The Difference Between France and the U.S.

You know what the difference between us is?

Here's a big one... France supports terrorists like Saddam Hussein (search) while discriminating against law-abiding Muslim citizens.

In France, there's a major row underway right now over the right of perfectly law-abiding Muslim school girls to wear their traditional head scarf to school.

In France, it is illegal.

In the U.S., the government has gone to court to make certain a young American Muslim school girl can wear her headscarf to school — a sign of her religious faith.

Many observant Muslims feel it is proper for a young woman to cover her head in a scarf to maintain an appearance of dignity and honor, but the practice was outlawed by an Oklahoma school board as part of its policy banning gang-related clothing.

The U.S. government entered the case on behalf of 11-year-old Nashala Hearn (search), a sixth grader who sued to be able to wear her headscarf. The U.S. attorney agreed with her, and has jumped into the case.

In France, the official position is just the opposite. Headscarves are a sign of a religious belief and the French are terribly afraid of anyone's religious beliefs. They see Usama bin Laden (search) and George W. Bush as equally dangerous fundamentalists.

In America, law-abiding righteous Muslims are welcome and protected and terrorists are hunted down. In France, the law-abiding Muslims are unwelcome if they are religious, and the terrorists are entirely welcome as long as they show no sign of religion.

Upside-down? That, my friend, is the difference between France and America.

That's My Word.

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