/lit/ - Literature

>>22872733
If you can say America practices "freedom of religion" then France practices something more like "freedom from religion" because of the latent coercive power it can hold, implication being to restrict religious expressions in public, prohibiting public officials from wearing religious attire, or at least criticizing it when it's legal. People should be left alone in the ir private lines but defining yourself by your particular ethnic or religious identity group is seen as corrosive. The French state recognizes people as individuals, not as members of groups.

>“It’s not really about religion,” the French writer Marc Weitzmann told me recently. “It’s much deeper than that. Americans are constantly publicizing who they are in every way possible. The French way is to show what you are instead of who you are—through manners. It’s all about conforming to a certain environment.” Weitzmann brought up characters in Honoré de Balzac’s 19th-century novels who arrive in Paris from the provinces, reinvent themselves, and achieve social, political, or literary success. Hakim El Karoui is a Franco-Tunisian writer and consultant who has informally advised Macron; he has advocated for (among other things) the development of French-trained imams who would foster an Islam that is compatible, as he sees it, with French republican values. When we spoke recently, he smiled as he explained the deal on offer: “France is open to anyone, but there’s only one path, and that’s universalism,” he said. “That’s the French paradox. It’s very open and very closed.” In your private life, you can cultivate your culture, your language, your religion; in public, you assimilate.