Is Islam Compatible with French Values?

Vive la France!

France is going to have a presidential election this year.  The first round will occur in late April. The final vote will happen in early May.

Today the two leading candidates are Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. Representing the radical right Le Pen opposes Muslim immigration and French membership in the EU. Many people are horrified at the prospect that she might win. Macron is a disenchanted socialist technocrat and investment banker. He is all of 39 years old.

If the polls are correct, Macron seems to be an easy winner. For the record the more conservative candidate Francois Fillon has gotten caught up in a scandal. He seems to have used his political influence to find his wife a well remunerated job where she did not exactly earn her way. Without the scandal he would have been the frontrunner.

Anyway, the French have taken a poll about religion, specifically about whether or not certain religions were compatible with French values. They take such polls occasionally. This time, to no one’s surprise, the voters—61%-- declared Islam—and not just Muslim terrorists—to be incompatible with France.

One notes that France has been opening its doors to Muslim refugees for decades now. It is not new to the game. Today, more than ten percent of the population is Muslim. Many Muslims live in enclaves in the Parisian suburbs, in no-go zones, zones where it is too dangerous for ambulances, fire fighters and even policemen to go without an armed paramilitary escort. Given the recent attacks by Muslim terrorists, both large and small, the nation remains in a state of emergency. 

Anyway, in the interest of perspective, some French people—6%-- believe that Roman Catholicism is incompatible with French values while some 16% believe that Judaism is. One does not know how many of those who took the survey were Muslims… which would certainly influence the vote.

The Daily Mail reports:

Sixty one per cent of French people believe Islam is incompatible with their society, according to a new poll.

That figure had been falling sharply until the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015, and has been steadily growing ever since, an Ipsos survey found.

That is compared with six per cent of people who believe Catholicism is incompatible and 17 per cent who believe Judaism is incompatible.

The massacre at Charlie Hebdo, coupled with the attack on the Bataclan and the horrors committed at a Bastille Day celebration in Nice persuaded French citizens that Islam and France did not mix. So much for good Muslims and bad Muslims. So much for the religion of peace.

It does not stop there. French people do not even support any conspicuous public display of the Muslim religion:

A further 79 per cent of French people supported banning headscarves on university campuses, while another 77 per cent want to see the burkini banned.

France already has a nationwide law banning anyone from wearing a full-face veil, while several French Riviera towns attempted to ban full-body 'burkinis' in 2016, but the law was overturned.  

The nation that invented the bikini obviously finds the burkini an offense of its values.