Socialist? Did you say Socialist? Isn’t the adjective “rightwing” required by law to be inserted into every reference to rules against wearing the hijab/burqa in certain public settings? Isn’t one always instructed that support of some restrictions is “reactionary”?
Believe UD, who has read hundreds of news articles and essays about this, that the ironclad rule remains: If you want to approach laïcité in France and elsewhere, you must do it ranged about with words like “arch-conservative,” even though the preservation of secularism is typically as important to the left as it is to the right, to the point where a recent rally, in support of a high school principal forced to resign out of fear for his personal safety after he tried to enforce France’s ban on hijabs in public high schools, was organized by the Socialist Party.
Tis the very essence of an inconvenient fact, this. It would be nice if people and organizations outraged by secularism legislation acknowledged it.