France Bans Prayers in the Street

France resorts to its age-old solution to culture clashes – banning something in the name of secularism.

What's France banning today? Praying in the street! Those Gaullist secularists are at it again, with the ban having come into effect in time for traditional Muslim prayers held on Friday afternoons. The Sarkozy government enacted the law in response to complaints that Muslims had shut down entire streets to hold the prayer sessions, a practice that had led far rightists, such as the National Front's Marine Le Pen, to compare the prayer sessions to the Nazi occupation of France. Anyone caught breaking the ban will be arrested. Of course, this has led to thousands of Muslims criticizing the decision, but in the interim, massive prayer spaces have been set up to accommodate the demands of their faith. Le Pen has turned street prayers into a divisive issue with less than a year to go before presidential elections, as she's styled herself as some sort of defender of a non-Islamicized Europe, which, as it turns out, seems to have struck a chord with a big part of the French population. Maybe not so much with France's five million Muslims, but the rest of them, sure!