TOO LITTLE TOO LATE IN FRANCE

Taki on how a muddle driven by political correctness and the desire to be "universal" led to France's headscarf ban:

"When Jean-Marie Le Pen first signalled the dangers of unlimited Muslim immigration, the establishment held its nose and called him a filthy racist. For good measure they threw in an anti-Semite label, because, according to PC law, if you are a nationalist like Le Pen, you are also a racist, an anti-Semite, and, of course, pro-Hitler. Monsieur le Pr‚sident, honest Jacques Chirac, refused to debate with Le Pen in the last presidential election, leaving Jean-Marie, whose only crime seems to be that he cares more for French men and women than Muslim men and women, talking to himself.

Now the chickens have come home to roost, as they used to say in Hong Kong before the latest bird-flu scare. The dress-code farce shows the feminists who were in favour of banning the scarves as symbols of female oppression to be as full of horse manure as Chirac, who first called the scarves 'aggressive'. Once the Muslims complained that they were being singled out, Luc Ferry banned all religious symbols, including 'religious beards', whatever that may mean.”