French President Sarkozy has reaffirmed his apostasy from the Church of Cultural Relativism by backing a law against burqas.  The wearing of the burqa offends his sense of gender equality, which is an indispensable part of French culture. 

He is asserting the superiority of French cultural norms over Islamic ones, thereby violating the first rule of the CCR.  But France has a precedent for this.  They have refused to recognize Scientology as a religion.  Is Scientologyphobia a word yet? 

The predictable bogeyman of Islamophobia is raised by the Muslim Council of Britain here.  If you follow this link you will find an article which raises another question:  Can Islam be criticized by non-Muslims?  Meaning, of course, can criticism of Islam ever be received by Muslims as anything other than hate speech?  I can say from first-hand experience that the answer is yes, but.  The but is there because the willingness of Muslims to receive criticism as anything but hatred of their religion is the exception, not the rule. 

Another important question is raised by this issue.  Europeanized Muslims deny with absolute certainty that Islamic law and custom force the women of Islam to dress in any particular way, requiring only modesty.  And yet in Afghanistan women are  forced by men to wear specific clothing, and they claim that Islamic law and custom demand it.  The question is:  Is there a single Islamic law and custom or is European Islam separating from the practice of Islam in the Middle East, Africa and Asia? 

It is the same question I repeatedly ask of American Muslims—are we non-Muslims being colonized by a monolithic Islamic culture or is American Islam qualitatively different from traditional Islam, amounting to a reform movement? 

Finally, if there is a reform movement, will its members support legal action against the parts of Islamic law that offend American sensibilities--such as gender equity, the use of force to propagate Islam, Islamic supremacy and separation of religion and state? 

(For more on cultural relativism, see Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam by Marcello Pera and Joseph Ratzinger and Irredentist Islam and Multicultural America, by Jan McDaniel.)