Not doing “la bise,” the kiss on the cheek that many French and Europeans use to greet each other, was on his list.

religious neutrality of state institutions. In 2010, it outlawed the fully face-covering niqab and burqa everywhere in public, arguing that those garments threaten public safety and represent a rejection of a society of equal citizens.

“If you are Muslim and you hide your face for religious reasons, you are liable to a fine and a citizenship course where you will be taught what it is to be ‘a good citizen,’ ” said Fatima Khemilat, a fellow at the Political Science Institute of Aix-en-Provence. “But if you are a non-Muslim citizen in the pandemic, you are encouraged and forced as a ‘good citizen’ to adopt ‘barrier gestures’ to protect the national community.”

“What we must attack is Islamist separatism,” he told the nation, saying extremists preyed upon desperate Muslims in desolate neighborhoods, basically creating anti-French enclaves by spreading their radical Islamic “ideology” and “project.” He also made some sweeping, incendiary generalizations, such as that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis today, all over the world.”

The problem with that is French Muslims may feel extremely targeted by what Macron’s government is doing. After all, Holocaust denial is criminalized, which means some forms of expression are outlawed in France. But when it comes to images of the prophet, Macron says that’s fair play.

Publications such as Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands-Posten aim to incite the very passions that they simultaneously criticize Muslims for harboring. Theology and issues of semiotic representation are thus not of primary importance here. Rather, the performative political power of mass media, exercised from a hegemonic position against a vulnerable minority, defines events such as the Charlie Hebdo attack, the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy, and the Rushdie Affair.

Besides showing insensitivity to their target, caricatures like Muhammad with a bomb instead of turban on his head contribute to entrenching the mindless Islamophobia that sees all Muslims as enemies of the West and its freedoms. Not a wise move if one is concerned either with integrating immigrants from the Maghreb in French society, or with avoiding the “clash of civilizations” which Islamophobes seem so eager to bring on.

First, Muslims, like Jews, are not counseled to “turn the other cheek” when attacked. But this acceptance of violence in self-defense does not entail violent aggression against the defenseless. Thus, the Charlie Hebdo murders cannot be called Muslim: what looks like a Muslim proclivity for violence may actually be more accurately described as the absence of a Muslim pacifism. Religions come in different shapes: unarmed prophets, like Jesus or the Buddha, occupy a different moral universe than armed prophets, like Muhammad or Moses. But, just because a prophet is armed doesn’t mean he will attack the defenseless.

This mess is ours and it needs no “outsiders” to provoke it. Where we err, is when we take them as the embodiment of our malfunctioning and conflicted category of religion. When they are provoked, we can select from this homegrown mess to simultaneously assert our foundational right to attack the gods—with all the aggression that a nothing deserve

Blasphemy as a category invokes the specter of religion, not ethnicity, which is why it is safe. Western modernity constructs itself on the assumption that the gods do not exist—or that they do not exist for all, which is the same thing.

Charlie Hebdo published many images of Muslim-like characters, some of them acting violently. Are such images meant to represent the generality of Muslims? In the way that, for example, the 1920s Nazi magazine, Der Sturmer, would have a cartoon of a Jewish financier, the undesirable qualities of whom—heartless, exploitative, greedy and so on—was meant to be about Jews as such. Yet if it is meant to lampoon jihadists, it is inoffensive and embodies a form of political defiance against terrorism.

We are Charlie because we are Malala; je suis Charlie because I Am Malala.

For French authorities to demand that Muslims now publicly proclaim that they “are” Charlie—that they effectively endorse the content of the cartoons—is not to defend free speech. It is to enforce compulsory, official speech—the very opposite of free speech.

Though it doesn’t cause violence, it is often the excuse for it. But religion can’t “do” anything—motivate actions or sway thinking—by itself. It is not a disembodied thing that has power of its own. It is simply a part of culture, something that people can use and abuse, for good or for ill. And lately, much of it has been for ill indeed.

When right-wing patriots almost literally wrap themselves in flags as they plot to assassinate the President of the United States—which they have—few people blame nationalism itself. Rather, they look at the mixture of psychological and political motives that may have brought the conspirators to their savage plans. When a whole group or culture adopts a vicious form of extreme nationalism—Nazism comes to mind—again it is not nationalism itself that we blame, but a perverted form of it crafted to buttress the power-hungry designs of a political junta.

Because this “us versus them” is very accessible to young Muslims everywhere through the Internet and other social media, it is no surprise that this rhetoric resonates with their daily experience in European societies and therefore make some of them easy recruits for the global jihad.

