Uproar in France

By Elder George, MMNS

An annulled Muslim marriage has created an uproar in France. A Muslim bride said she was a virgin, but when her new husband discovered she wasn’t, he went to court to annul the marriage, and the French judge agreed.

I thought this event would be of interest to you since my articles—especially the recent ones—point out that Western society crushes out all religious influence and culture; that this destruction takes place under the guise of women’s liberation; and also includes the removal of the “unseen” values of male authority, which provide the moral structure for society. The annulment of the French Muslim divorce touched all three of these conditions.

The French, like most Western nations, want their laws to be secular in nature and not influenced by religious beliefs or cultural practices. Also, the French are somewhat uneasy about the five million Muslims that comprise about 8% of the French population. It was France that passed a law in 2004 banning Muslim headscarves from classrooms, a move that also caused an uproar.

The next condition was the reaction of some critics who said the annulment undermined decades of progress in women’s rights. The decision “is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women,” said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara. I wonder what Fadela’s response would have been if the man had represented that he was wealthy and owned a villa on the French Riviera, but after the marriage was found to be a cab driver in Marseilles. 

This brings us to the third component of the incident. The issue did not focus on physical or material considerations, nor did it concern religious beliefs or cultural practices. The issue concerned an “unseen” quality—those things that real men involve themselves with in their efforts to propagate and preserve the species. The bride LIED. No marriage, family, tribe, organization, or nation that condones lying will long endure. Lying indicates a lack of ethics. A marriage that at its inception was based on a lie would be highly unlikely to last.

In the rush to embrace the Western “emancipation” and “liberation” of women I think of the words “You shall know them by their fruits.” What are the fruits of secular non-patriarchal French society?

A brief look at one aspect presents a very negative feedback. The suicide rate in France is among the highest in the industrialized world. At 17.6 per 100,000 it is 2.5 times the rate in England, where the number one health issue is mental illness. It is estimated that 3.5 percent of the French population are taking medication for depression at any given time. This might be good news for pharmaceutical companies, but presents a rather worrying picture of the general mental state of the nation. Like the inhabitants of all Western non-patriarchal nations, the people of France are losing their minds.

Nations devoid of spiritual and cultural values cannot provide an environment conducive to the well-being of its citizens, especially to women and children.
Patriarchal societies on the other hand have few mental illness issues. Women and children fare well in societies whose men insist upon such pesky values as honor, truth, constancy, loyalty, ethics, and “unseen” stuff like that.

Elder George’s website is www.mensaction.net and he can be reached at 212-874-7900 ext. 1329.

10-25