Sarkozy's Stand Against Burkas Courageous, Instructive

In a speech before both houses of parliament, president Nicolas Sarkozy identified the burka as an object of “enslavement” and said that it was not welcome on French territory.

Sarkozy said, “We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind netting; cut off from any social life, deprived of any identity. This is not the idea the French republic has of a woman’s dignity.”

France has the largest Muslim population of any European country (estimated at 5 million) and the refusal of this population to integrate as well as their aggressively theocratic conduct poses a threat to French secularism.

By refusing to accede to the oppressive practices of some French Muslims, Sarkozy demonstrated a courageous opposition to the multiculturalism that has been undermining the rich secular traditions of nations such as the Netherlands, France, Italy, Denmark and Germany.

American institutions and philosophy inspired the creation of the First French Republic more than 200 years ago. Today, in their stand against Islamic extremism, the French republicans must serve as a model to us in America.

I was disgusted when my President, a man I had voted for, traveled to France and dared to chide Sarkozy for the French ban on religious symbols in school that included crosses, yarmulkes and Islamic headscarves. Obama said, “…in the United States our basic attitude is that we’re not going to tell people what to wear.”

But a defining aspect of the 2004 ban on headscarves and the current controversy over burkas is that the French government is seeking to protect young women from being told what to wear by patriarchal religious authorities who would force young Muslim women to cover their bodies.

I’m with Sarkozy on this one. The values of radical Islam are not the values of Western republics and should be confronted by all governments that value liberty over religious conformity.

Moderate Islam can have a place in Western republics but the radical ideology that seeks to cover women from head to toe must be made unwelcome throughout Europe and North America.