Please don't make cheap jokes that can only take the thread wildly and predictably off-topic. It's not worth it, and it isn't OK on Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In my experience French people are much happier to talk politics than Americans. Possible they are sick of hearing about burkinis right now though.

the burkini ban was issued by a few mayors and strongly rejected by the judicial system. most french people could not care less.

It's so yesterday, it's racist restaurants now.

Talk like this makes me ashamed of my country. I'm not particularly patriotic in the first place, but at least when the Paris attacks happened and one of Hollande's first reactions was to say immigration policies would not change, I was proud. When muslims, atheists and christians stood together after the attacks, I was proud. Seeing this demoralizes me.

I'm an agnostic. You talk about how "backwards" various things are. You talk about freedom. Yet you are the one imposing dress code.

To make a parallel to the world of tech, it's a lot like those "cool startups" where "we don't make you wear a suit & tie", but if you show up without jeans people look down on you.

Let people dress however the hell they want already. I don't care if you're wearing a cross necklace and I certainly don't care if you're wearing a giant shirt & cap with a picture of jesus and "I LOVE JESUS" written on the back. And you comparing a traditional clothing to a crusader's robe "that killed hundreds of thousands" is... honestly the most repulsive thing I've read on HN this month.

Our women are free, yes. They're free to dress however they want. And if they want to cover themselves head to toe, they're free to do so. Muslim women are especially modest, and see their hair as private. Some women see their legs as private - we're not banning stockings.

You don't get to talk about freedom any more than americans do when they parade around bombing countries to "export their freedom", as you so nicely put it.

Although I agree with you on the matter of burkini I think the "let people dress however they want" argument is a common fallacy amongst people who defend the burkini that disturbs me.

In France (and other countries) we have already been setting specific legal rules on how to dress : for instance it is illegal to wear nazi uniforms or svastika (unless for historical reason). Note that this is for the sake of the argument, to say that there is no such thing as an absolute freedom on how to dress and some reasons may explain that. If a clothing does not respect the conditions then I don't care wether or not it is a religious clothing and disappoint the believers.

What are these conditions ? There is a safety condition : if a clothing put public safety in danger then it should be banned period. The burqa and niqab ban (late 2010 in France) falls into this one. And I am not talking about terrorism but everyday life : you are supposed to live in the public space with your face uncovered that's all. The burkini and hijab are obviously fine with this.

There is a secularism reason that is invoked by some people and officials for the burkini ban and indeed I find it to be hypocritical since it is more of a circumstance decision (and there are other things than that to do to fight terrorism but whatever) and it can't be justified by secularism which only restricts civil servants clothing. If people want secularism to apply to civilian in the public sphere why not but it must be clear (define precisely what is ostentatious proselytism) and consistent : if we are to ban hijab we must ban kippas and nun's "outfit" too.

Then there is the ideology propaganda and morality question. To say that there is nothing wrong with the burqa is hypocritical too, because it has been and is still a mean to oppress women (watch the numerous photos of women burning burqas recently in Syria or read "Bas les voiles !" by Chahdortt Djavann if you need to be convinced). Stating that "yes maybe in the Middle-East women are forced to wear it but I am in France and just want to decide what to wear" is like saying "yes I know the Nazis ideology is awful but for me the svastika is just a peace symbol from India and I want to wear it because I like it". Ok maybe you are a genuine and sane person but as a natural person evolving in the public space the clothes you wear don't affect only yourself. Ideologies don't stop at boarders.

Criticizing this way of forbidding clothings may make sense from an american point of view where people can wear ku klux klan dress freely. But it is not absurd and not automatically discriminatory in a more european or french spirit.

I would really like to invite you to speak to muslim women about this. Ask them their opinion about the veil - the ones that wear it. Ask them why they wear it. Ask them how they would feel about removing it in public.

I'm absolutely in favour of removing female oppression from middle-eastern culture. This is not the way to go about it. I have seen that oppression, second hand, and I despise it... this burqa bullshit is such a red herring, it honestly upsets me so much time is wasted on it. These are societies where there is very little personal freedom, especially for women, and people want to remove one of the freedoms they do have.

