France: History,Culture,Politics and Achivement

Bahamut

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Use this thread to talk everything about France

9 things you didn’t know about France and #digital technology

IMPRIMER
European champion in E-Government, the land of Wi-Fi and online courses (the famous ‘MOOC’): discover the figures which disprove generally accepted ideas about digital technology in France.
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1. FRANCE IS THE EUROPEAN CHAMPION IN E-GOVERNMENT

So says a recent United Nations study. France has become the leader in the European ranking and comes in fourth place in the global ranking based on three criteria: online services provided by the authorities, telecommunications infrastructure and population’s education level. France is the world champion for online services mainly thanks to the service-public.fr website.

2. FRANCE IS THE LAND OF WIFI

France is also the land of WiFi. According to the statistics drawn up by the specialist firm Maravedis Rethink, France is well ahead of the United States (9.58 million terminals) with more than 13 million public terminals. And that is not all: France is due to increase its number of terminals by 80% by 2018.

3. FRANCE IS AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF BIG DATA

This is what reveals a study conducted by Teradata on more than 300 French, German and British companies. France is running neck and neck with Germany far ahead of the United Kingdom. According to this study, three French companies out of fiveuse advanced analytical processing to improve their efficiency and save time. Big data maturity is mainly due to the quality of French engineers’ training in mathematics and statistics. France is ranked second for the number of Fields medals!

4. FRANCE PROVIDES ONLINE COURSES

In the space of one year, 400,000 students, employees and people wishing to widen their knowledge have taken or are taking 53 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on the French Digital University (FUN - France Université Numérique) website in very diverse fields. The catalogue is continuing to expand: 23 new MOOCs have been made available since the start of the new academic year in September 2014. So the first anniversary of “FUN” can be celebrated with pride.

5. FRANCE IS CONNECTED

83% of French people use the Internet compared with the European average of 75% according to the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Research (Insee) in 2012. Mobile internet is on a roll: almost 40% of people were using mobile Internet in 2012 compared to only 10% in 2007.

6. FRANCE “LIKES” SOCIAL NETWORKS

French people are also very active on social networks. According to a study conducted by the We Are Social agency, Facebook has28 million active users in France, which represents 42% of French people. Let's “like” this!

7. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY HAS AN IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY…

Digital technology currently represents 5.5% of French GDP. According to a recent study from McKinsey firm, France may increase the share represented by digital technology in its GDP by €100 billion by 2020, provided that companies noticeably speed up their digital transformation.

8. … AND CREATES JOBS!

According to the same study, direct jobs linked to this sector account for 3.3% of salaried employees nationwide. However, efforts still need to be made to fully benefit from the potential of this revolution impacting practices and services. “The Government is taking decisive and intentional action to this end” highlighted Axelle Lemaire. For more information

9. FRANCE ENCOURAGES CROWDFUNDING (AND IT WORKS!)


152 million euros were raised in 2014 thanks to crowdfunding platforms that enable Internet users to fund projects directly. This figure is twice the amount raised in 2013, according to the study carried out by Compinnov for the association Financement Participatif France ('French Crowdfunding Association') among 46 French platforms. The amount consists primarily of loans (88.4 million euros), the majority of which are interest-bearing, but donation platforms rank in second place with a total of 38.2 million euros raised, followed by crowd equity platforms, which enable the donor to acquire shares in a small company, accounting for 25.4 million euros raised. In its attempts to strengthen France's position on the international stage, the Government has made a number of changes to the applicable regulations, including an ordinance, which came into force last October 1st, designed to eliminate the bank monopoly on interest-bearing loans, thus enabling individuals to fund projects by lending money in return for interest (up to a maximum 1,000 euros per investor and 1,000,000 euros per project).
 

Bahamut

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French writer Patrick Modiano wins the 2014 Nobel prize in literature


Novelist is 15th French writer to win prestigious award

• Live reaction to Modiano winning the Nobel prize in literature



Patrick Modiano is known to shun the media and rarely gives interviews. Photograph: AP
Paul Owen, Mark Brown,Alison Flood and agencies

Thursday 9 October 2014 18.35 BST

This article is 2 years old

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Patrick Modiano has been named the 111th winner of the Nobel prize for literature.

