Craig Smith of the New York Times discusses the French troubles here, and as usual for a correspondent from that sad wreck of a paper, he gets it wrong. Just to take one example, we read that the French government has stoked up Muslim resentment by “suppressing cultural expression in measures like forbidding Muslim girls to weir veils in school”. Passing rapidly over the phrase “cultural expression”, which would not, I believe, be used by the Times in any (vaguely) similar controversy, say, over school prayer in the US, let’s just ponder this:

Has the “veil” been banned in school?

Yes and no. So far as the government is concerned, it’s permitted in private schools, but not allowed in public schools.

Has this measure stirred up resentment? Possibly, but you would think that the ‘paper of record’ would take the trouble to note that, at the time the ban was introduced last year, most Muslim women supported it.

As for the other measures restricting Muslims in their ‘cultural expression’, with the exception of the deportation of a handful of extremist clerics, what were they?