Thousands Protest France Head - Scarf Ban

"Waving the French flag or wearing it as a head scarf, thousands of Muslim women marched through Paris, the center of a worldwide protest against France's plan to ban head coverings from public schools."

Now here's another story that has been widely reported but with little or no balance. Yes, a few thousand (between 3000 and 10000 ïn Paris) protested the new head-scarf ban. But did anyone to put this into perspective?

For example, on that same Saturday in Paris, police estimated that 6000 people marched to protest the opening of new nuclear plants. This went practically unreported outside of France. If numbers were important, this would have been the more reported story.

Furthermore, the muslim population in France is estimated at 5 million or around 8 percent of the population. Now what percentage protested? Compare this to the hundreds of thousands who protested the US invasion of Iraq. What we can see is that there is very little resistance to the new law.

Finally, there is mention of the makeup of the protestors: mostly muslim girls, but no analysis of this makeup, other than what I heard on France Inter this morning. If you consider that headscarves are often imposed upon muslim women by their families, especially fathers, then you can consider that many of these girls were obligated by their families to attend the protest. So take away half the numbers to get a real feeling.

Seriously, these numbers are so small as to be ridiculous, yet this story became headline news around the world. How can that be, unless you are looking for any pretext to trash talk France?

For my part, I support the headscarf ban, not because I fear Islam, but because I fear fundamentalism in all of its forms. In the same way, I believe that the president of the US should not be allowed to turn over funds to "faith-based" organizations. And he should be forbidden to ever finish his speeches with the blasphemous, divisive and sectarian "God bless America".