And yes, I can see the point re nazi/KKK outfits. My personal opinion on that aside, we're not talking about a handful of people wearing a certain cloth in order to make a political/xenophobic point. We're talking about millions of people, following their faith. Entire countries.

Here's the catch: I dislike burqas. I do think they are a symbol of control rather than faith. But this isn't about my opinion, it's about the right for these women to choose to remove it by themselves rather than have a bunch of ignorants make that choice for them (sounds familiar?). They can wear it, they can burn it, it is not my place to say.

Exactly, unfortunately there is a blantant lie in France, propagated by our politicians and most of the mass media, for more that twelve years.. Its about secularism implying that religious signs should be banned from the public space.. In fact it is exactly the opposite.

I just hope that the wise decision from the "conseil d'état" (roughly the french supreme court) ended this joke...

Apparently our politicians like Manuel Valls don't agree they want less and less freedom and human rights..

They're the first to show no respect to secularism, when they express public views regarding religions, publicly participate in religious events, and when they try to meddle with religions (ie: fondation des oeuvres de l'islam en france).

A lot of racist hypocrits only care about animal rights when it comes to the muslim ritual slaughtering, and the women's right but just about islamic clothing.. Today secularism is too often anti-muslimism in disguise..

Politicians want the votes from racists, and/or are too happy to divert us from their failure, betrayals, corruption, unkept promises etc.

Caring about animal's/women's rights only when it comes to ritual slaughter/honor killings seems a lot more ethical than claiming to care about them except when it comes to ritual slaughter/honor killings. The latter seems more common among leftist Islamic apologists.

Listening to both sides, trying to understand them, work on a short-term compromise while simultaneously setting bases for a long-term real solution -- such is a path to enlightenment.

Dismissing someone's opinion on an emotional pretext, pretending the problem doesn't exist because the initial condition was ill-formulated -- is not.

How much of reactions of French commenters here are due to the complex of french people working abroad (or with people from abroad) -- always feel the need to justify and defend France?

Emotions are a by-product of a brain metabolism. Please, let us leave this sort of defense to the Constitutional Court, it has been doing a pretty good job at it, France still is a free country.

I was about to to make a pretty sarcastic comment on this thread, about how you probably only want to call "The French Number" if you are a white christian/atheist.

As a non-white individual whose general group is a target of the sort of attacks you are defending against: thank you. Thank you for not thinking that we (and ALL our predecessors) are (were) incapable of self-reflection, or that we all think (thought) the same way because we "look the same".

Vicious comments like that are spreading from the cesspools of reddit and 4chan to a much broader audience, and it can be demoralizing...but that's only if one forgets that most people actually think like you or me.

The world will be okay.

As a french, I agree. Much talk only to assert the fallacy that someone disallowed to dress like she want could possibly be "more free".

Should I have? We're talking about how people can dress. And how does terrorism factor into dress code, anyway? I thought HN was a site where we could dispense from the "x for the children" / "x against the terrorists" rhetorics.

This is the logic I'm getting from you - and please, do correct it if I'm getting it wrong: "Some terrorists are muslim. Muslim women wear hijabs. Hijabs therefore remind you of terrorism."

Need I really explain how that logic is harmful? Does arabic script remind you of terrorism too? What should we do about that?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/iv...

La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Laïque. Laïcité works both ways - religion stays out of the government, and the government stays out of religion.

Edit:

> Maybe you drink his cool aid to fast

I stay out of french politics (american ones are just so much more entertaining right now) and I have no particular love for Hollande, but his response to the Paris attacks is burned into my mind because it was the first time in a long time I felt proud of my country and president.

I think this article gives a better justification for the thoughts behind ban than the simplistic way that you describe it:

http://fitnah.org/fitnah_articles_english/interview_M_H_Luca...

The ban is extremely complex and I am not talking about its justifications - I am talking about GP's.

> And how does terrorism factor into dress code, anyway?

Here our opinions diverge. I think the dress code is like a flag (or a svastika, like @Rasco explained). You defend it isn't. I think a good part of Muslims identify with anti-French causes. You think nothing is going on. I think there's a link between the niqab, the burkini, 8 terrorist attacks by Muslims, Köln's massive "spontaneous" rapes and my 8-years-old goddaughter's rape by a Muslim, all within 2 years. You say there isn't any such relation. I say I'm seeing thousands of Muslims in the street today with conservative outfits they weren't wearing 3 months ago. You say it's peaceful. If all you say is right, then how come we've had terrorist attacks? How can we make sure the niqab/religious support is peaceful?

