Ironically,
French Muslims Don Symbolic Star of
Persecution in Response to Headscarf Ban
Israel
National News
April 13, 2011 / The Jewish Voice April
14, 2011 / Israel Insider Magazine April 14, 2011
By
Shelomo Alfassa
In
all of Europe, the country with the most numerous
Muslim population is France. In response to many
native Frenchman's fears that their national culture
is being subverted by a growing Islamic influx,
as well as security concerns, the government of
France overwhelmingly placed a ban on wearing
full-face veils in public. In response to this,
several protests were instituted by various Islamic
groups in the streets of Paris.
These
protests included the distribution of 'green stars,'
which were to be worn by Muslims as a sign of
symbolic persecution. On April 11, 2011, the day
the headscarf ban took effect, French and international
television reports showed Muslims distributing
these five pointed green stars. Abderahmane Dahmane,
the French President's former "diversity
adviser," called on Muslims to wear the green
star (the declared color of Islam) a move deliberately
reminiscent of the yellow stars forced on the
Jews by the Germans, Bulgarians and others during
the era of the Holocaust.
One
would think that the French Muslim leadership
would be more urbane than to compare the banning
of the headscarf to the mass murder and torture
of six million innocent people. Yet, these sorts
of protests are not original. In 1994, Muslims
in France sported yellow crescents on their arms
while marching with the slogan, "When is
it our turn?" an explicit allusion to the
Holocaust and the yellow stars the Jews were mandated
to wear during WWII.
Nonetheless,
there is something ironic about all of this 'stars'
business, for it was not Hitler who mandated the
yellow star, but the leaders of the Islamic religion
some 1200 years earlier. With the Pact of Umar,
a 9th century set of guidelines between conquering
Muslims and conquered non-Muslims, both Jews and
Christians could gain their safety by complying
with the wearing of a distinct yellow indicator
of their non-Islamic status. Subsequent to this,
Muslims mandated Jews wore distinct clothing,
often yellow, and/or stars, from Islamic Spain
to Syria and Iraq and out as far as Persia.
This
unsophisticated route the Islamic leadership in
France has elected to take as a form of protest
at the banning of the headscarf, is not only hypocrisy
at the highest level, but demonstrates a lack
of understanding of the history of their own religion
and a crass insensitivity to the Jewish people.
Photo:
Euronews