The 69-year-old is the 15th French writer to win the prestigious prize, worth 8m kronor ($1.1m or £700,000).

His name was announced at a short ceremony in Stockholm with Peter Englund, the Nobel Academy’s permanent secretary, reading a citation which said Modiano won “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation”.

Modiano is well known in France but something of an unknown quantity for even widely read people in other countries. His best known novel is probably Missing Person, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1978 and is about a detective who loses his memory and endeavours to find it.

The writer was born in a west Paris suburb two months after the second world war ended in Europe in July 1945.

His father was of Jewish Italian origins and met his Belgian actor mother during the occupation of Paris, and Modiano’s beginnings have strongly influenced his writing.

Jewishness, the Nazi occupation and loss of identity are recurrent themes in his novels, which include 1968’s La Place de l’Etoile – later hailed in Germany as a key post-Holocaust work.

He owes his big break to a friendship with a friend of his mother, the French writer Raymond Queneau, who was first introduced him to the Gallimard publishing house when he was in his early 20.

Modiano, who lives in Paris, is known to shun media, and rarely accords interviews. In 2012, he won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature.

Englund said: “Patrick Modiano is a well-known name in France but not anywhere else. He writes children’s books, movie scripts but mainly novels. His themes are memory, identity and time.

“His best known work is called Missing Person. It’s the story about a detective who has lost his memory and his final case is finding out who he really is: he is tracing his own steps through history to find out who he is.”

He added: “They are small books, 130, 150 pages, which are always variations of the same theme - memory, loss, identity, seeking. Those are his important themes: memory, identity and time.”

Modiano’s win was not a total surprise, with Ladbrokes quoting odds of 10/1 for him earlier this week, fourth favourite behind the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o (7/2), the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (4/1) and the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Aleksijevitj.

The winner is chosen by an academy consisting of 18 prominent Swedish literary figures. This year 210 nominations were received, 36 of which were first timers. That became a 20-name longlist and then a five-name shortlist.

Last year’s award went to the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro.

The Nobel announcements have been going on all week, and will conclude withthe peace prize and prize for economics on Friday and Monday respectively.

On Wednesday Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, William Moerner of Stanford University in California, and Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia won the chemistry prize “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”.

On Tuesday Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara, shared the physics prize with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan for “the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”.

And on Monday, British-US scientist John O’Keefe and married couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser from Norway won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the brain’s “inner GPS”.

Worth 8m kronor each, the Nobel prizes are always handed out on 10 December, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Besides the prize money, each laureate receives a diploma and a gold medal.

Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, provided few directions for how to select winners, except that the prize committees should reward those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”.
 

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Nano-machines' win European trio chemistry Nobel prize


Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa will share prize for their design and synthesis of the ‘world’s smallest machines’



Jean Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa, winners of the chemistry Nobel Prize 2016. Photograph: Nobel Media 2016
Hannah Devlin

@hannahdev
Wednesday 5 October 2016 10.59 BSTLast modified on Thursday 6 October 201600.10 BST


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A European trio of chemists have won the Nobel prize in chemistry for developing “nano-machines”, an advance that paved the way for the world’s first smart materials.

Sir Fraser Stoddart, from Scotland, Bernard Feringa, from the Netherlands, and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, from France, will share the 8m Swedish kronor (£718,000) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm today.

The Nobel committee described the tools developed by the chemists as the “world’s smallest machines”. The technology is already being used to create medical micro-robots and self-healing materials that can repair themselves without human intervention.

In living organisms, cells work as molecular machines to power our organs, regulate temperature and repair damage. The Nobel trio were among the first to replicate this kind of function in synthetic molecules, by working out how to convert chemical energy into mechanical motion.

This allowed them to construct molecular devices a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, including switches, motors, shuttles and even something resembling a motorcar.

