france has the largest muslim population in europe, nearly six million people, and for a country holding that record, it is not treating as muslim population with respect, the most recent instance being the french government banning french athletes wearing the hijab at the paris olympics next year, well this was received wide scale condemnation, including by the un. this edition of the... we will look at why france

is enacting restrictions on muslim women, and whether there is pattern by france in discriminating against muslims all together. first let me introduce our guests. anthony hall, professor of globalization, lethbridge university joins us from lethbridge. also joining us is fahima mahomet who's a broadcaster and executive coach who joins us from london. welcome to you both. i'll start with you first, anthony hall. uh, the incident, as we understand it, the french government of banning french athletes for wearing the hijab at the paris olympics, now this was the french sports minister has said an explanation from him, he's in favor of a quote strict regime of secularilism applied rigorously in the field of sport, and my question to you aside from your reaction to this is, isn't in itself this stance a form of discrimination? well, discrimination is a tricky word. uh, i think the word that i like

to see uh, put front and center is secularization, and certainly islamophobia, now to me, the quintessen of islamophobia was concocting this 911 event, to make it seem that radical muslims, did it because they hated freedoms of the west, it was a concocted job, an israeli zionist lead job, 911, so this islamo. uh that infects people's minds, has been engineered and created. now uh, this word secularization, we're talking about france here, france had a little something called the french revolution in 1789, which was largely about secularization, overthrowing the divine right of monarchs and the clergy, and so the west has develop this,

see the communist revolution as a sort of outgrowth of the french revolution, and the communist revolution was about you, secularization, materialism, that the main way that humans define and negotiate their relationships has to do with economics and material relations, so this secularization that is uh being demonstrated here and the obsessions of those who want to take it, be beyond the point of uh respecting fellow human beings, but imposing some kind of doctrinaire uh principle that they believe in uh in terms of dress or how you do schooling or what you wear at the olympics all of that is uh you know we need to put this in context, well thanks for putting it into context, but i'm going to take the context some background info that you gave to us, which is really appreciated and put it uh much more simpler to youd in terms of...

"let's say you are athlete, you are a muslim, you believe in the hijab, and you're very good at let's say archery or let's say swimming, and you you have very promising future in that field, enough to qualify for the olympics, but you can't go to the olympics if you're a french muslim because of this uh, i guess ban that the government, the french government feels is necessary, how would that make you feel? tell us what a person in those shoes is feeling? yeah, um, it's a great question. and i think that it's quite obvious to lot of women generally that when they are told what to wear um it's definitely infringing upon an individual choice and freedom and it's also an pression. i think as history shows that there is lots of dictatorship around the fact that when you want to control a particular sector or society then you will actually pick on something like trying to challenge what someone wears and dictate that. i think it's a much wider very alarming message. that's

been sent across even though french has its, fundamental principle of secularism, it shouldn't really infringe upon individual choices, as well as you know disregard the... usativity of spiritual um sort of like international sporting events, because in in the spirit of sport, it should really be wide and open everyone, and we all have our individual choice, and even if it's under a certain rule, i think it again, it's it's more of a dictatorship as well as an oppression to a particular group, so it's definitely worrying and it's definitely something that we need to review lot closer and see how this unfolds, because it is targeting a particle group and it really is not uh in line with values of the west or the un in general. well, france seems to be very focused on the muslim community as it should, but maybe for all the wrong reasons, anthony hall, when it passes a law such as this anti-separation separatism law, which has

been criticized widely uh for singling out muslims. one of the things that it does, intervening in masks and associations, responsible for their administration, as well as controlling the finances of... affiliated associations and non-governmental organizations. what does france feel that it has to pretty much control mosks in that respect when it comes to muslims? well, i believe uh that this obsession with secularization that i introduced has lot to do with it. now i heard my fellow presenter here, talk about individual rights that the individual rights of muslims are being infriend. but then there's a discussion of group rights and treating all members of a group in a discriminatory way, so this is a big deal in the west, group right versus individual right, and how do we balance the two? um, mean if, if the position is like say

