It’s happening in France today as it has happened across Europe.  The steady declination of individual liberty and the overstepping authority of the state.  It is not just an isolated incident anymore, but a pattern of invasion.

The latest outrage is a new ban in France which went into effect today.  Anyone caught wearing a full face veil, an Islamic burka or equivalent face covering, will be subject to a fine and a “citizenship course.”  (I don’t know what “citizenship course” means, but that sounds an awfully lot like Mao’s reeducation camps to me.  But I digress.)

Islamic women, like any other people–if they are to be acknowledged as people–have as much a right to wear what they want to wear as anyone else.  States historically have often intervened in the clothing choices of its citizens, often in the legislation of “public decency,” such as a ban on nudity in non-designated areas.  States have also legislated occupancy-related clothing requirements such as masks for doctors or helmets for motocycle riders.

What’s ironic in this case is that the people who are most effected by this new law in France are not only exempt from any occupancy requirements, but they are practicing an extreme form of modesty that shouldn’t offend anyone.  And if they DO offend people, that isn’t a justification for banning the veils on legal grounds.  That goes against every fundamental notion of free speech:  that the speaker has a right to speak as much as the listener has a right to be offended, but that no speaker or listener’s right is more important than anyone else’s.  This is why even hate speech, in America at least, remains tolerated: because of the hesitancy of any court to open the door of deciding which speech, or which offense, should matter more in the eyes of the law.

But more important than a fundamental right of expression through clothing–a right that has been taken away in history to deprive citizens of their humanity in more than one case (yellow stars of David and the Scarlet Letter come to mind)–is the ever creeping infringement of the French government–and indeed, governments across Europe–on the rights of their citizens.

It starts with restrictions on free expression where they will be missed least:  bans on anti-semitism or denying the Holocaust, bans on hate speech, bans on religious symbols on display in classrooms, and last year, bans on minarets.  Add to the long list of activities citizens can no longer perform: wearing clothing that many believe–like it or not–to be either traditional or required by religious law.

These bans may seem innocuous, mostly because they are the most publicly supported.  It’s easy to ban speech when people can universally or near-universally despise it.  There are many people whose speech shocks the conscience.  But it is just in these situations where the freedom of speech is MOST important.  The rights of the minority of an opinion and the majority are indivisible and logically equivalent.  As John Stuart Mill wrote in his treatise on the subject, On Liberty, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

What’s next for France and Europe?  The banning of political groups that support the Islamic veil?  The banning of public Islamic prayer?  The banning of private Islamic prayer?  What about the banning of the Koran itself?  And how quickly these new laws can be used to turn against all other French citizens, to deprive them of liberty, to take away their fundamental rights because an arrogant belief in uncontested moral superiority?

There are two arguments I have heard routinely to justify the ban itself, on legal and political grounds:

A)  The ban does not target Muslims, but applies to all people, therefore it is not a targeted ban on any one group.

This is pure crap.  The bill was passed as a burqa ban, understood to be a burqa ban, and continues to be a burqa ban.  And the law makes exceptions for occupancy-related masks and “Masks used in “traditional activities”, such as carnivals or religious processions,” which somehow doesn’t include the right to practice one’s religious laws in public.

B)  The ban is there to protect France from Islamization; as Sarkozy himself said:  ”The burqa is not welcome in France because it is contrary to our values and contrary to the ideals we have of a woman’s dignity.”

This argument is logically equivalent to a state banning a value system, a way of life, an act of speech or anything else that goes against the “values” and “ideals” of that state.  First of all, who is Sarkozy, or any French politician, to decide what constitutes the “values” of French society?  And if he has that right to decide, what rights is he giving his successors?  The right to decide that Muslims, and their very existence, are a threat to the values of the French state?  These very arguments were used in Europe–and France–before, albeit for a different religious and cultural minority.  The BBC is even calling this situation “the Muslim question”–if that doesn’t make your hairs stand up on end.

Furthermore, if the logic of the ban is to encourage equality and French unity, it will clearly have the opposite effect.  French Muslims who are forced to wear the veil will be forced, now, to stay indoors to avoid the fine, thus rendering them effective prisoners in their own homes.  Not to mention the alienation of Muslims in general from the French state: a recipe for more dissidents, more protests, and no doubt, more reactionary behavior from the state.

This creep of unilateral state action against citizens may seem justified–it may even seem necessary–but therein lies its danger.  I fear for the French people, as they have just given the state the power to decide key questions on their liberty, and sooner than they think, they will be unable to stop the juggernaut when it has gone too far.

This is terrible

I am recalling a Jon Stewart bit where he says that Fox takes their opinions and puts a question mark at the end of it.  ”Is Barack Obama a Muslim?” asks Fox, thereby putting it out there while staying “fair and balanced.”

Anyway, unless someone was up there saying “This looks like a terrorist fist jab because there’s this photo of this terrorist doing it and blah blah blah” then why would the anchor say that?  It quite literally comes out of nowhere.

And, for the record, I’ve made the “terrorist fist jab” about a gazillion times.

The most disturbing story to come out of the news of late has not been the Michael Pfelger videos (although, unlike Wright, he has managed to issue a somewhat sincere apology).  Lost in the Politico’s election analysis and the media’s echo chamber has been a little-noticed story about Dunkin’ Donuts, who just pulled an ad from the air which included Rachel Ray wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arabic scarf.

