Christian Secularism in France – Banning the Veil

France is apparently down with banning outward expressions of religion, so long as those expressions are Muslim.  It passed the National Assembly with a vote of 335-1 (the socialist party abstaining) and will pass the upper house as well.  The punishments include a fine and/or “citizenship classes”… which should strike everyone as generally creepy.  However, France and Europe have some controls that are proactive rather than retroactive (as the American system is was until the activist Roberts court decided to start legislating issues that weren’t even brought by the case before them).  The law must pass constitutional muster before it goes into effect, though this is apparently not the case with all French laws.

The Council of State, a prestigious advisory body, has already warned that an outright ban, such as the one imposed Tuesday, would be vulnerable to a challenge on constitutional grounds. Similarly, legislators in the European Parliament have warned it could be stricken down in the European Court of Human Rights, an organ of the European Union.

Martha Nussbaum has an excellent, in-depth analysis of these sorts of laws, refuting on straightforward legal grounds the most common arguments in support of veil-bans.  She mainly points out that laws banning the veil don’t even pass the Lockean standard of religiously discriminatory laws (not to mention the erstwhile “accomdationist” standard used by the Supreme Court back before it became a tool of majoritarian will).  She says:

An example of a discriminatory law, said Locke, would be one making it illegal to speak Latin in a Church, but not restricting the use of Latin in schools.  Obviously, the point of such a law would be to persecute Roman Catholics.  But if a law is not persecutory in this way, it may stand, even though it may incidentally impose burdens on some religious activities more than on others.

Banning the veil is clearly directed at a particular community whose praxis is taken to be a threat that is described in the aforementioned WashPo article as “steeped in traditions of secularism and Christianity.”  There are some who would claim that Christianity is a religion that set the stage for secularism (and these are usually the same historical determinists who say that the problem with Islam is the lack of a Reformation event in its past… which is just wacky).  But the fact is that Europe is steeped in Christian secularism where Christianity is the norm and the s0-called secular environment relies on that norm to function.