you go to war with france, it's conceivable that muslims will join the french military, should uh the french military be open to distinct form? of uniforms for uh muslims in the french army, let's move it away from the olympics, i'm just trying to advance a discussion here and think this through. well, i mean that uh, what do you think about that analogy there, family, first of all, um, because there's different venues and of a war, or the military, i should say, i think that that would be, a unique one, i don't, if that fits into the conversation, what do you think? well, i'd like to think of it. different sort of sense end of the day, for example, international human rights standards emphasizes that the restrictions on religious expression should be minimal and justifiable under a specific circumstance, and france, strict regulations on religious attire,

including the bikini ban, for example, may raise questions whether or not these restrictions meet international criteria, and i don't think that they are addressing this on that level. from the un's perspective and it's just been out there to say under the umbrella of secularism, but it does actually infringe even on the un standards of human rights, so when you look at it much as you say group or individual regardless, um, i think we need to question, you know, where do we have those boundaries and lines when it comes to the human rights standards? why should there be such boundaries and lines, anthony, when it comes to muslims, i mean another one of the... things based on the spedism law that i'm looking at, which really unbelievable is that it restricts educational choices of muslims by making home schooling subject to official permission, would you allow that to happen to your family if you muslim? uh, well, i think this is very good place to dig into this issue, because uh,

homeschooling is much being discussed in canada right now, because schooling is doing transgender experiments trying to convince young people that they should change their genders, trying to persuade them that they need surgery to be mutilated, that they need hormones and such, and muslims here in canada are leading the rejection of this, and people are facing this crisis in canada, wanting homeeschooling, and i'm wondering if homeschooling might be the place to say to french government, well if you uh are you so obsessed with you, being secular and conform. and violating our human rights to express ourselves as individuals and a group, what about if you're if the muslim community in france became organized to say, well we're going to do our own school, and we want our percentage of the tax money recompensed to us

for you, some support in our schooling, and so we don't really want to be part of your your school system, we we would like to have our own homeschool. which we could organize a small way or a large way, and and we'll live and let live in that in that way, we don't like the way you're forcing your majoritarian. control of the french government on us, which is very significant part of france, but since you're insisting on doing these horrific things to us, we want to have our own schools and uh we want to raise our children, not in a woke way, this woke thing about uh forcing uh, you know, homosexual, gay, lesbian things on on, that doesn't wash well with muslims, as we can see here in canada, i'm sure it's the same in france, so about being a little bit assertively separatist with the government of

france and saying let us develop our own education then since since you're you know we we don't agree with your type of education that's uh what we're asking and and we have to share a country here uh i believe that number of muslim people there probably committed to being citizens of france and uh making in france uh but we need adaptations well that sounds like an at least proposition there if i'm not a mistake, something that perhaps can be contemplated, but when it comes to this french uh president, i believe that it was just years ago when he said, islam is in a crisis, muslims need to be reformed, even the clerics need to go through schooling in order to adhere to the type of islam that the french president and his state thinks should be exercised in his country, i don't know if he's going to uh stand up for muslims standing up against the government and in terms of having a budget pass for for them, i mean, what, does the french president

not realize what he's saying, and the impression he makes when he says, clerics need to be reformed and islam needs to be reformed, i mean, i'm not going to say that's a blast for me, but that is very offensive, give given a muslim to hear those words. absolutely, it's a belief system that has been conucted, and at the end of the day it also shows that um, it's more of a state. control that he's trying to you know uh sort of place france under instead of the uh sort of democratic sort of like society and state that every sort of western um sort of uh country sort of it tries to sort of say that keeps them apart from you know backward or other countries so what they are exercising is it sort of the same same sort of way as they would um scrutinize um sort of you know the east for example when they are doing it just because of they choosing to have the other end of the extreme, so i think that we need to be very, very concerned about the way

in which uh we seeing france to be more of a dictatorship, as well as um trying to um target certain groups and especially the muslims in particular, and having a state control where they not even giving parents a right to um educate their own children and they have to be involved even in the home. so that is very worrying and it's really no different to any other maybe communist country or dictatorship or autocratic system, so i think that if they can do that and successfully do that with one group, they can definitely do that with someone else, so even if you're not emplied and part of the umbrella of islam or muslims, then if they can successfully do it there, then other groups and other religious parties or other sort of like community should also be worried if you know they're going to be targeted next in the same way, indeed. all right, let's get your thoughts on this european islamophobia report uh conducting in the year 2022. if i

