The Attack on Muslim Culture and Religious Life

By Elder George

The special year-end issue of U.S. News & World Report contained a two-page article featuring France’s Minister of Justice Rachida Dati, who comes from its Muslim minority, certainly a newsworthy event in a nation that rarely makes positions of authority available to its immigrants and where 65% of the prison population consists of Muslims.

This Muslim minister of justice is also a woman, and a very unique one at that.

Justice Minister Dati (the entire article never once referred to her as Mademoiselle Dati even when addressing her non-ministerial past) is 43 years old, single, pregnant, and has not divulged the name of the prospective father, assuming she can name him. A matter of significant interest has in fact unfolded here, even for France, which boasts of a rate of unwed motherhood of 50%.

Feminists can point with glee to a high-level government position occupied by an unwed, pregnant Muslim who has defied the constraints placed upon her by her religion and culture. However, to earn significant newsworthiness in Europe a woman must not only show her perceived independence from men, but her disdain for them as well. Minister Doti fulfills this qualification with ease. The article states that Doti has instituted a system of penalties that will keep criminals in prison even after they completed their sentences, and has also backed calls to jail criminal offenders as young as 12.  The overwhelming majority of those affected by these punitive legal actions sent are Muslim boys and men.

In issue 51 of TMO, which was published just two weeks ago, my article The Continued Attack on Islam stated …“the big attack on Islam will focus on the cultural and religious life of Muslims throughout the world.” If I had prayed to God to give me an example of this statement I could not have imagined a better one than the scenario of French Minister Doti’s career.

What effect will her conduct (she wears designer clothes and was featured on the cover of Paris Match magazine) have upon impressionable Muslim girls? Will they choose to be like the poor Muslim women they see who are devoted wives and nurturing mothers, or will they dream of becoming like French Minister of Justice Dati? What future can the teenage Muslim boys in prison look forward to?

At the International Conference of Women held in Beijing, China in 1995 the feminist agenda called for the elimination of gender and religion in society. France has become an example of their success. Fifty years ago France was a provincial Catholic oriented society with an unwed motherhood rate less than 4% and minimal divorce. It has since devolved into a secular society with a 50% unwed motherhood, a fertility rate below that necessary to sustain the race, a continually declining marriage rate, and an increasing incarceration rate. Its women take anti depressants at a rate two and half times that of women in England, a country whose number one health problem is mental illness.

France’s six million Muslim minority will be expected to adapt to this environment.

They will have no other option than to adapt unless voices speak out and leadership develops.

Elder George’s website is www.mensaction.net and he can be reached at 212-874-7900 ext. 1329.

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