The advances have allowed scientists to develop materials that will reconfigure and adapt by themselves depending on their environment - for instance contracting with heat, or opening up to deliver drugs when they arrive at a target site in the body.

In an interview following the announcement, Feringa said that winning the prize had been “such a great surprise. I’m so honoured and also emotional about it,” he said.

He added that it had also been a shock when he succeeded in developing the first function: he “could hardly believe it worked”.

Göran Hansson, secretary general of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, said: “The laureates have opened this entire field of molecular machinery. They have shown it is possible to make a machine at the molecular scale.”

The Nobel committee compared the trio’s breakthrough to the first crude electric motors in the 1830s, when scientists were unaware that spinning cranks and wheels would eventually lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans and food processors.

Mark Miodownik, professor of materials and society at the University College London, said that the advent of nano-machines could transform the very fabric of cities.

“If you want infrastructure that looks after itself - and I think we do - I’m pretty sure we’re going to be moving towards self-healing systems,” he said. “We’ll have plastic pipes that can repair themselves or a bridge that when it gets cracked has these machines that rebuild the bridge at a microscopic scale. It’s just beginning. The potential is really immense.”

Prince Charles famously raised the spectre of a “grey goo” catastrophe in which the types of micro-machines first designed by the laureates replicate and devour the planet. However, Feringa told the Stockholm press conference that he didn’t have apocalyptic nightmares about his inventions. “We have to think about how we can handle these things safely,” he said. “But I’m not so worried about that ... We will have the opportunity to build in safety devices if that is needed.”

Sauvage, professor emeritus at the University of Strasbourg, made the first step towards a molecular machine in the 1980s, when he succeeded in linking two ring-shaped molecules together paper-chain style, and later showed one ring structure could rotate freely relative to the other.

Speaking to the French TV channel iTele this morning, Sauvage said: “I have won many prizes, but the Nobel prize is something very special, it’s the most prestigious prize, the one most scientists don’t even dare to dream of in their wildest dreams.”

In the 1990s, Stoddart, who is based at Northwestern University, Illinois, built the first molecular wheel - a free-moving ring structure on an axle that was later used to develop a molecular muscle and an abacus that could act as a computer chip. Feringa, who works at the University of Groningen pioneered the nano-motor, first showing that a molecular rotor blade could be made to spin continually in the same direction. He later put four of these together to make a car smaller than the width of a human hair that could “drive” across a surface.

Stoddart’s daughter, Alison, who is chief editor of the journal Nature Reviews Materials, said her father had always been driven and passionate when it came to his research. “It wasn’t a particularly trendy field of chemistry many decades ago but my Dad stuck at it,” she told the Guardian. “I remember when I was a kid, he came home from a trip to Stockholm with a chocolate Nobel prize. Now he has a real one!”

Last year, the Nobel prize in chemistry went to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich andAziz Sancar for their research into the mechanisms that cells use to repair DNA. Their work mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA in order to prevent errors occurring in genetic information.

The 2016 Nobel in medicine or physiology was awarded on Monday to the Japanese cell biologist, Yoshinori Ohsumi, for discoveries on how cells break down and recycle their own components, a process known as autophagy. On Tuesday, three British physicists, David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, won the physics prize for their work on exotic states of matter.

The winner of the peace prize will be announced on Friday and the economics prize will be announced on Monday 10 October.
 

ezsasa

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Add to this... one in every seven citizens of France work for govt..

Others can confirm...
 

Bahamut

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Add to this... one in every seven citizens of France work for govt..

Others can confirm...
France have followed anti capitalist policy , hope this changes . Most important thing is to reduce welfare and reduce taxes for small and medium business.
 

Bahamut

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Add to this... one in every seven citizens of France work for govt..

Others can confirm...
Photo: AFP
French civil servant paid to do nothing for 10 years


Published: 17 Oct 2016 16:24 GMT+02:00


The French civil service is renowned for providing job security and a decent salary but the story of one fonctionnaire takes le biscuit.

The hard-to-believe story of Bosko Herman was being told around France on Monday.

