I did not know and am shocked to discover that animal sacrifice is a protected religious practice in our country! Another thing for which to thank mass immigration, I guess. But I do not think that we should have to pass any laws to diminish the wearing of the veil and the full, head-to-toe Muslim dress in public schools and colleges. I believe that assimilative processes should bring that about, the assimilative processes the immigration supporters tell us are ever churning to create true Americans committed to equality of the sexes. But if the assimilative processes do not bring that about, then they are not working, and the immigration supporters have to stop invoking them.

As for Robert’s suggestion in his first response to my post that if a country doesn’t want to see Muslim practices that violate its societal values prevail, then it should curb Muslim immigration — I agree, although I don’t know if he meant this for our country. If he did, this is an idea impossible for our immigration enthusiasts to countenance. Since they want to believe that democracy is universal, apodictical, inevitable, unstoppable, and so on, the absolute final word in human development, it would cripple them mentally to have to concede that some groups may not be assimilable to our way of life. Thus they must insist that assimilation is taking place, even when it isn’t, and must silence disagreement with name-calling and completely irrelevant references to past waves of immigration.

I believe France stood up for something very important when it banned the veil in public schools, that is, its own traditions in dealing with religious expression. Most interesting to note is that Turkey has upheld the ban on the veil in its universities. Aside from upholding their secular character, these countries know that there, as here, the veil is often an expression of defiance of and hatred for the host country as much as it is religious. France believes its public square must be secular and they are sticking to that. Turkey is not going to allow itself to be Islamicized again. The United States supposedly believes in separation of church and state but is permitting encroachments on that. It is not admirable.