The international community has warmly welcomed the French intervention in Mali, of which the stated goal is to save the country from collapse. There has been a lot of talk and questions about whether France has found its Afghanistan, and certain commentators have started to dub northern Mali the new “Afrighanistan.” Though the war is for now strictly a French matter, the absence of a concrete EU policy on the question offers three crucial lesso...
...e research and debate, not legislation.” In other words, history, like religion, is not something the state should be institutionalizing. French President Nicholas Sarkozy would seem to disagree. He has vociferously supported France’s own law that not only recognizes Armenian genocide but makes it a criminal offense to deny that it occurred. More recently, Sarkozy ordered all French high schools to read to their students a letter written by a 17...
from Wikimedia Commons On Tuesday, November 13, Francois Hollande, president of France, faced the press at the Elysee Palace for his first “news conference”, at which he tried to turn the momentum of the growingly unpopular first months of his mandate. Hollande has come under severe criticism by the press, giving birth to term “Hollande-bashing”; the Economist has gone so far as to call France “Europe’s time bomb” in this week’s cove...
...ous beliefs. It can also imply that, because religion is considered to be a strictly private affair meant to be practiced behind closed doors, it must not enter the public sphere. The legal frameworks of the United States and France, for example, both include the Establishment Clause, which delineates the separation of church and state, and the Free Exercise Clause, which protects freedom of religion. When these two ideals clash, each county has...
In April of last year, France became the first European country to implement a ban on face veils. In keeping with the French tradition of using legislation to regulate the display of religious paraphernalia, the law subjects Muslim women who wear the burqa in public spaces to a fine of €150 or lessons in French Citizenship. Of course, the ban is divisive by nature and has flared domestic and international passions alike, causing a paroxysm of de...
...massive investments in Andalucía and especially Marbella’s port. Other investments include stakes in LVMH, Lagardere, Barclay’s, Credit Suisse, and many others. Nowhere have the political investments been more visible than in France. In fact, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, often seen at the stadium sitting next to Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is close to the Qatari royal family and participated in selling them the Parisian club. Qata...
...elf the target of international condemnation just weeks later for her ringing declaration that “[in Germany] multiculturalism has failed.” Germany’s leaders are not soloists in this chorus of jingoist rhetoric: the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands have all expressed similar nativist sentiments. This represents a marked departure from the idyllic progressive toleration often touted by the Old World. Anti-imm...
Sharia don’t like it In mid-January, something very promising happened for President Obama and the United States’ relationship with its European allies. France launched Operation Serval in Mali. In this operation, French armed forces intervened in the country’s deteriorating civil war to restore power to the incumbent government against the rapidly advancing rebel and jihadist forces from the north of the country. The French intervention...
...oward the large number of Muslim immigrants in Europe, immigration policies are more stringent than ever before. And it’s plausible that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far right National Front, could become the President of France. Yet the most disturbing trend is that this growing nativism has turned much of Europe against a group of its own citizens – the Roma. The most evident instance of this was France’s deportation of hundreds of Roma las...
Last Sunday, February 19, I opened the New York Times homepage to check in with the rest of the globe and found the startling headline: “Iran Halts Oil Exports to Britain and France.” Agog, I anxiously clicked the link and hurried through the article, eager to hear of the potential ramifications of Iran’s bellicose ruse and anticipating the many possible reactions from the West. What I found, however, were not flared passions or irate diplomats,...
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