Max McGuinness on a spat between Bertie and Sarkozy
Once the Gardaí decided that their solitary Sikh bobby could not wear his turban on duty(by extension forbidding any hypothetical Muslim bean Gardaí from wearing a veil), French President Nicolas Sarkozy clearly thought he had found an ally in Bertie against the rising tide of Islamism. For, as revealed last week on "Coulisses de Bruxelles", a blog maintained by Jean Quatremer, the highly-respected Brussels correspondent for the left-wing French daily Libération, during his meeting with Sarko on 21 September, Bertie was subjected to what Quatremer here describes as an "anti-Muslim diatribe". Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was treated to an identical phillipic two weeks later.
Sarkozy apparently harangued Bertie for over twenty minutes about the excessive number of Muslims in Europe and their lack of integration within European society - all to try and persuade the taoiseach that Turkey should never join the EU.
Perhaps France's "omniprésident" was misled by Fianna Fáil's meaningless self-designation as the "Republican Party". For Bertie is all too keen on according privileged legislative access to "confessional bodies" lacking any democratic legitimacy and inveighed in February against "a form of aggressive secularism which would have the State and State institutions ignore the importance of this religious dimension".
Indeed, the continuing scandal of Catholic domination of our education system, which I have written about here, and which has led to educational apartheid in North Dublin(where an all-black school has had to be created this year to cater for hundreds of kids who had been turned away from existing schools because they lack the correct baptismal certificate) is proof of how the taoiseach is no kind of republican.
Sarkozy has in the past attempted to conciliate French Muslims by proposing a programme of positive discrimination in the civil service and police as well as state funding for mosques(which currently receive a lot of dosh from foreign extremists). But all this went out the window during the election campaign this summer which Sarkozy won in part on the basis of successful, explicit appeals to the electorate of the Front National.
Readers of this blog will know that I am no friend of Islamism, including so-called moderates like Tariq Ramadan who refused to condemn the stoning of women outright in a televised debate with Sarkozy himself a few years ago. But given that integration is a 2-way street, the French government bears perhaps the greatest responsibility for the alienation of the Muslim community who are constantly told they must become more French without receiving the kind of assistance - like free language classes, and infrastructural investment in the dilapidated suburbs where most of them live - which would allow them to achieve this.
The headscarf ban, however, has been an all round success with no major stand offs between Muslim pupils and school authorities. The issue was a dilemma for liberals. On the one hand, how are we supposed to justify preventing teenage girls from expressing their religion? On the other hand, there was widespread evidence that the girls were often coerced into wearing the headscarf in the first place by their parents such that banning the headscarf was actually a way of liberating them. Turbans, which were also banned in French schools, along with crucifixes, yarmulkes and any other obvious display of religion, should be a special case simply because it is not practical for a Sikh to remove his turban.
I digress. Bertie, whose immediate reaction to Sarko's "clash of civilisations" rant is not recorded by Quatremer, clearly did not warm to his French counterpart. For as he flailed around last week trying to justify another massive salary increase, which makes him probably the best paid leader in the western world according to The Economist, Bertie contrasted his situation with other world leaders, singling out Sarkozy's "prolonged holidays and yachts and homes and everything else". Bertie insists that with a mere €310,000(before tax, after all) he and his ministerial colleagues are "poverty stricken against the rest of them".
When I rang the Elysée to see if Sarko had any response to make, the press officer corrected Bertie's assertion that Sarko owns yachts(he merely borrows them from his plutocratic pals) before predictably refusing to comment.
Nevertheless, it seems Franco-Hibernian relations(for whatever they're worth) have gotten off to a bad start under the new President. Maybe Bertie should start spending some of that extra 30 grand in Charvet or something.
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