Liberalguy

Who is that at the gates? By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen (bio)

A recent Associated Press story out of France describes how its “changing demographics” threatens to catapult the country back 1,000 years. It seems the French courts decided in favor of a new husband who wanted his marriage annulled because he discovered his bride was not a virgin. The ruling ending the Muslim couple’s union reportedly “stunned France and raised concerns the country’s much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities.” And here’s where the French, the rest of Europe and even many in the United States are making their mistake. They are confusing immigrants with invaders. Immigrants come to a new country wishing to adopt and be adopted by it. They learn the language and the ropes. They maintain their cultural base, but fold it into their new society. Invaders, on the other hand, come not to become part of their new country, but to remake their new country in the image of their old one. It’s the intent and the attitude that differentiates one from the other. And mistaking the difference may cost Europe its culture. In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin, that in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite and the woman was in breach of contract. Critics say the ruling undermined decades of progress in women’s rights, reducing the status of marriage to a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them. In its judgment, the tribunal said the 2006 marriage was ended based on “an error in the essential qualities” of the bride, “who had presented herself as single and chaste.” The issue, the story says, is particularly distressing for France because the government “has fought to maintain the country’s secular traditions as demographics change.” An estimated 5 million Muslims live among France’s 64 million people – the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, the story notes. The country’s Muslims have begun hacking away at French culture in a attempt to make it more closely resemble a Muslim country, and in this case, endanger the rights and freedoms of all French women in its attempt to keep Muslim women in 12th century servitude. It is not unusual, the story notes, for young Muslim women “to procure fake virginity certificates, use tricks like vials of spilled blood on the wedding night or even undergo hymen repair to satisfy family expectations, and evade the shame that would follow if their secret got out.” An informal AP survey done in 2006, reportedly found numerous private clinics around Paris where such surgery is performed, as well as doctors who supply fake virginity certificates before a marriage. Now, critics reportedly contend the law is being used to condone the ancient custom requiring a woman to enter marriage as a virgin, and prove it with bloodstained sheets on her wedding night. France’s inability to discern between invaders and immigrants and its failure to act against the one while welcoming the other, has left it scrambling to hang onto its identity. We’d all be well to learn this lesson. If the immigrants refuse to learn your language, if they wave only the flag of their original country, if they insist on changing your rules to suit their cultural sensibilities, they may not be immigrants at all.