[/caption]Michael Cosgrove -Jehovah's Witnesses in France have always been under great pressure from the state and they are currently fighting a bitter legal battle against the prison system, which refuses to allow religious services for Jehovah's Witnesses. The Paris Appeals Court has just ordered the French Justice Ministry to reexamine complaints by Jehovah's Witnesses within two months or face a daily fine of just under 150 dollars.
France is one of the most fiercely draconian secular countries in the developed world, to the point where I once branded French secularism as being tantamount to racism. This is why Jehovah's Witnesses are only one of many religions with relatively small numbers of followers which are under pressure from the French state, although representatives from major religions in France such as the Catholic Church and Islam would quite reasonably argue that they too suffer from discrimination.
Religious organizations in France are broadly divided into "cults" which are organized and established religions such as Catholicism, Islam, Judaism and Protestantism, and "sects", which for many years included Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Scientologists and a host of other, smaller, organizations who are judged not to be religions, but pseudo-religious groups run by psychological manipulators, money thieves and gurus amongst others. Jehovah's Witnesses however managed to gain the hybrid status of "cultural association" in 2000.
The French justice system has almost always refused to consider law suits filed by them favorably and the current case involves Jehovah's Witnesses in prison, who do not have the right to services because the prison authorities claim that there are not enough of them to warrant services even though that criteria is not applied to other relatively small-following religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism. Although a few less influential government-sponsored organizations such as the HALDE, whose mandate is to combat all forms of discrimination, have pointed out that the refusal to allow Jehovah's Witnesses to hold religious services in prison is abusive, they are up against the full weight of the government, constitutional and presidential philosophy which holds that "minor" religions should not be encouraged.
This is an unacceptable situation by any modern ethical and human rights standards and although I am not a member of any religion whatsoever that does not mean that I will not vehemently defend the rights of believers. People have the right to believe, or not. They have the right to attend church services, or not. And they have the right to freedom of religious, spiritual, aetheist, agnostic or any other expression. I insist upon my right as a secular westerner who believes in secular democracy not to be controlled by a religious state or laws but I also insist that the rights of those who wish to express their religious beliefs, be it in church or via dress and other customs, be respected as long as those customs respect common law. But secularism, as it is a dogma, has nothing to do with that.
Secularism's remit goes only as far as to decide who governs a country and votes its laws. And that also means that it has no business poking its nose into people's religious beliefs, let alone interfering with them or denying believers' basic rights.
