But laicite’s influence also has created a kind of identity crisis among younger generations of Muslim immigrants because they are raised in Muslim homes yet are exposed to a secular humanist environment, said Gracie Couloir, a Southern Baptist missionary from Virginia who has served in France for the past 17 years.

Instead “a French judge has ordered two branches of the Church of Scientology and seven of its leaders to stand trial for fraud”.

The post links to an interview with the Archbishop of Paris, who mentions court practices in Muslim countries (they work through Ramadan).

But why? What do the court practices of Egypt during Ramadan have to do with French court practices?

There seems to be some kind of dissonance when it comes to issues like this: on the one hand Muslims living in the UK, France, etc. should conform to the cultural norms of their countries* and not of their ‘ancestral’ homelands. Yet you will see commentators and politicians invoking practices of these very same Muslim countries.

“They do it in Saudi!”

Either the man standing trial, in France, is allowed to make an appeal for a delay to trial (for whatever reason and as long as it is done within the framework of French law); or he is not. The court in France will decide either way (and the court said he can).

It shouldn’t matter what Egyptians (or Saudis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Tunisians, Turks, etc) do.

*And this is, in general, a perfectly reasonable demand.

Forget compensation. France is not even able to face up to its colonial past.

Doesn’t keeping statistics like that violate laïcité?

Next up for an overhaul: Bashar al-Assad.

In this context, read the debate at National Interest between ‘neoconservatives’ and ‘realists’.

Related: Even renewable sources will probably need ‘energy security’.

The New York Times also covers France’s very own ‘cartoon crisis’ (thankfully, this one does not involve any Muslims), as does Jason Burke in the Observer. The Independent, though, covered the story a little earlier.