Well, are Muslims at war against France? Let's see:

Our president chose to say "we are at war" in his speech, like Bush said in 2001. Such as USA in 2001, our country has then decided to destroy each other with racist restrictions and weapons. You say you agreed with "his response to the Paris attacks". I don't. There was another discourse he could have made about "How all French people are going to gather to help poor schools in the suburbs, which happen to be partly Arabic, so we starve off candidates to terrorism - and when there's equal chances for everyone then we'll be safe from terrorist attacks." I think this would have been more efficient for our taxes and more socialist from him. But Hollande didn't tell those words. He chose to say "we are at war against terrorists" and "we're going to spend 6 billion euros on police". See the difference. I didn't decide the war. But the French people massively gathered behind the president like you did, and you didn't say anything (at least, statistically, only 0.003% of you were there) when 3200 Muslims were house-arrested during the État d'Urgence. I was here to demonstrate, but no-one listened to the peaceful camp who wanted more education for poor people (including potential terrorists). Conclusion: I don't know whether the Arabs of France are at war against the whites, but I know France is at war against Radical Islamists, which is a very badly scoped subset of the Arabic population, so if I were Muslim I would feel threatened anyway. So it's totally plausible that random Muslims identify with the Islamist cause, and even moreso those who were agitate Muslim signs on the street.

So, yes, we are at war. Now is the dresscode related to religion and is the behavior related to that war?

===

Last thing. You say:

> I stay out of French politics

> I have no particular love for Hollande

> I'm an agnostic

Let me address this fallacy. I've seen enough people to see a pattern. People who claim this also believe they are very neutral and moderate. But their opinion is strong and dismissive of others. For example you qualified my opinion as "shameful", you probably often dismiss others' opinions as "stupid". For example what did you say for the Brexit? Let me guess that you qualified voters as "fascist", or you assumed they were too old to think right, or too deep in the countryside to have education. Well maybe you could leave the possibility that they've made the vote they indeed wanted to, based of their own very sound reasoning, and that they;re neither shameful, fascist, stupid, senile nor are rednecks. Maybe others have a right to live and have decent opinions that are different than yours, don't you think?

You may have built this "I'm center and neutral" opinion through many means. For example you may have the feeling that Le Nouvel Obs or Le Monde are neutral magazines and that Le Monde Diplomatique gathers interesting articles from all opinions around the world. But those 3 examples go from leftish (only criticizing Hollande when it's unavoidable) to extreme-left (Le Monde Dipomatique hasn't quoted an article teaching about economics in years, except to paint bankers as thieves and crooks). If you've been in public schools too, then you've been taught all your life by leftish teachers. So this leaves very little room for accepting the existence of valid opinions in other people.

The other side is that in France, beyond what I believe is a djihad, there is also the ambient anti-Christianism that is everywhere, which I'm not sure you're aware of. It may look innocent but when I say I'm a Christian, I've been countless times talked about how "cruisades" or "inquisition" are bad, or I've been answered that "You're Christian, fine, but I'm not, because priests rape children. I completely tolerate your religion, though." - which you don't. Christians in movies are always depicted as stuck-up, and depicted as conservatives in all public litterature. This is where tolerance stops: France has been intolerant about Christians for long, and so-said "agnostic" French people err between not defending us and throwing more prejudices at us. But of course you're all arms up when it's about defending Muslims.

So is niqab about defending the right of Muslims to bring their traditions to France, including the right of Arabic people to burn the French flag or praise terrorism? I say yes. You say no. Let's vote.

I don't have time to delve into this too deep, and your post is a bit fractured, so I'll try to reply to the general points - you can email me if you want to continue this off-thread.

First of all, please let me rid of you this opinion that I attend to any of france's political culture. The last time I read the Nouvel Obs was over almost two decades ago, because my father was reading it. I give very, very little attention to french politics and generally care only about European (EU) or American issues. The EU gave me a right to choose my country, so I left mine to find better ones.