It has emerged that 55-year-old Herman, a senior civil servant orfonctionnaire as they are called in France, has been banking a salary of nearly €4,000 a month for 10 years, without actually doing a day’s work.

The €3,700-a-month salary equates to over €500,000 over the 10 years and will be a few hundred thousand more by 2023, the year when his salary can no longer be paid – because he will have retired.

Herman spent five years between 2001 and 2006 as the “general director of services” for the Town Hall in Saint-Savine, near Troyes in eastern France.

When a new mayor was elected in 2006 Herman was let go after a “personal disagreement” with the new man in charge.

According to reports in the French press he was “invited” to work for another Town Hall, in Vitry-le-François but things did not work out for reasons that have not been made clear.

What is clear however is that his old paymasters, the Town Hall(Mairie) in Saint-Savine, were required to pay 75 percent of his salary until he found a new job. A bill they are still paying to this day.

The other 25 percent was paid by a civil service management centre tasked with finding roles for staff, reports say.

The bizarre, head-shaking scenario, described as “Kafkaesque” by the French media, came about because of a 1984 rule in the French civil service that protects people in his role (general director of services) at each Town Hall.

'49 job applications sent off'

The rule states that when a director is moved on from a municipality for whatever reason, then their former bosses must pay a part of their salary until they find an "equivalent job".

The clause is titled “civil servants momentarily deprived of a job”.

According to Le Figaro newspaper Herman’s situation is not a one-off. Some 150 civil servants in France are currently being paid whilst they are “momentarily deprived of a job”.

While some may point the finger at Herman and wonder why he hasn’t found himself an equivalent job, well it wasn’t for the lack of trying apparently.

“He’s not been sitting on his hands doing nothing,” said Yves Labouré from the Aube department’s civil service management centre, tasked with helping Herman find a job.

“In 2015 he sent off 49 job applications and by August 2016 he had sent off another 34," he told Le Figaro.

Herman’s story will give ammunition to those like Nicolas Sarkozy who desperately want to cut thousands of jobs in France's civil service.

Story continues below…

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Almost one in five workers are employed in France's civil service and it is often a dream job for many employees, in part due to the job security that is offered.

While Herman's story will shock many it’s not quite as alarming as the tale of Charles Simon.

The manager was paid more than €5,000 a month by state rail operator SNCF over a period of 12 years, despite not working for a single day.

“Each month I receive a pay slip and a transfer into my bank,” Simon told BFM TV. “Last month, like every month of June over the years, I received a €600 holiday bonus.”

But despite receiving his healthy wage packet each month, Simon was not happy at having to "work from home" all this time and has accused SNCF of ruining his career.

He demanded €500,000 in compensation.
 

ezsasa

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France have followed anti capitalist policy , hope this changes . Most important thing is to reduce welfare and reduce taxes for small and medium business.

Just curious....

Has there been any negative impact of anti-capitalistic policies?

Or in other words... Has the social welfare spending suffered due to anti-capitalistic policies?
 

Bahamut

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It's official: France finally gets its new map

Published: 29 Sep 2016 17:12 GMT+02:00


France has finally had its new administrative map officially recognized, after it was published on Thursday.

It only took nine months.

The new administrative map was published on Thursday in the Journal Officiel, the bulletin giving details of laws and official announcements in France.

The move comes after France remapped its regions in January in an effort to reorganize local governments and whittle back France's famously voluminous bureaucracy.

The reform shaved the number of French administrative regions on the mainland from 21 to 12 (or 13 when you include Corsica).

Some of the new amalgams – such as Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté – opted for a simple merger of their former names.

Normandy was created by the simply move of combining Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandy.

Others chose to start afresh with brand new names.




Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine became Grand-Est, Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées became Occitanie, Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie were baptised as Hauts-de-France, and Nouvelle Aquitaine came from a fusion of Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes.

The names have come with some mockery, with one joker pointing out that with Hauts de Fance (which could translate as Upper France), and with the region Great East, a region in central France should have been called Middle Earth after the land in fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.

Six regions - Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Corsica, Ile-de-France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'azur, known as PACA and Pays de la Loire – did not undergo any changes to their boundaries. They will keep their existing names.

