France, Child Molesters and the Burqa

Plenty has been said on the re-arrest of Roman Polanski, the confessed child rapist and filmmaker now languishing in a Swiss jail, awaiting extradition to the United States.

But I stumbled on a quite original perspective on the case, in a different context: How does France's refusal not only to extradite Polanski for all those years but to celebrate him and include him in the most rarefied air (and airs) of high French society square with France's recent war on the burqa?

Ibrahim Abusharif, a Chicago native, journalism professor at Northwestern's Doha, Qatar campus, and an engaging blogger (his blog's title, "From Clay," echoes the title of Pakistani-American writer Ali Eteraz's "Children of Dust") asks the question. Here's his biting answer, from a longer piece he contributed to almuslim:

While I make no judgment about this case per se, the following comes to mind: the French seem to have no problem granting freedom and privilege to a man who "drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl in the home of actor Jack Nicholson" (according to Slate). Yet French President Nicolas Sarkozy may declare, with little public dissent, that a woman who wears a burqa is not welcome in France because the burqa is a symbol of a woman's repression. In other words, the rape of a girl has no negative symbolism, and if there were such symbolism, then its expiration is rushed along nicely by a rapist's association with the arts.

Is this what we may infer from this French quandary? To recap, a middle-age man who reportedly forced a girl to satisfy his lust in natural and unnatural ways repeatedly is welcome in France to live, work, sign autographs, and dine at high levels, but a woman who dresses like the mother of Jesus (God bless mother and son) is told that there's no room at the inn.

See Also:

• Beer Guts, Not Burqas
• Sarkozy to Veil-Wearing Women: Stay Home
• Moroccan Woman Denied French Citizenship for Her Niqab
• Does the Quran Require Women to Wear the Veil?
• The Muslim Veil and the Law in Europe, the United States and Canada