Now, I didn't call your opinion shameful, I said I was personally ashamed of it. There is a lot of personal experience that goes into that. I was raised as an agnostic, in a catholic/atheist family. I have made muslim friends and fell in love with one. I've experienced, left and right, religious discrimination against my friends without understanding why people cared to be so hateful. I know by now what that discrimination looks like and I can form an opinion of others without having to hear their story at length. Reading this reply of yours reinforced all the assumptions I made. So yes, I was dismissive.

You are also confusing two things: Islam, and extremism-through-islam. I don't defend extremism.

My opinion on the subject is strong because I despise seeing this xenophobia (here used as, fear/hatred of "the different"). I believe this xenophobia is the root of terrorism. Not islam. Islam may be a vehicle for extremist terrorism, but xenophobia is the fuel that keeps it running. It's convenient for people to pick various parts of the Quran, a massive book, to point and laugh at and say "look how backwards and hateful this is". It's easy to do that with any old book, the Bible just as well; the roles could be reversed and the terrorism would work much the same way. Most religions have the same attributes, yet the west is only ganging up on Islam because it's easy, it's a minority and it's different enough. It also gets that disgusting patriotic hard-on going for the warmongering kinds.

I don't see people calling for a ban against christians when gays get shot in the name of jesus. That little "anti-christian sentiment" you're seeing, do you realize it's a reflection of the anti-muslim sentiment everywhere right now? Do you realize muslims are dying in their home countries, and being massively discriminated against in christian countries? There's a few orders of magnitude difference between those. "Christians are always depicted as uptight in movies" -- really? How about "Muslims are always depicted as terrorists"?

And seriously, you need to stop projecting this bullshit on people defending muslims. I'M not shitting on christians. I'M not the one calling "all christians uptight". I'm defending a bunch of fucking innocent people against what is currently a near-worldwide persecution. I'm not saying "let them into the countro so they can blow shit up", I'm saying "let's not prevent 50% of all muslims from wearing what they want to wear". Fuck. In fact, I didn't say anything against christians, yet here you are talking about how persecuted christianism is. Give me a break.

It baffles me that you complain about anti-christian persecution and are completely oblivious to your own position against muslims. Please do some serious self-reflection here.

Here's the deal: I don't care that you're a christian and I don't care what you're wearing. If people were calling you out, telling you not to wear your "I love jesus" shirt, I would be shitting on their insane logic all the same, and you'd be up in arms about your freedom of speech and clothing. This is my position, and it's consistent with Islam. You should be consistent as well -- if you want people to treat you with respect, then treat others with that same respect. Your religion, no matter which religion that is, doesn't get a free pass over another just because it's "yours". Your free speech doesn't get a free pass over somebody else's free speech.

That's exactly what I wanted to demonstrate. You say nothing when Christians are attacked, because (you believe) Muslims have it worse. Yet, Muslims have all leftish French people on their side.

> do you realize it's a reflection of the anti-muslim sentiment everywhere right now?

I didn't have an opinion on Muslims until a guy raped my goddaughter. Turns out he was Muslim. Bad luck for Muslims! Bad luck, really. Bad luck, or was it because she's the white child of French people? Is it his way to do djihad, at his level? Why would he djihad against me, while I was giving him free programming lessons so he could get a good job and avoid discrimination when he grows up? or is it just bad education from his parents? It echoed very hard with the Köln events. Is rape about bad education on a massive scale? Is it due to poverty, religion or simply traditions?

The answers don't matter. I've done my share. Muslims aren't as peaceful as you depict them. They don't clearly reject terrorism. A lot of them are hateful against France. If you don't acknowledge that, you're naive. There are few exits. Either they restore trust by participating positively to society, either we vote more and more extremist, have riots and racism and France will be in flames at the end of 2017.

What's more, if Muslims rejected extremism, would it be smart to buy a burkini today?

The only thing you demonstrated is that you read what you want to read. I said my attitude is equal regarding Christians.

And that you haven't learned correlation vs causation. And are extremely prejudiced.

As the death of Adam Traoré, and Sarkozy aiming for presidential bid..

The question was about burqini, and you disgressed a lot..

Not to be confused with Burkina Faso which is incidentally a francoPHONE country (most puns intended)

So do they use burkini?