This rhetoric presents Islam as an external religion that threatens the core liberties of European democracies and therefore needs to be limited or circumvented, following the argument made famous by the French Revolutionary Saint-Just: “No freedom for the enemies of freedom”

Muslims claiming that they could be protected by existing legislations across Europe (including France) that actually limit freedom of speech in cases of inciting racial hatred or denying the Holocaust.

In the French context as well as all over Europe, we have witnessed in the last 20 years an increasing political resistance against the practices of Islam and their visibility in public spaces: from the ban on hijab (head covering) and niqab (full face covering) to the limitations on mosque-building, halal slaughtering, and even circumcision. Muslims have the feeling that being or looking like a practitioner of the Islamic faith will ostracize them, not to mention that this hostility goes hand in hand with concrete discriminations against the practice of the religion: women barred from entering public buildings because they wear hijabs, discrimination on the job market, in the workplace, etc.

These measures are, in fact, part of a climate in which laïcité and republican values, while never clearly defined, have been used as a justification to scrutinize and interfere with the bodies, sensibilities, and practices of Muslim citizens (particularly women).

In no country is freedom of expression absolute, and the risk of turning the libertarian-anarchist soixante-huisards of Charlie Hebdo into martyrs in a liberal free speech pantheon through liberal media megaphones, is to feed the flames of stigmatization and polarization

There is no single cause of terrorism—whether right-wing extremist or salafi-jihadist. The Paris terrorists are dead and do not speak. But we can be reasonably sure that their hatred and resentment did not relate exclusively to caricatures and cartoonists. Through the rituals of mourning and commemoration, these have been turned into core postmortem symbols of French elitist liberal and secular culture. The terror and violence seem also to have spoken about the longue durée of French-Arab-North African relations; its legacies of extreme brutality and violence on all sides; and its long afterlife in everyday lives marked by segregation, exclusion, marginalization and discriminatory policing in the French banlieues.

. But it is not unlikely that the rush by many in the United States and Europe to identify with the publication had something to do with the fact that the killers were Muslims and the cartoons were of Muhammad. By conflating form and content, Je suis Charlie lent a patina of liberal respectability to anti-Islamicism: “I disapprove of you, and I will defend to the death my right to say so.”

Muhammad deeply offensive, and critics have called the magazine racist and demeaning of the country’s cultural minorities, especially its sizable populations of North African origin. Notably, its offices were firebombed after the magazine named Muhammad its “editor in chief” for an issue on sharia in 2011.

Mr. Paty was a strong believer in laïcité, the strict secularism that separates religion from the state in France. Ms. Davoust recalled Mr. Paty once asking a young girl wearing a cross around her neck in school to take it off.

In a country guided by strict secularism, such actions are a violation of French law and regarded as signs of radicalization by the authorities — and they have led to many sports clubs being placed under surveillance.

Located in a public facility, the club was investigated by the local authorities because some members prayed in the locker room and asked women to cover their arms and legs, according to the French news media.

We don’t want your otherness because we want you to be like us,’”

Jean-Pierre Obin, a former senior national education official, said that public schools played a leading role in “the cultural assimilation and political integration” of immigrant children who “were turned into good little French” and no longer felt “Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or Polish.” Other institutions that also played this role — the Catholic church, unions and political parties — have been weakened, leaving only the schools, he said.

Offended by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad shown in a class on free speech given by the teacher, Samuel Paty, 47, the teenager beheaded him a week ago with a long knife before being gunned down by the police.

The class decides everyone should be able to use the bathroom that makes them feel comfortable, and makes new, inclusive signs to hang on the bathroom doors.

, “reveals its failure to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist. They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size. Eliminating books depicting LGBTQ individuals as happily accepted by their families will not eliminate student exposure to that concept.”

