

He called the burqa "a problem". And he said that somehow it's not a religious symbol (of course it is ...).

There were existing rules against covering your face in some situations but you are perfectly right that the law in 2010 was triggered by the rise of radical islam and the (perceived or real) problem that full head coverage place on Republican values[1].

>And he said that somehow it's not a religious symbol. The full sentence: "It's not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement."

Basically, "some think it's a religious sign, but we don't agree". And most Muslims in France don't either as the wearing of burqas and niqabs was quite uncommon in the first place (some estimates placed the number of women wearing them at around 2000).

We can argue on the merit of forbidding full-covering or whether there was really a need for all that noise but there is a reasoning and much public debate on the matter.

From your original comment, you seem to disagree, but in France people are free to practice any religion they wish, as long as it is done within the boundaries of the country's values and laws. So your statement of "Religion is already banned in places such as France" -without further characterisation- is clearly inflamatory and false.

[1]: Deepl makes a decent translation of this: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/dossierlegislatif/JORFDOLE000...

Oh c'mon.

If there were a law that banned cross shaped objects, and then someone said "well, we aren't banning a religious symbol! All things in a cross shape are banned" this would obviously be a dishonest argument.

We don't have to play games here, or be dishonest about what the purpose of the ban was.

> was triggered by the rise of radical islam

Ok, so then you agree that it was literally created to target certain religion practices... That is what people are saying. That is a target law, meant to attack a certain religious group, specifically that of "fundamentalist islam".

That is what everyone is saying.

You're right, should've mentioned it. And I for one never gave much credit to the face covering excuse - that ban was meant to attack Islam.

It was meant to attack some representation of fundamentalist Islam.

Most Muslims do not believe in the requirement for burqas and niqabs. There is no such prescription in the Qur'an itself, only a requirement for modesty that some fundamentalists interpret as full concealment.

There seems to be a ban on "conspicuous religious symbols in schools" - that's hardly most public places?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_c...

What a bizarre statement. Religion is not banned in France.

> Religion is already banned in places such as France.

No. France is ultra-secular, and does not ask religion when doing their census.

However, most Western countries want Saudi Arabia to stop sending radical imams, including France and the USA.

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