Paris [France]: Women being banned from hanging out at bars and bistros, being told to wear fully covered clothes, being forbidden from mixing with men; such a scene is very easily acceptable in a place like Saudi Arabia where the Sharia law, which is quite clear on the role of the woman in Islam, governs the way of life.
But when similar scenes are witnessed in a neighbourhood of Paris, the city known for its romanticism, fashion, food, art and culture, surely it is a sign of worry.
In Sevran, a commune located just 16.2 km (10.1 miles) from the French capital, women going in a bar is equivalent to breaking a taboo.
Sevran is part of the district of Seine-Saint-Denis, an area inhabited by over 600,000 Muslims, out of 1.4 million people. Already in 2011, a report by the highly respected political scientist and expert on Islam, Gilles Kepel, “Banlieue de la Republique” (“Suburb of the Republic”), showed that Seine-Saint-Denis, as well as other suburbs, were becoming parallel Islamic societies, increasingly cut off from the rest of French society.
And a recent video by France 24 clearly shows how women rights activists are trying to fight this plight and trying to raise an alarm of the creeping gender segregation.
Wearing button-hole cameras, two female volunteers of La Brigade des Meres (the mother’s brigade)- an anti-radicalisation group, Nadia Remadna and Aziza Sayah, entered a cafe in the suburb and a male customer tells them “It is best to wait outside. There are men in here… In this cafe, there is no diversity.”
“In this cafe, there is no mixing. We are in Sevran, not Paris. Here there is a different mentality. It is like back home,” said another male customer.
In another suburb of Lyon a women tells the journalist, ” we wear baggy clothes, trousers, no skirts, no obvious make-up, red-lipstick is out of question. We erase ourself. Try to be most discreet.” When asked why, she says, “because we are scared.” Apparently, scared of being targeted by Muslim men in the neighborhood.
But some women have decided to fight back by organising regular marches in such affected place, saying that their intention is not to disrespect religious sentiments but promote more camaraderie among the different sects of the society.
This fast-spreading Islamisation, which the elite and politicians still stay ignorant to, is taking over many such suburbs in Western and European countries.
Many analysts have said that this Islamisation has been fuelled and strengthened by Qatar’s heavy investments – particularly in mosques – in France during the past five years. These investments currently stand at around USD 22 billion.
Investments in mosques are how Qatar is apparently spreading Wahhabism – a particularly radical form of Islam – around the world.
Considering the subservient role of women in Sharia law, it is only a natural development that those French suburbs that have become Islamised and where Sharia is held in high regard, now resemble Saudi Arabia.(ANI)