ons Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Focus mode setTimeout(()=>{try{if(-1===document.cookie.indexOf("c_mId="))return;const e=window.localStorage.getItem("FocusMode");if(!e)return;if(!JSON.parse(e).enabled)return;const o=document.querySelector(".focus-toggle"),t=o?o.querySelector(".toggle-switch-button"):void 0;if(!o||!t)return;document.documentElement.classList.add("focus","focus-enabled"),o.classList.remove("hidden"),t.classList.add("is-checked")}catch(e){console.warn("Error retrieving data for Focus Mode",e)}},0) Subscribe or Log In Profile Sign Out Show Search Search Query Submit Search Advertisement California The 9 LGBTQ+ children’s books targeted in high court ruling upending education policy A selection of books featuring LGBTQ+ characters that are part of a Supreme Court case are pictured April 15 in Washington. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) By Jenny GoldStaff Writer Follow June 27, 2025 8:01 PM PT 8 Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print Picture books are not usually the stuff of Supreme Court rulings. But on Friday, a majority of justices ruled that parents have a right to opt their children out of lessons that offend their religious beliefs — bringing the colorful pages of books like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Pride Puppy” into the staid public record of the nation’s highest court.The ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought by parents in Montgomery County, Md., who sued for the right to remove their children from lessons where LGBTQ+ storybooks would be read aloud in elementary school classes from kindergarten through 5th grade. The books were part of an effort in the district to represent LGBTQ+ families in the English language arts curriculum.In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that schools must “notify them in advance” when one of the disputed storybooks would be used in their child’s class, so that they could have their children temporarily removed. The court’s three liberals dissented. Advertisement Politics Parents may pull their children from classes that offend their religion, Supreme Court rules Supreme Court hands down a major victory for parents’ rights June 27, 2025 As part of the the decisions, briefings and petitions in the case, the justices and lawyers for the parents described in detail the story lines of nine picture books that were part of Montgomery County’s new curriculum. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor even reproduced one, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” in its entirety. Here are the nine books that were the subject of the case:Pride PuppyAuthor: Robin Stevenson Illustrator: Julie McLaughlin Book “Pride Puppy” published by Orca Book Publishers. (Orca Book Publishers) “Pride Puppy,” a rhyming alphabet book for very young children, depicts a little girl who loses her dog during a joyful visit to a Pride parade. The story, which is available as a board book, invites readers to spot items starting with each of the letters of the alphabet, including apple, baseball and clouds — as well as items more specific to a Pride parade.Lawyers representing the parents said in their brief that the “invites students barely old enough to tie their own shoes to search for images of ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ ‘lip ring,’ ‘[drag] king’ and ‘[drag] queen,’ and ‘Marsha P. Johnson,’ a controversial LGBTQ activist and sex worker.”The “leather” in question refers to a mother’s jacket, and the “underwear” to a pair of green briefs worn over tights by an older child as part of a colorful outfit. Advertisement The Montgomery County Public Schools stopped teaching “Pride Puppy” in the midst of the legal battle. California As children’s book bans soar, sales are down and librarians are afraid. Even in California Book bans are tanking sales of children’s books. Schools and libraries aren’t buying books about LGBTQ+ issues and race as they brace for culture war pushback. Dec. 12, 2024 Love, VioletAuthor: Charlotte Sullivan WildIllustrator: Charlene Chua Book “Love Violet” published by macmillan publishers. (macmillan) The story describes a little girl named Violet with a crush on another girl in her class named Mira, who “had a leaping laugh” and “made Violet’s heart skip.” But every time Mira tries to talk to her, Violet gets shy and quiet.On Valentine’s Day, Violet makes Mira a special valentine. As Violet gathers the courage to give it to her, the valentine ends up trampled in the snow. But Mira loves it anyway and also has a special gift for Violet — a locket with a violet inside. At the end of the book, the two girls go on an adventure together.Lawyers for the parents describe “Love, Violet” as a book about “two young girls and their same-sex playground romance.” They wrote in that “teachers are encouraged to have a ‘think aloud’ moment to ask students how it feels when they don’t just ‘like’ but ‘like like’ someone.” Advertisement Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named PenelopeAuthor: Jodie Patterson Illustrator: Charnelle Pinkney Barlow Book “Born Ready” published by Random House. (Random House) In “Born Ready,” 5-year-old Penelope was born a girl but is certain they are a boy. “I love you, Mama, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don’t want tomorrow to come because tomorrow I’ll look like you. Please help me, Mama. Help me be a boy,” Penelope tells their mom. “We will make a plan to tell everyone we know,” Penelope’s mom tells them, and they throw a big party to celebrate.In her dissent, Sotomayor notes, “When Penelope’s brother expresses skepticism, his mother says, ‘Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.’ ” In their opening brief, lawyers for the families said that “teachers are told to instruct students that, at birth, people ‘guess about our gender,’ but ‘we know ourselves best.’ ”Prince and Knight Author: Daniel Haack Illustrator: Stevie Lewis “Prince and Knight” is a story about a prince whose parents want him to find a bride, but instead he falls in love with a knight. Together, they fight off a dragon. When the prince falls from a great height, his knight rescues him on horseback. When the king and queen find out of their love, they “were overwhelmed with joy. ‘We have finally found someone who is perfect for our boy!’ ” A great wedding is held, and “the prince and his shining knight would live happily ever after.”“The book Prince & Knight clearly conveys the message that same-sex marriage should be accepted by all as a cause for celebration,” said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, a concerning message for Americans whose religion tells them that same-sex marriage is wrong.

