[The headscarf] does, in a way, symbolize submission -- the meaning of Islam is "submission -- but it is submission to God...

This is the problem—aside from what others have written about, that this symbol of inferiority is correlated with the suppression of women. Also, I really cannot take seriously the idea that the headscarve symbolizes only submission to God and not also to men: clearly, this is just liberal, post-modern spin.

But even if it only symbolizes submission to God, it is still unacceptable. I hate to say it, but what Pope Benedict said in his controversial speech Faith, Reason, and the University is very relevant here. (I am not a Catholic or even a believer. Also, I should note that Bendict's speech was quixotic in one respect, in that Benedict claimed that reason leads to Catholicism. If reason leads to anything in the Christian context, it is Gnosticism (and the modern (welfare) state). This was essentially the view of German romanticism, which I believe influenced Benedict's speech. To me, it seems more German than Catholic. Finally, I should say that since Benedict has not strongly condemned the Anglo-American aggression on the Muslim world, he is clearly a Western chauvinist.)

[To a Christian,] not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Muslim R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

For a Muslim, there is no rational reason to embrace God. That is why instead of accepting him or letting him into you, you must submit to him. In Islam, the relation between man and God is that of enslavement: God is man's slave. Since in Christianity in contrast, both man and God are bound by (the same) reason, man accepts God freely and voluntarily, through reason. In fact, by endowing us with reason, God makes us free, since when we employ our reason, we act on the basis of well-justified reasons, as opposed to arbitrary wishes and desires. Thus, we see that in Islam and Christianity, the relationship between man and God is precisely the opposite.

That is why the Bavarian law which states that "teachers' attire must be in line with 'western Christian' values" is perfectly proper and in fact necessary. By wearing a head scarf, a Muslim woman is proclaiming that we are all slaves. And that is an act that cannot be allowed or tolerated, since it brazenly attacks the central idea that is constitutive of European civilization (I won't say "Western civilization", since the anglophone world seems to have given up on it), and thus expresses a desire to destroy that civilization.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns