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The issue of the Muslims in France is very much like the issue of Spanish speakers in the USA. If your primary goal is the purity of the culture of the motherland, they you will try to ban people from wearing burqas and/or speaking Spanish. It is all a part of the same mentality. But there is no point in telling anyone that in America, because such people believe American values are worth saving and French values are not, and their opinions motivate from faith in that dogma.
As in "Look what the silly French are doing. They are doing the same thing we are doing, but their culture is not worth defending that way, like ours is."
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
Because I observe that Americans have general disdain for about everything anybody else does in the world.
Have you ever heard of "Freedom Fries". Americans had great fun bashing the French, merely because they would not come along on our murderous panty raid in Iraq.
If I never bashed the Americans on these forums, who would? Do Americans never deserve bashing?
Again, there is no general disdain as you claim. I do not know where you have been in the world. I will tell you from personal experience that the type of attitude you claim Americans have, on the rest of the world, is not any different I have seen Germans have (I lived there 3 years), Koreans have (I lived there three years), in the Dominican Republic (lived there for 7 months), in the Republic of Georgia (lived there two months), Saudi Arabia (lived there 7 months), etc. In these countries and others where I have been on business I have seen the same type of national pride that borders on superiority, no differently than, some people here in the US.
Do you think people in this country all they bash is the US? No, they have their favorite target. The Georgians hate the Russians and enjoy bashing them. The Germans hate the French and viceversa, the Germans and French love to bash the British, the Saudi's all they talked was about the Iranians and Iraqis.
The Americans are not different in bashing others. However, I reiterate, it is not as if that is all we do. Some do have a sentiment of superiority but not different in other countries where there are great numbers that do not care one way or the other. Interestingly you seem to fall in the same category as the Americans you love to bash, bashing Americans at every opportunity you have. If a French does that, well, I can see that but you as an American with such disdain for you own homecountry? This is not to say you should not recognize the bad we have done but there is good in us too, it is not that difficult to take a time to see that part and recognize it.
I ask you a question I asked you before and never answer, where have you been besides the US?
Your question "Do Americans never deserve bashing?" Don't twist that around. I asked YOU why you do so. I would like to know what is it that YOU seem to make that your cruzade.
Of course there are things we as a country have done that are not correct moraly but I at least try to maintain a balance by also knowing there is positive. You in turn, it is just bad. Not only that, everything you write is how bad the US is.
With such disdain why not do what others at least in action have done, not just by words, moved out of the country. There are many people I have dealt with that have said the moved to Canada because they were ashamed of being here. I respect that part. I tell some of the immigrants that bash the US when they fled from Mexico why bite the hand that feed them. It does not make sense to me.
I am in favor of banning the burqa in France. "When in Rome..."
When my kids were in grade school they had a rule that children were to wear hats and mittens outside during recess. This was great, because if my children balked, all I had to do was say that "it's a rule".
You know those poor, oppressed women wouldn't be traveling anywhere unless they wanted to get away from the stupid rules made by the men.
I ask you a question I asked you before and never answer, where have you been besides the US?
I've visited about 125 other countries, and lived in 10, but most of those for less than 2 years.
Generally, in other countries, they have one or two old rivals or enemies that they bash, but otherwise, they are pretty decent about giving any country credit for their achievements and criticism for their faults.
However, Americans have a general attitude that everything is wrong if it is not done the American way. In almost every international ranking of countries, the US ranks from about the middle of the pack up to about number ten, and very rarely in the top ten. Where we are in the top ten, it is for negative things like crime and obesity. This attitude of American superiority is a result of, to coin a phrase, a "studied ignorance" about the rest of the world. Americans are proud of how little they know about other countries, and actually seem to make an effort to know as little as possible. For example, the US is the only country in the world in which you can go into a hotel room and turn on the TV and not get a single cable channel of foreign origin. I'd venture to say that less than half have ever watched a single subtitled movie. Americans cannot watch foreign TV, they refuse to learn foreign languages, or read a book translated from another language, a tiny few have ever been outside the gates of a 5-star resort hotel complex in any foreign country. Yet we treat the rest of the world as if we are know-it-alls and can tell them how to live.