“teachers are told to instruct students that, at birth, people ‘guess about our gender,’ but ‘we know ourselves best.’ ”

On Valentine’s Day, Violet makes Mira a special valentine. As Violet gathers the courage to give it to her, the valentine ends up trampled in the snow. But Mira loves it anyway and also has a special gift for Violet — a locket with a violet inside. At the end of the book, the two girls go on an adventure together.

The story, which is available as a board book, invites readers to spot items starting with each of the letters of the alphabet, including apple, baseball and clouds — as well as items more specific to a Pride parade

The books were part of an effort in the district to represent LGBTQ+ families in the English language arts curriculum.

In dissenting from Monday’s decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority had gone astray by prioritizing the religious rights of a school official over those of his students, who could feel pressure to take part in religious activities.

Meyer got basic facts wrong. He concluded that EUSD removed the appearance of religion by renaming poses, giving the example that “the so-called lotus position was renamed criss-cross applesauce.” The term “criss-cross applesauce” does not appear even once in the spring 2013 yoga curriculum; the term “lotus” appears 194 times. The 2013 EUSD promotional video records a teacher instructing: “go into lotus.” Meyer believed testimony that jnanamudra was replaced by “brain highways,” a claim contradicted by defendant declarations and the video. Indeed, Meyer ignored multiple instances where defense witnesses contradicted themselves, each other, and documents they signed.

Yes. Some refused to participate in activities that felt like prayer to them. Many kids in EUSD classes still chant Om, assume jnanamudra, close their eyes to meditate while sitting in lotus, and use Sanskrit, such as Namaste (“I bow to the god within you”) and shavasana for “resting” pose.

EUSD teachers displayed posters of an eight-limbed Ashtanga tree and asana sequences taught by the “K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute”; used a textbook, Myths of the Asanas, that explains how poses represent gods and inspire virtue; taught terminology in Sanskrit (a language sacred for Hindus); taught moral character using yamas and niyamas from the Yoga Sutras; used guided meditation and visualization scripts and taught kids to color mandalas (used in visual meditation on deities).

Meyer determined that “yoga,” including “Ashtanga” yoga, “is religious.” Nevertheless, he allowed EUSD’s yoga program to continue, since he did not think children would perceive the program as advancing or inhibiting religion. The judge found the Jois Foundation partnership “troublesome,” but did not rule that it excessively entangled government with religion.

The Jois Foundation was founded “in loving dedication” to K. P. Jois, with funding from billionaire Paul Tudor Jones whose wife Sonia is an Ashtanga devotee, to spread Ashtanga, especially to kids.

Ashtanga emphasizes postures and breathing on the premise that these practices will “automatically” lead practitioners to experience the other limbs and “become one with God,” in the words of Jois, “whether they want it or not.”

he Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) accepted a $533,720 grant from the Jois Foundation to establish (to quote the signed grant) an “Ashtanga Yoga” program staffed by Jois “trained” and “certified” instructors who “partner”ed in developing a “comprehensive” yoga curriculum for Jois to export to “other school systems.”

yoga was developed by Krishna Pattabhi Jois (1915-2009) from the Yoga Sutras, a sacred text for Hindus.

This freedom to worship was indispensable in a country whose people came from the four quarters of the earth and brought with them a diversity of religious opinion.

These companion cases present the issues in the context of state action requiring that schools begin each day with readings from the Bible.

"in that it threatens their religious liberty by placing a premium on belief as against non-belief and subjects their freedom of conscience to the rule of the majority;

children's attendance at Abington Senior High School is compulsory

the children's relationships with their teachers and classmates would be adversely affected

home-room teacher, 2 who chose the text of the verses and read them herself or had students read them in rotation or by volunteers.

by the students in the various classrooms, who are asked to stand and join in repeating the prayer in unison.

broadcast into each room in the school building through an intercommunications system and are conducted under the supervision of a teacher

Any child shall be excused from such Bible reading, or attending such Bible reading, upon the written request of his parent or guardian."