Confused? Here is the full list of France's 12 regions, together with their capitals, starting with the seven new regions.

Grand-Est, Strasbourg
Normandy, Rouen
Occitanie, Toulouse
Hauts-de-France, Lille
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Lyon
Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bordeaux
 

Bahamut

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What's on in France: Ten of the best events in October

Published: 03 Oct 2016 17:59 GMT+02:00
Updated: 03 Oct 2016 17:59 GMT+02:00


Don't worry about the shortening days and take part in the outings we've picked out for you this October.

Fête des Vendanges, Montmartre 5-9 October

Wine in Montmartre - something you can't afford to miss. Held every year since 1934, the streets of Paris' most romantic neighbourhood are taken over by a folkloric celebration, to toast to the arrival of the wine made from the quarter's own vineyard. Amongst the festivities are traditional dance shows, food stands, fireworks and even an auction sale for bottles of the celebrated Clos Montmartre wine.

Photo: AFP

Paris Oktoberfest 6-16 October

Didn't make it to Munich's overflowing beer tents? Oktoberfest is back in Paris after its successful launch last year where 15,000 litres of beer were downed by its participants. Tents and bars will be set up in true Munich-style at the Paris Event Centre in the 19th arrondissement, or why not make your way down to Marseille for its first edition from 26th to 30th October.

Photo: AFP

Toqué du Cèpe, Mende 7-9 October

With the entire weekend devoted to ceps, that you may know as penny buns or porcini mushrooms, the town of Mende in southern France organises market stalls, cep-picking outings and countless cooking workshops. In case you don't want to get your hands dirty, you can sip on local wines and watch the fanfares as you take a slab from the giant omelette.

Photo: Pixabay

24 Heures du Livre, Le Mans 8th and 9th October

This association, of which the name is a spin on the town's world-famous car race, organises one the most important book fairs of the country. Authors will be there to talk you through their latest works with interviews and storytelling included on the agenda.There will also be a large collection of children's books and of course comics, one of France's biggest obsessions.



Fête du Piment 29th and 30th October

Escape the cold weather and head south to the Basque Country to heat up your palate in the annual chilli pepper festival. You'll get the chance to take part in pelote basque, the local sport, as the town which gives its name to the popular Piment d'Espelette showcases its local dance and music. Food stalls will serve up the region's specialities enlivened by the celebrated spice.

Photo: AFP

Festival Musica - 21st September to 8th October

You still have time to catch Strasbourg's internationally-acclaimed Classical music festival and attend performances of the most significant pieces of the 20th century. Tickets can be bought online but there are also free activities and workshops.



Zombie Walk 8th October

Take part in Paris' zombie takeover in your most terrifying costume and join thousands of others in the walk of the living-dead at the Place de la République. A rock'n'roll band and DJs will guide you to the Place des Vosges through a route that will be kept secret until the last minute.

Photo: AFP

Semaine du goût 10th-16th October

During the week of 10th to 16th of October, school canteens to top-notch restaurants will focus on healthy eating throughout France's official food celebration. Towns and villages will be holding events, and participating restaurants offer generous discounts over the week so make sure to look out for what's happening near to you.

Story continues below…

Photo: Le Gout.fr

Jazz entre les Deux Tours 1-9 October

The seaside town of La Rochelle organises concerts across different venues to reflect almost all of jazz's genres, inviting musicians of national and international fame. Many of the shows are free and there will also be conferences, photo exhibitions and dinner concerts.

Photo: Rochelle.fr

Festival International des Jardins - All October

The gardens of the castle of Chaumont-sur-Loire are designed by landscapers from around the world with the aim for them to be at their most beautiful in Autumn. The castles of Amboise, Chenonceau and Blois are also nearby making this the perfect off-peak time to visit the most beautiful castle region of France.

Chateau de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley. Photo: Joy Weese Moll/Flickr

By James Vasina
 

Bahamut

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Just curious....

Has there been any negative impact of anti-capitalistic policies?