may ask you there uh anthony hall, some of the findings, i'm going to begin with one, if you are a french muslim applying for a job, you are five times more likely to face discrimination than a non-muslim. the same types of findings were found for housing for muslims and also for police brutality. so the big question is, in a country like france that houses or has the most number. of muslims in europe, why is it that there's islamophobia uh in this scale, to the scale that we're seeing based on this report? and why does france have the most muslims in europe? i mean, the fact is, this is really deeply rooted in history with algeria, especially, and uh, there was a point at which france actually treated algeria as part of france, and essentially demean this. the human rights and citizenship of indigenous

algerians who are mostly muslims, so this oppression of muslims uh is uh, very deep rooted, it's part of consistent package, france colonized much of africa and is facing that, you know, the united states is facing the poverty, this secular approach to the to the maxs, um, where'... we become without principles, without ethics, without values, without respect for the rule of law and such, so uh, this has to be confronted. the the the depth of this. well, the confrontation uh comes with gear, by gear, mean the type of gear the muslims were, and that findings that reported in this or that i just relayed in this report that was done on islamophobia in europe, of which france was the case study, one of things uh regarding employment, it said if you are a muslim woman, wearing head

scarf, you have a 1%, 1% chance of finding employments. why is this muslim gear so much a thorn or piece of uh or issue for uh at least france? 2004 it banned hetscarves, 2010 it passed the ban on full face valles, we're looking at uh 2023, the the abaya, there was a ban on that, and now of course uh our news piece that we begin with in terms of the the swimwear, why is does the muslim gear on women? even issue to pass laws banning them? i think this multi-faceted reasons for it, obviously the the actual ban itself is such a disparity, which contradicts the principles of equality and fairness, and also whereby they're getting away with it, because the eu and the un are and have role to play with

regards to addressing discrimination within any member states and ensuring that the eu adhered to principles. of religious freedom and non-discrimination um you know being essential and i guess that we're targeted generally across the globe because we are very strong in our faith and we don't conform and if there are agendas that are being put out there with regards whether it's an education or anywhere else it's always out of fear and threat because we are the one long standing very wide um sort of religion that is ever so much growing in numbers across the globe as well as we are still strict and it here to our... sort of religious views and ways, but at the same time we are still able to uh be quite successful in the west and and still conform and integrate, and maybe that is seen as a threat. um, there could be many reasons for it, to sort of, you know, dum us down or you know to control and to dictate, because obviously there's power within the way in which we believe, feel and act, and

we're not easily swayed by even you know this wness or feminism or anything that people. even in the west, you know, under even secularism or non-religion may even find a problem, whereas with us, it's already embedded in stone in our traditions and our cultures and our beliefs. anthony hall, our guests our talks about the un and the eu, it's worth mentioning that they as institutions need to somewhat be more proactive when it comes to muss in general and this case with france and the laws that it has enacted, why uh have, i don't want to say, why have they short changed muslims, but why are they not being more viciferous, even uh, let alone act on. well there's a political reality here that i think i would like to address from the west uh and there's an understanding that the jewish supremacy in the government of baiden uh and you know it's in all western countries has become so intolerable that we have no say in our own government anymore and uh let's just consider

what about the muslim migration into israel isn't that happening aren't they supposed to be? democratic israel, there is no muslim immigration into israel, and yet israeli agents, and people like soros are enforcing this rule on europe that there must be open immigration of largely muslims, from africa and such, into you, germany and the eu countries, and and and this is creating a backlash among western'. people, largely white people, like you could say indigenous european people, and it's not totally to be dismissed as just bigtry and racism, and such, like, why is it that israel needs to have ethnic ruled so that israel is for jews and to develop that color, but the same doesn't apply to europeans or north americans

and united states, there's a totally open border, with people coming from all over the world, blocking without going through any uh vetting process into the united states, this immigration uh thing and what is behind it like the financing of george soros, very uh well-known uh agents of a zio-american empire you know which is failing, christianity is not a success story these days and it's under assault and it's definitely that the people pushing this wokenda. have special uh animosity towards white christians, so the fact that this is unfolding in this way, now there's macron trying to play all sides, he's a obvious roth child shell. uh and he is representing that faction as you know eu is is to represent that banking cartel, so usual suspects that we can talk about on press tv,

