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A flurry of press reports and comments in response to the French vote to ban the wearing of face-coverings in public:
Prospect Magazine: Why France is banning the veil
New Humanist: France moves closer to burqa ban
BBC’s Gavin Hewitt: Criminalising women behind the veil
The vote was the lead front page story for the Daily Express, which also claimed that one of their own polls showed that 99% of Britons wanted the UK to follow France’s lead and quoting the UK Independence Party.
Germany’s Stern magazine’s cover story this week is on Women in Islam.
If you read German, the paper by Annemarie Sancar at Caux is now posted on the conference’s website, and a podcast interview in French.
Good to meet up this evening with several people from across Europe who were at the CEJI course in Brussels last November – all practitioners/activists in their own fields. The kind of work we’re involved in draws from the whole person, so catching up inevitably includes news of love affairs and bereavements – between us, over the last six months, we cover much of what it means to be human in 2010.
It’s refreshing to be amongst people who have different geographic and historic starting points – I tend to get very London-centric. Before I left, I was told more than once that the UK is perceived to be ahead of the game on inter-faith relations compared to other European countries. But each nation has a very specific history and rather different challenges to rise to: Germany’s relationship with Turkey and its guest worker scheme; the way France’s tradition of laïcité is playing out in response to current demands.
I’m hoping that strengthening contact between grassroots multifaith groups across Europe will enable us to learn from one another in the broadest sense.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s workshops.
The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt has touched on one or two issues that have come up at the CEJI course – how different do we want to be from each other? How similar do we want or need to be? How important is a shared language, or an agreed commitment to universal human rights?
Developments such as the upcoming vote in Switzerland on minarets and citizenship tests (UK) or training (parts of Belgium) seem to be on the rise.
One exercise in our training today involved putting togther a timeline of faith traditions/value systems and I was surprised to find something called laïcité in amongst Judaism and the Baha’i faith. Based on a strong commitment to the separation of religion and the state, it is popular in France (where it originated) and in Turkey.
Being in the company of people from Holland, Austria, Romania, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and Belgium makes for wide-ranging conversations and a steep learning curve for me, but a fascinating one. And I like finding philosophy monthlies in the newsagents here, next to the gardening, computer and lifestyle mags.
