La Fête nationale du Québec; Technical Difficulties; Vive Québec

President Nicolas Sarkozy "said on Monday that the burka [sic] was not welcome in secular France, condemning the head-to-toe cover as a symbol of subjugation rather than the Muslim faith." And he's right. If it were indicative of Islam it would be universal in the Muslim world and it is not. Islam is not monolithic nor uniform. Nor are the Muslims of the world culturally uniform, nor do they speak the same language (not even beginning to discuss the variants of Arabic), nor do they have the same interpretations of the Qur'an, the Hadiths and tradition.

Here's where it becomes nice and grey. Religious clothing in the pubic sphere is the clear intersection of religious and state rights. Those who want to make the state and public sphere entirely secular are advocating that the burqa not be allowed. That is key. The advocates of the burqa are a small subset of French Muslims. However, once again, the ones who suffer either way will be the women. Either side is dictating the choice of women. How do we in the liberal west address the question of choice?

(Source Yahoo News, Canada)

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We heretics also love the Barefoot Bum. Here is a recent blog post on "Religion and killing." Doesn't get much more heretical than BB; nor does it get more readable. Barefoot Bum lives here.

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TECHNICAL difficulties:
We here in the HERESY QUÉBEC secret location are currently suffering from technical difficulties. It seems that we should not have accepted the doctrine of Intelligent Falling: our main processing computer had problem with mean old Mr. Gravity. "Episode 8: Linguaphiles attend" (and thus subsequent episodes are delayed). Sorry. I just hope that the really great interview we had is not completely dead as our HERESY computer.

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On the occasion of La Fête nationale du Québec / St.-Jean Baptiste, bonne fête tout le monde!
(Yvon Goulet, mixed media. For more brilliance why not visit the artist's Facebook site here.)