And a very large FU to France this morning

[the_future_modernes]

France bans public Muslim prayers

MUSLIMS will be banned from praying outdoors in France from today in the latest move by officials to remove Islam from the public sphere.

The ban, announced by the government yesterday, infuriated French Muslim leaders, one of whom accused President Sarkozy's government of treating them like cattle.

They say that Muslims, who pray outdoors only because of a lack of space in mosques in France, feel stigmatised.

But Claude Gueant, the Interior Minister, said that the sight of hundreds of people gathering in the streets of Paris and other cities for Friday prayers was "shocking".

It comes after laws to prohibit pupils from wearing headscarves in schools and women from wearing the niqab, the full Muslim veil, in public.

Mr Gueant described outlawing street prayers as the latest brick in the wall that is shoring up the secular nature of the French state. He said that he had nothing against Islam, but wanted it out of the public eye.

...

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, was accused of racism when she said that the worship amounted to an "occupation" - a word that for many French is associated with the Nazi invasion during the Second World War.

But the government now appears to be on the same wavelength, with Mr Gueant agreeing that street prayers would "upset" his fellow countrymen.MORE

Wait a second. Muslims praying on Paris streets are a fucking occupation!? WHAT now? I ain't even hitting the Nazi invasion, what about the French occupation, invasion, colonization of a good chuck of the world's surface not too long ago? And for damn sure they weren't doing anything as innocuous as praying the streets!!!!


And why oh why can't Muslims build bigger mosques to spare our Mr. Gueant's racist, white-supremacist, ignorant, discriminatory, ahem! delicate sensibilities? Why, because the fucking French gov't refuses to give em the permits! See how that works?

France to ban Muslim street prayers

“Here we have the hypocrisy of the French right. On one side, they authorize in the street and on the other side, they say ‘look French people, Muslims are taking over our streets and speak of invasion’,” French lawmaker Axel Urgin told a Press TV correspondent.

Even though France has the greatest Muslim population in Europe, Paris has only one mosque. This lack of mosques leaves French Muslims no choice but to attend Friday prayers at about a dozen street locations across France.

“If we are praying in the street, it’s because we have no other choice. We are using what we have, and that is the street,” the president of Muslim Association of Openness, Moussa Niambele said.

French politicians use the country’s 1905 secularism law as reasoning why Muslims cannot be financially assisted by the government to build mosques. Right-wing mayors also allegedly refuse issuing construction permits to those who have the money.MORE

via ontd_political

Ah... All these civilized European countries. Such a contrast to all those barbaric Global South countries, yes?