Facing severe criticism that the wearing of the scarf was symbolic support for Islamic terrorism, Dunkin’ Donuts, as the BBC reports, issued a statement that the scarf was not intended to offend and that “given the possibility of misperception the commercial was no longer being used.”

What misperception?  The wearing of a traditional dress, cultural dress, is somehow a support of Islamic extremism?  Conservative bloggers have pointed out, correctly, that the scarf was worn by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian liberation movement until his death in 2004, and is routinely worn by Islamic extremists and Palestinian nationalists.

True.  But the scarf is also worn by millions of Arabs, and non-Arabs, around the world, and an overwhelming majority of them would rather not perform extreme and violent acts of terror, thank you very much.  Most people who wear the keffiyeh are not extremists, and are certainly not terrorists (and I’m sure Rachel Ray would agree).

Not only do Arabs wear the keffiyeh, but Urban Outfitters sold the scarves until January 2007, when, responding to public pressure, they pulled it from the shelves.  In their statement:  ”We apologize if we offended anyone, this was by no means our intention.”

What’s next?  The pulling of Middle East products off store shelves?  The sacking of Arab journalists?

This is symbolic of a much larger undercurrent of American Islamophobia that has swept the United States (and much of Europe) since before September 11.  Indicators of this movement have been rampant: Brigitte Bardot’s incendiary anti-Muslim comments that recently got her fined, riots in the streets of Paris, the Danish cartoon fiasco and of course, conservative commentators’ incessant ranting about the “Muslim problem.”  Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are especially to blame.

Of course, now that Barack Obama, a black man with the middle name Hussein, is running for president, the ugliest of the hatred of Muslims in America has come out in full force.  In all the talk about racism in this Democratic primary season, the mainstream commentary has forgotten about the real issue of race in this election—not whether Obama is “too black” to be President, but whether or not he is a Muslim.

It was Barack Hussein Obama’s connection to Islam—through his father—that led to the Fox report, later proved to be false, that Obama had attended a radical Islamic school as a schoolboy in Indonesia.  It was this false religiosity that led to the famous “Madrassa Hoax” email, which circulated the internet widely in the early months of the primary and has since emerged again.  The email implored Americans “Let us all remain alert concerning Obama’s expected presidential candidacy,” and that “The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!”

Remember Hillary Clinton’s famous “3AM” ad, in which she asked who would best be able to answer a 3AM phone call to the White House in the midst of a catastrophe?  Orlando Patterson wrote for the New York Times that the ad played on subtle racism and the classic white fear of “the outsider within”—the criminal black man infiltrating the safe neighborhood:  “The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.”  However, the more subtle sub-message, the one that did not have to be stated, was the fact that “Something is happening in the world,” and the terrorists behind that “something”—well, you get the picture.  The very idea that a Muslim—a guy who shares a name with the late Iraqi dictator—could be the one answering that call in the White House came across clear enough.  Clinton’s margin of victory in Ohio, much larger than the pre-election polls, suggest that late-deciding voters broke for her, and whether the subtlety of the “3AM” ad had something to do with this final push will never be known for sure.

A Pew poll taken in late March found that one in ten Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim.  The number is telling in part because 10% of Democrats—most of whom already were Clinton supporters—believed this fact, and because 8% of Independents—a group who Obama needs to depend on to win the election in November—believes it as well.  Furthermore, a whopping 19% of rural voters—that’s one in five—believed this to be true.

The fact that the son of a Muslim Kenyan joined a radical black Chicago church, and then stayed in that church for 20 years, does not help diminish the rumor that he is a Muslim.  America is familiar with images of radical black Muslims like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, and should now be equally familiar with Jeremiah Wright’s praise of Farrakhan.  The tendency to equate Islam with radicalism of course has been swollen since 9/11.  But the underlying assumption is that it is Islam that implies radicalism—not blackness.  The fear of Islam “penetrating” American society cannot be understated.

It is disturbing that I have received these emails about “Barack Hussein Obama” being a “secret muslim” who “joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.”  These claims are not only outright false, but they force Obama to sink to the level of divisiveness by having to respond.  “No, I’m not a Muslim!” he has had to say, as if being a Muslim were somehow like being a bunny eater.  Such stringent, politicized denial only reinforces the claims, not diminishes them.  It reminds me of the high schooler who insists “I’m not gay!” when he is hit with the G-word in a routine downsizing of his character by his peers.  (Harry Truman, when we was running for a judicial seat in Missouri, was rumored to be Jewish due to his close ties with a Jewish childhood friend and business partner.  “I’m not Jewish,” he is reported to have said, “and if I was, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it.”)

This is a major problem, and one that shows no sign of letting up.  Let the keffiyeh remind us that hatred of Muslims has increased in recent years.  How would America respond if, tomorrow, a skullcap-toting news anchor stepped down because “given the possibility of misperception Mr. ____ will no longer be working with us,” because, after all, “we don’t want anyone to think that we work with Jews.”  It’s unacceptable.

Milton Friedman wrote that in the long run, the free market will work against discrimination.  It’s in the best interest of industry economically, he said, for employers to seek the most qualified people regardless of race, religion, gender, etc.  However, the free market in this case has spoken in another direction:  ”Don’t sell this item because people associate it with terrorism, and thus we will lose business if we keep it on the shelves”–this might be good business, but morally it stinks of bigotry.  The underlining assumption is fed, not starved, and thus the evil wheel of bigotry continues to turn, turn, turn.