but somebody like me, it's hard to talk about it on western media, we don't have opening for this kind of discussion in western media, so i think it's incument upon folks in the theocracy of iran for instance, to you know consider what we're going through in the west, sure, well one of the... that's be amazing when it comes to this whole uh islamophobia and anti-islam sentiment uh if you agree from is the fact that you have many politicians in europe who are uh their platform uh part of it is anti islam uh and they promote that and then they have followers and they have lot of supporters that way uh can we who can we blame there or what can blame there is it because it's a product of the society in the way that anti-islam sentiment is maybe promoted through other the culture uh through media what have you? or is it that uh they feel threatened by muslims in any shape or form? what do you think? i think it's a little bit of everything that you suggested and do think there's an agenda in mainstream media to uh

promote uh certain minority groups uh within certain faiths in order for everyone to you know be the sheep that they've got following with regards to having one narrative about you know for example muslims and that's why when anyone sees a muslim the first thing they say is you know either terrorist or oppressive or anything like that because it's been subliminal messages for decades um in the media with regards to it and you know even probably even beyond uh 911 and at the end of the day that was just the jump start where you got a real excuse now for you know promoting this kind of material and that's all people see when they muslims and their voices are never really generally heard and the the norm and the everyday people and the ones that are working and integrating and live for generations are not necessarily being heard spoken to, and even if they stand up for the same rights and the same values as everybody else, they're not looked upon as you know as equal in that way or even seen in

that way, if anything was go wrong, muslims are also the first to condemn certain things, but you've never see that. so yes, media is powerful, and um, but the thing is we are moving away from that with other platforms that are coming up and uh seeing obviously if you've already got a belief you're going to follow what you're going to follow and you're going to jump at bandwagon very easy so until you know criminalizing islamo is going to be an idea considered as criminal offence a kind to anti-semitism, then then yeah we might have some sort of weight, but we need more leaders, we need more um, obviously we've got you know powerful countries, unfortunately that are not even on our sides, even if they claim to be muslims, for example you know in the middle east, so then we do have a political problem within our own um sort of muslim communities as of not actually being um on the... side that we need for our own people, so there is a wider conversation beyond just france at the moment. thank you for that, we appreciate it, broadcaster and executive coach from london. anthony hall,

thank you, professor of globalization, lethbrige university from lethbrige. thank you to you both. with that we come to an end this edition of the spotlight from team. it's goodbye. as the berlin wall collapsed in 1989, so did the once great superpower of the soviet union, the communist party leader michael gorbachov, ustured in new era of openness with the west. by 1991, peter streika was failing and along came the new russian state's first president, boris yelson. this documentary tells the story of the eight years of yelson's leadership under russia's attempted. transition from communism to capitalism, it is an often tragic story of the fall of once proud superpower, the hardships of millions of ordinary people, and

the rise of new breed of ultra rich oligarchs. it is also the story of how russia has become the state it is today. ian puddick found himself controversially charged with harassment by city of london police. this relatively minor charge resulted in raids on his home, office and accountants. you think about the allegations against dean. there was overkill in the police approach to this, in the raides in his home, the raids on his business. it didn't seem necessary. police interviews went unrecorded. accusations were made against ian without any. justification, if what he was saying was true, what he has done is left huge quantity of class a drugs to be sold? is that sort of thing that a policeman would really do? and

worst of all, there is evidence the city of... we live in england, things are transparent, things are white and white, well they're not, this is case of somebody standing up and not allowing themselves to be bullied by by these, mein name ist lena, ich bin 21, komme aus dorften, das liegt im schwesser in bayern, in der zeit habe ich erstmal dieses bewusstsein für den islam überhaupt entdeckt. dann habe ich äh, ich bin hab auch jeden jede nacht zu gott gesprochen, gesagt, gott, wenn du da bist, die menschen wissen vom islam erzählen und so meiner begeiisterung, dass ich.

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jackings is. also more than doubled.