You know from your experience that people elsewhere have a worldly knowledge. They know about the history and geography and arts and literature and religions and political institutions of other countries, besides themselves. Americans don't, and don't want to. After ten years of constant attention, I bet not one out of ten Americans can find Iran on a world map, or know that Iranians don't speak Arabic.
If the American government, with the advise and consent of the American people, goes to another continent and wages a one-sided military campaign against a poor country that's never harmed or threatened us, and carries on for a decade, do not expect me to say "Gee, that's nice" in order to comport myself civilly in this police society. I will say what I think. If you want to call that bashing America, then so be it.
In the defense of Western culture, I believe that Europe's vastly un-assimilated Muslim populations need to do more to fit in to the society that took them in. The burqa and the hijab that Muslim women wear is a symbol of separation. I don't blame France for not "relishing the burqa". I don't relish the burqa either and believe it should be banned in all places but the mosque.
What you relish is irrelevant. In a free society people can dress as they see fit.
Location: Oviedo, Fl formerly from the Philly Burbs!
1,016 posts, read 2,712,357 times
Reputation: 374
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
The issue of the Muslims in France is very much like the issue of Spanish speakers in the USA. If your primary goal is the purity of the culture of the motherland, they you will try to ban people from wearing burqas and/or speaking Spanish. It is all a part of the same mentality. But there is no point in telling anyone that in America, because such people believe American values are worth saving and French values are not, and their opinions motivate from faith in that dogma.
As in "Look what the silly French are doing. They are doing the same thing we are doing, but their culture is not worth defending that way, like ours is."
Very much like speaking Spanish in the US?? Except it's totally different. Wearing a burqa is not an impediment to communication, doing business, teaching our children, or reading a warning label- that is required by law...(sometimes needing to be printed in several languages...)
Not speaking English, the primary language of the USA IS and impediment to these things. Not nearly the same thing.....
"France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people."
The whole issue has to be understood in the light of growing tension between a secular France and the development of muslim fundamentalism. One key symbol of the strength of this fundamentalism are women wearing the Burqa.
Most French muslims are from North Africa. I was in Casablanca in April and while most women did wear long dresses and a head scarf, there were no Burqas in sight. The Burqa, therefore, is not traditional to French muslims but rather an import, by the fundamentalists, from the middle east and Afghanistan. It is a direct challenge to the French secular tradition.
Muslim fundamentalism is inimical to the rights of women. In Saudi, women are not allowed to drive cars, in Afghanistan girls were forbidden schooling. The French are right to make a stand. Multi-culturalism is the enemy of the democratic freedoms we enjoy in the West.
Muslim fundamentalism is inimical to the rights of women..
And, the rights of women are inimical to Muslim fundamentalism.
You are taking a stand, choosing which of those ought to survive---the dogma that you subscribe to. That's fine. But it does not make it right, it just makes it your opinion.
You need to provide some reasons why it is "better" for France or any other country to have women's rights, instead of Muslim fundamentalism. Better from some objective viewpoint, not simply "I'm more comfortable with women's rights".
Location: The Chatterdome in La La Land, CaliFUNia
39,031 posts, read 23,020,628 times
Reputation: 36027
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
In many parts of Africa, women do not wear anything above the waist. (This is less common than it was 50 years ago, doe to fashion globalization). How would an American woman like if is she and her family had gone to live there, and it was always perfectly OK for her to wear a top, but suddenly she is told that she cannot do that anymore, she must go topless?
I think this is a good analogy. As much as I disagree with women wearing burkas, it is a symbol of modesty in their culture. I wonder if folks realize that for many women, going without the burkas would be immodest and shameful. Sort of like an American woman being forced to go around topless.
Why shouldn't a Muslim woman be allowed to wear a Burka at school or work if she works or is a student at a state facility?
I think forbidding them is stepping on religious freedom.
I think you are wrong. Sarkozy's position is that it's NOT tied to religion, it's a cultural thing.
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