Or in other words... Has the social welfare spending suffered due to anti-capitalistic policies?
If you put 60% on small business where access credit is limit , profit goes down so the business goes down ,there go taxes and there are more people for welfare.Till now France has increase taxes for its rich but rich are moving to other country and hiding there money.
 

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OrangeFlorian

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New orthodox center opens its doors in Paris . Thank you Russia for making Paris even more interesting and beautiful :) and long life to the french russian friendship ! Whatever differences we have, we shall never forget all that Russia has done in two world wars for France.

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/society/201610191046484697-russian-orthodox-center-paris/

View attachment 11165 View attachment 11166 View attachment 11167

The orthodoxy is based compared to the vatican tbh
 

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Not sure if it would become law, but still it passed through the French Senate


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/9/a-law-against-islam

‘Law against Islam’: French vote in favour of hijab ban condemned
As part of the ‘anti-separatism’ bill, the French Senate has voted for outlawing the headscarf for minors in public.

France’s 5.7 million-strong minority Muslim population is the largest in Europe [File: Thibault Camus/AP Photo]

France’s 5.7 million-strong minority Muslim population is the largest in Europe [File: Thibault Camus/AP Photo]
9 Apr 2021
A bid by the French Senate to ban girls under 18 from wearing the hijab in public has drawn condemnation, with the hashtag #HandsOffMyHijab circulating widely on social media.
The hijab is a headscarf worn by many Muslim women and has been the subject of a decades-long feud in France.
KEEP READING
French ‘separatism’ bill risks discriminating Muslims: AmnestyMuslims in France contend with a shifting centre‘Islamo-leftism’: France enters its McCarthyist era‘Not French enough’: What it means to be an immigrant in France
The French Senate’s move comes as part of Paris’s push to introduce a so-called “anti-separatism” bill which it says aims to bolster the country’s secular system, but critics have denounced, arguing it singles out the minority Muslim population.
While debating the proposed legislation on March 30, senators approved an amendment to the bill calling for the “prohibition in the public space of any conspicuous religious sign by minors and of any dress or clothing which would signify inferiority of women over men”.
The ban is not yet law, with France’s National Assembly required to sign off on the change before it can take effect.
But a backlash to the amendment was swift, with some suggesting the proposed rule amounted to a “law against Islam”.
AD

“Age to consent to sex in France: 15 Age to consent to hijab: 18 Let that sink in. It isn’t a law against the hijab. It’s a law against Islam. #Handsoffmyhijab #FranceHijabBan,” one Twitter user wrote.



Another posted: “I thought we already had this covered. Forcing a woman to wear a hijab is wrong. Just like forcing her to take it off is wrong. It’s HER choice.”



AD

The issue also attracted the attention of several high-profile figures.
On Instagram, Olympic athlete Ibtihaj Muhammad shared a post suggesting the Senate’s amendment indicated “Islamophobia is deepening in France”.
“This is what happens when you normalize anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim hate speech, bias, discrimination, and hate crimes – Islamophobia written into law,” the post said.


Amani al-Khatahtbeh, founder of Muslim Women’s Day and the website Muslim Girl, also weighed in on the controversy.
“No government should regulate how a woman can dress, whether to keep it on or take it off,” she tweeted, referencing the hijab.

AD


Somali-born model Rawdah Mohamed suggested the French Senate’s move had put it on “the wrong side of equality”.
“The Hijab ban is hateful rhetoric coming from the highest level of government and will go down as an enormous failure of religious values and equality,” she posted on Instagram.

The National Assembly, France’s lower chamber which is dominated by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist La République En Marche (LREM) party, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill on February 16 before it was passed up to the conservative-led Senate.
The legislation has been debated in a highly charged atmosphere in France after three attacks late last year, including the beheading on October 16 of teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free speech.
AD

The law does not specifically mention the word Islam, but French Muslims have for months protested against it, saying several of its measures single them out.
Amnesty International last month warned the proposed law posed a “serious attack on rights and freedoms in France” and called for “many problematic provisions” of the bill to be scrapped or amended.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
 

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