Slow and inexorable shipwreck of French secularism: 52% of students opposed to blasphemous satire
A survey by LICRA and the Ifop institute of high school students indicates that over 50 percent are in favor of the use of religious symbols and even 38 percent are in favor of a law that allows wearing the "burkini" . 52 percent then say they are against the right to blasphemy.
French secularism suffers another blow, satire and criticism of religious dogmatism forced to face a growing hostility in the younger population, which suggests a not very rosy future for France. In a survey commissioned by the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism ( Licra ), whose magazine devotes a special issue to secularism, the Ifop Institute ( Institut français d'opinion publique ) examined how school students superiors perceive one of the foundations of the French Republic, sanctioned by the Constitution, namely that of secularism. And the results of the survey, carried out last January on a representative sample of 1,006 high school students, reveal incurable fractures. More than one in two high school students (52 percent) said they were in favor of the use and display of religious symbols in public high schools, twice as much as the general population (25 percent). Forty-nine per cent of those interviewed, on the other hand, do not notice any contradiction in the fact that a public official flaunts his religious beliefs. But the most alarming figure is this: 38 percent are in favor of a law that allows students to wear the "burkini" (a percentage that, as the survey indicates, reaches 63 percent among students enrolled in the network REP, which includes high schools and schools located in difficult and sensitive neighborhoods). This percentage even rises to 76 percent among high school students who declare themselves Muslims.
Even the right to blasphemy does not come out very well. Five years after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo following the publication of the cartoons on Muhammad, the situation has not only deteriorated but reversed irreversibly. According to the same survey, 52 percent of high school students say they are not in favor of the right to criticize a religious belief, symbol or dogma. But the high school population itself is divided: while 78 per cent of young people of Muslim confession oppose the right to insult a religion, among Catholics this percentage drops to 45 (to 47 per cent for those who define themselves as atheists). “Religion is no longer perceived as a corpus of values in which one believes, but as a consubstantial part of identity. And since the mockery of identity is perceived by some as intolerable, violent reactions are no longer incomprehensible ”, points out François Kraus of Ifop, author of the survey. "For example, 10 percent of high school students today do not express any condemnation or are indifferent to the perpetrators of the 2015 attacks compared to 4 percent of young people between 15 and 17 who were asked the same question in 2016. ".
In short, for the new generations the right to blasphemy no longer seems a priority because it would affect the very identity of people. This is what Catherine Kintzler, philosopher and specialist in laicité says . The results of the survey, he explains, are the direct consequence of the "sacralization of religious conviction" supported by decades of educational techniques based on the enhancement of the child's cultural elements. “We are always told that religious opinion and belief are an essential part of the individual, which constitute his identity. In this way, however, over the years, pupils no longer distinguish between private and public spheres in the legal sense of the term (school, courts, etc.), and no longer know how to distinguish between beliefs or opinions and the people who adhere to them. The French school limits itself to informing but no longer educates ”, the scholar explains.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/lento-ed-inesorabile-naufragio-della-laicita-alla-francese-il-52-degli-studenti-contrario-alla-satira-blasfema/ on Sat, 06 Mar 2021 05:03:00 +0000.