PARIS, April 11 (Reuters) – France’s ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force on Monday, exposing anyone who wears the Muslim niqab or burqa in public to fines of 150 euros ($216).
A Muslim property dealer, who is urging women to keep wearing the veil if they want to, has urged supporters to go to Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris for a silent prayer during the day, and is also offering to help people pay the fines.
France’s five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe’s largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil.
Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it.
The timing is all the more sensitive after France’s ruling political party, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP, called a debate on the place of Islam in France, a move that some say risked stigmatising a portion of the population.
Police received a guide last week to help implement the ban. It tells them not to remove veils by force. It also notes that the ban does not apply inside private cars but reminds policemen such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules.
Rachid Nekkaz, the man who called for the Notre Dame prayer, said in a webcast that he was putting a property worth around two million euros up for sale to help fund his campaign.
“I am calling on all free women who so wish, to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience,” he said.
French police arrested 59 people on Saturday who turned up for a banned protest over the veil ban, one of them on arrival in France from Britain, according to a police spokesman. (Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Remember, often times the wearing of these Burqas is forced:
Here is also some commentary from Creeping Shariaon those many killed in the Ivory Coast:
Take note, Obama and the Ummah United Nations are behind Ouattara even though the winner of the election is in dispute. When it’s time to choose his poison, Obama always sides with the Muslim.
Patrick Nicholson, of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas, said workers visited Duekoue last Wednesday and found hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by bullets from small-arms fire and hacked to death with machetes. He said they estimated that more than 1,000 civilians had been killed.
Nicholson, the Caritas spokesman, said the killings occurred over three days in a neighbourhood controlled by fighters loyal to internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara, though it was not clear who the perpetrators were.
[This is]…the second source claiming no clue on who killed 1,000 people even though fighters loyal to the Muslim leader captured the town.
To catch the reader up on the issues in that part of Africa,one article explains why we find this tension growing:
Background
A civil war began on September 19, 2002 due to several unresolved social, political, and military issues the government of the Ivory Coast had not proactively dealt with. One of the largest of these issues remains the increasingly grim “ethnic problem” that has led to violence around attempted pre-election periods. It is estimated that over 20% of the national population is of foreign descent, which has led to a national disunity concerning voting rights. The underlying problem of the voting rights issue is the indecision surrounding if foreigners, many from Burkina Faso, have the right to vote.
During the 30-year reign of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, ethnic tensions had been suppressed under the strong leadership of the government despite a growing influx of foreigners from other African nations. After Houphouët-Boigny, the nation struggled to integrate democracy into the fragmenting society largely due to a growing dislike of the “non-Ivoirity” population. Over the past several years, this term has been used as increasingly racist and is often used in the rampant nationalist, xenophobic politics to represent the population of the southeastern portion of the country, particularly in the capital of Abidjan.
As last century drew to a close, ethnic violence began to increase as the economy of the Ivory Coast continued to sink, forcing many urban workers to return to the growing fields that had originally made Ivory Coast a regional powerhouse. However, many of the farmers were immigrants from other African nations who had been drawn to the wealth of the Ivory Coast. This further exacerbated heightening tensions between ethnic groups, leading to frequent riots on plantation farms.
The final straw came before the 2000 elections, which required that both parents of any presidential candidate be born within sovereign territory of the Ivory Coast. This excluded northern presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara, a serious contender for the presidency from the race, who represented much of the immigrant community.
On September 19, 2002, northern troops mutinied and launched multiple attacks across Abidjan. By that night, much of the north was under their control despite a failure to take over Abidjan. French troops soon moved in to separate the two sides and evacuate expatriates. Despite a ceasefire soon afterwords, additional rebel groups appeared in the west of the country and fears of a nationwide security meltdown led to UN troops being deployed throughout the country. Sporadic violence has kept the Ivory Coast in a state of tension into 2010.
Currently, the international community is enforcing an arms and diamond embargo on the Ivory Coast, as well as freezing the assets of anyone standing in the way of peace.
Current Crisis Due to Multiple Unresolved National Issues
The failure of the shaky coalition government to deal with security issues, voting rights, and demobilization of the rebel group New Forces has created an environment that is not safe for free and fair elections to take place.
