RUTHFULLY YOURS

The foreign minister understands what should be abundantly clear across Europe: Aiding and abetting the segregation of a class that would fancy itself too “special” for civil law achieves the opposite of integration. “Støre bans Sharia councils,” by Michael Sandelson for The Foreigner, June 24:

Jonas Gahr Støre, Labour’s (Ap) Foreign Minister, has totally discounted the idea of establishing a Sharia council in Norway. He says a parallel court system is out of the question, arguing it does nothing to help integration.

Discrimination

“I believe desegregation is our society’s biggest social challenge. We must have a common fundament [sic!] and a set of values anchored in universal principles of law if we are to succeed,” he tells Aftenposten.

According the paper, Norwegian Imams and the National Courts Administration have already said they’re open to the idea of establishing a council for civil matters such as divorce, inheritance, and domestic violence.

You can’t spell “Norwegian” without “No.”

Støre, head of Labour’s integration panel that’s to present its report at next year’s Party Conference, argues there’s no place for a parallel system that makes judgements based on Islamic law. His Party has also given the principle the thumbs-down.

“We’re a constitutional state based on democracy, freedom of speech and religion, as well as equal opportunities and status,” says Støre.

Norwegian law forbids cultural traditions that discriminate against women, such as forced marriage and female circumcision.

“Practices not part of Norwegian culture shouldn’t be able to obtain legitimacy from alternative court systems,” he says.

Those boundaries make the ensuing multicultural boilerplate slightly less discouraging:

Challenge

“[But] increased diversity means our society will need both established and new conflict management methods. Many within the immigrant communities can help to solve disputes at a low level. I welcome this.”

Støre also hopes the integration panel’s work will help open up the public desegregation debate, as well as challenging traditional fears of raising the matter in a non-discriminatory way.

“We must take the concerns of immigrants and ancestral Norwegians seriously, for example when an 80-year-old ethnic Norwegian woman fears the neighbourhood is changing, or the anxiety a 30-year-old Somali single mother experienced during her encounters with things that are purely Norwegian.”

Spanish senate votes to ban burqa

Following a trend of local burqa bans within the country. “Spain’s Senate Votes to Ban Burqa,” by Raphael Minder for the New York Times, June 23:

MADRID — In a significant escalation of Spain’s debate over how to handle radical Islam, the Senate on Wednesday narrowly and unexpectedly approved a motion to ban Muslim women from wearing in public the burqa or other garments that cover the whole body.

The vote, 131 to 129, was another setback for the Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which had favored more-limited restrictions on Islamic clothing and has instead been pushing to curtail religious fundamentalism through better education.

The Spanish vote comes amid several national initiatives across Europe to restrict the spread of radical Islam and defend liberal values. […]

The motion adopted by the senators calls on Spain to outlaw “any usage, custom or discriminatory practice that limits the freedom of women.” It was drafted and led by politicians from the main center-right opposition People’s Party. […]

The Senate’s position also came as a surprise because although Spain has become a major European entry point for Muslim migrants from North Africa, few of those immigrants wear either the burqa or the niqab, which does not cover the eyes. A similar argument has also been made by opponents of a burqa ban in countries like France, where only an estimated 100,000 women wear the burqa out of a Muslim population of about 5 million. France, however, already passed a law in 2004 to ban head scarves or any other “conspicuous” religious symbol from state schools in order to preserve their secularism.

The Spanish government is supposed to follow the Senate’s motion. However, given that Socialist senators opposed the ban, the governing party is likely to seek ways to circumvent the vote….