French President Nicolas Sarkozy tosses a few at Muslim burkas.

Nicolas Sarkozy gets the first chance in a century and a half for a French President to address the French Parliament, and what does he talk about? The way (some) Muslim women dress, that’s what.

Sarkozy said the head-to-toe Islamic veil was not a sign of religion but a sign of subservience.

“It will not be welcome on French soil. We cannot accept, in our country, women imprisoned behind a mesh, cut off from society, deprived of all identity. That is not the French republic’s idea of women’s dignity.”

He has a point. But it’s a lame one.

I totally agree that the burka is just a way to supress women in Muslim countries. This is their way of keeping women uneducated and without alternatives so men can be as controlling as they like. Muslim men instinctively understand that if their women actually have a life of their own, they won’t have power over them anymore.

Still, I strongly suspect that Sarkozy’s new (and very hot) former model wife must have threatened to cut off his supply to get him to stand up in front of Parliament with this. (Either that, or he’s an idiot. Come to think of it, however, isn’t he a good buddy of the idiot Bush? Maybe they’re going to form a club?) What about all of these women who are imprisioned, cut off, and deprived in France? (See the picture on the right.) I don’t see Sarkozy wailing and moaning about their plight.

The fact is that both Catholic nuns and fundamentalist Muslim women – in France at least – cut themselves off and deprive themselves of identity. Nobody forces them do it in France. (On the other hand, if Fatima decided to have a girl’s night out in a mini-skirt, Mohammad would probably not be too pleased when she got home again. But, at least in France, she has a legal right to wear whatever she wants.) Sarkozy’s bias against one and not the other flies directly in the face of the responsibility of the state to remain fair and impartial.

Speaking of which …

We have our own version of the burka here in the Different World of Utah. I see them every time I shop at the Hurricane Walmart. Like the Muslims, FLDS women do this to themselves. (And, I notice that the FLDS men aren’t forced into some soul-destroying costume.) You could argue that the women are being forced into this life of subjugation. I don’t buy it. I think putting Jeffs in jail for forcing young girls into this life made the point that we’re not going to put up with it. And any woman who willingly chooses subjugation is a fool.

But that’s just me. In our system of laws, they’re free to be fools.