According to a judicial official, last week Ivory Coast investigators discovered evidence of “fraud” in a voters’ roll, triggering additional protests in the western town of Man, where the local court was ransacked by hundreds of angry civilians. The Independent Electoral Commission denied the allegations despite previous acknowledgements of major problems in providing fair elections.[see video near bottom]
“Rioters in western Ivory Coast burned down a local government building on Tuesday during a demonstration against the government’s handling of voter registration in a much delayed election. Witnesses said more than a thousand demonstrators marched through the city of Vavoua as local security forces tried unsuccessfully to disperse them by firing shots in the air…
Political tensions are rising as West Africa’s former economic giant looks set to miss another deadline for holding presidential elections needed to end years of political crisis…
President Laurent Gbagbo is locked in a row with electoral commissioner Robert Mambe, whom he accuses of trying to add around 430,000 names to the final voter list that were not properly vetted to check their Ivorian nationality.”
As violence and riots continue to mount, the spokesman for the ex-rebel group New Forces Sidiki Konate stated that the Ivory Coast is at a renewed risk for civil war:
“We have today in places a real danger to the peaceful coexistence of our communities. The communities are looking daggers at each other, ready to attack. The seeds of civil war are there, each one is already preparing its munitions.”
Such rhetoric, along with the ever-growing ethnic, political, and social issues such as:
a government failure to deal with security issues
voting rights
demobilization of the New Forces
raises sincere concerns that not only will a national election be delayed yet again, but also that this time civil war could be resumed by it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, quoted this morning by Fox News:
President Laurent Gbagbo to step down immediately,” she said. “His continuing refusal to cede power to the rightful winner of the November 2010 elections, Alassane Ouattara, has led to open violence in the streets, chaos in Abidjan and throughout the country… Gbagbo is pushing Cote d’Ivoire into lawlessness. The path forward is clear. He must leave now so the conflict may end.
First of all, the liberal mainstream media has hardly been chomping at the bit to report any story regarding Islamic violence towards women. For example, when Time magazine featured a cover with a picture of a woman whose face had been disfigured by the Taliban, The New York Times called it “war porn” (see the image below).
Second of all, liberals seem to have an overwhelming tendency to downplay Islamic abuses towards women (as well as towards gays) under the guise of multiculturalism. Don’t believe me? Well, then I suggest that you read the column by liberal Boston Globe columnist Susan Jacoby where she asks the question, “Why are liberals excusing religious abuses on grounds of cultural relativism?” To be specific, Jacoby makes some great points when she writes the following:
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: I’m sure that at mosques around this country, especially the more radical mosques, this is going to be seen as one more evidence that people are picking on us.
So Kristof acknowledges the existence in America of “radical mosques.” Isn’t that the very proof of the need for inquiry along the lines Peter King is conducting? What Kristof suggests sounds like appeasement. People in “radical mosques” might feel like they’re under scrutiny? Good.
NAIROBI, Kenya, March 7 (Compass Direct News) – At least one Christian was killed and others injured when thousands of Islamic extremists set fire to 59 churches and at least 28 homes in western Ethiopia in the past five days, Christian leaders said.
More than 4,000 Christians in and around Asendabo, Jimma Zone have been displaced as a result of attacks that began on Wednesday (March 2) after Muslims accused a Christian of desecrating the Quran by tearing up a copy, sources said.
“The atrocity is still going on, and more people are suffering,” said a source in Addis Ababa who is in close contact with area church leaders.
The Christian killed, believed to have been a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, has not yet been identified.
“One Orthodox believer, whose daughter is a member of Mekane Yesus Church, has been killed,” an Ethiopian church leader told Compass. “Ministers were injured, and many more believers have been displaced.”
A pastor based in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa noted that evangelical church leaders have reported the attacks to authorities and asked officials for help, but no action had been taken at press time.
“The church requested more police protection,” he said. “The authorities sent security forces, but they were overwhelmed by the attackers.”
A hardline Muslim mob clashed with police and burned two churches in Indonesia Tuesday to protest what they considered a too-lenient sentence given a Christian for blaspheming against Islam.
The U.S. ambassador in Jakarta expressed concern about the burnings and also deplored an earlier mob attack on a minority Muslim sect in which three people were stabbed and beaten to death.
The Christian, 58-year-old Antonius Bawengan, was given the maximum five-year sentence Tuesday on charges of distributing books and literature that allegedly spread hatred about Islam.
But a crowd estimated at more than 1,000 people attacked police with stones outside the courthouse in central Java, saying the man should have received a death penalty. The mob then set two churches on fire, burning the roofs, and damaged a third.
JAKARTA, Indonesia – Violations of Christians’ religious freedom in Indonesia jumped from 12 incidents in 2009 to 75 last year, according to a report from the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace.
Setara Institute researcher Ismail Hasani said at a press conference last week that 43 incidents involved attacks on churches and other security threats, sealing of worship venues and prohibition of activities, among other violations. Other incidents among the 75 violations included blocking churches from establishing places of worship and banning services and other religious activities.
