France’s Abaya ban exposes its intellectual and soft-power bankruptcy

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Crescent International

Safar 20, 1445 2023-09-06

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

Few political analysts will disagree that the events in Africa have resulted in France experiencing some serious foreign policy setbacks.

Further, that things are likely to get difficult for France even internally due to its recent racist ban on Muslim girls wearing Abaya clothing in schools.

To many informed Muslims, and indeed even some non-Muslims, such racist state policies in France are nothing new.

What is somewhat surprising is that by implementing the new policy, France’s political elite is showing that it is in denial regarding France’s economic, social and political decline.

The Abaya ban is clearly a distraction aimed at diverting attention of the broader French society from real problems at home.

While the western corporate media is focused on the gimmicks of the latest racist ban, the broader picture escapes attention, and thus deeper analysis.

France’s Abaya ban is first and foremost a manifestation of France’s intellectual and soft-power bankruptcy.

It is a sign of the total failure of its so-called secularism.

Even though French secularism enjoys a monopoly of power in the media, educational and political spheres, the French state is forced to resort to Nazi-like coercive tactics to hold its intellectual and ideological ground.

Contrary to France’s shallow state ideology, the Muslims of France, although oppressed and at a significant disadvantage in terms of power, are able to steer political and social debates in society.

This influence can, in part, be attributed to the exaggerations made by Emmanuel Macron's regime concerning the so-called "Islamist" factor.

France’s obsession with Muslims has inadvertently propelled them into the center stage of French politics.

As a minority it would otherwise have been busy in being integrated and earning daily sustenance, is now forced to politically mobilize and unapologetically defend itself.

Macron’s regime assumes that the current ban will only have impact internally.

What Paris overlooks is that unlike the earlier anti-Muslim bans in France, the world now is multipolar.

This is important.

Anyone who has followed, even at a superficial level, the news about France for the past year knows that the country is in deep turmoil.

Macron’s regime is simply opening an unnecessary social front for itself with wider ramifications.

It was not necessary to open this front at a time when the west-centric global order is unraveling.

Many Muslim governments in West Asia and beyond are beginning to understand that due to the new multipolar reality, they can now play big powers and not merely be played by them.

The entry of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Ethiopia etc into BRICS is a sign that the master-slave relationship with western regimes is going through reconfiguration.

For cynical and Machiavellian reasons, these countries will use the Muslim factor in France to gain leverage in Europe.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has used the Turkish diaspora in Germany with some political and social success.

As was the case in Sweden, it would not be surprising if Muslim governments apply political and economic pressure on France.

Algeria and Türkiye are likely to feature prominently in this new approach, but one should not exclude Niger and Gabon either.

The days when only western regimes could influence social currents in other countries are gone.

Other countries are now gaining capabilities to reciprocate.

END