Thread: Mini-Skirt: Not Welcome in Extremist Enclaves in Paris

What does it tell us if, in France, a 16-year-old girl is beaten up for wearing a mini-skirt?

BY LESLIE SHAW April 24th, 2016

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Photo: Screen shot from a video of the incident)

In a Paris suburb, a 16 year-old girl is beaten unconscious for wearing a short skirt (see video below).

Last week, a 16-year- old girl was waiting on a streetcar in the Luth neighborhood of Gennevilliers, a northern suburb of Paris. She was approached by a group of youths who verbally assault her because she was wearing a skirt they thought was too short.

A few minutes later, three girls arrives. They also started talking about the fact that she was wearing a short skirt. Their attitude was hostile. They boarded the streetcar with the girl and continue to harrass her because of the way she was dressed.

The situation deteriorated. The ringleader grabbed the girl’s hair and forced her to get off the streetcar at the next station. They called her a whore and began to beat her.

The girl was subjected to a hail of punches and kicks. One of her attackers, a veritable colossus, knocked her down with a blow from the knee. The girl collapsed, unconscious. Amid the screams and confusion, passers-by intervened and chased off the attackers.

An ambulance arrived and the girl was taken to hospital. She regained consciousness after several hours of being in a coma. After being revived by medical staff, she filed a complaint at the police station.

One of the attackers, a 19-year-old girl, was dining in a fast-food joint when she was told that the victim has been hospitalized. She went to the police station with one of her accomplices and was placed in detention. The court hearing is set for May 17, 2016.

The police investigation concluded that the attack had nothing to do with religion, nor was it a settling of scores, as the attackers did not know the victim.

This incident recalls a similar attack in the town of Safi in Morocco in July 2015. A 13-year-old Moroccan girl who was on holiday from Italy with her mother was walking in a street market when she was surrounded by a crowd who castigated her because her pants were ‘‘too short.’’ The mother tried to ignore the crowd, but they became more agressive and started hurling insults at the 13-year-old girl. Fearing for their safety, the two made a hasty getaway.

Could there be a common denominator between these two incidents and if so, could that common denominator be the Islamic injunction for girls and women to dress modestly and, in some cases, cover their bodies from head to foot in dark robes and a hood?

Gennevilliers, where the 16-year old was beaten up for wearing a short skirt, is one of the hotbeds of radical Islam in France. For years, the local authorities turned a blind eye to the mushrooming of what the French term ‘‘underground Islam’’ in the form of makeshift prayer-rooms and mosques run by Salafist imams.

The largest of these was located in a squat in the publicly-owned industrial zone of the Gennevilliers river port. This illegal mosque had been operating for several years and Friday prayers attracted up to 700 Muslims from the surrounding areas.

Tents were set up in an inner courtyard to accommodate the overflow, and those who could not gain entrance laid their prayer mats on the street to pray to Allah.

There were so many cars double-parked on adjacent streets that trucks could not access the warehouses and river docks. French intelligence alerted the local authorities to the risks posed by the growth of Salafism on several occasions, but no action was taken until four days after the November 13 attacks in Paris, when the mosque was raided by police and subsequently closed down.

The investigation revealed that the credit balance on the bank account of the nonprofit that operated the mosque was $34,000, the accumulated proceeds of the weekly collection.

Gennevilliers, a town whose origins date back to the ninth century, is one of the areas described by Urban Minister Patrick Kanner as ‘‘the hundred Molenbeeks of France.’’

The mini-skirt, invented by French couturier André Courrèges in the 1960s, is definitely not welcome in these enclaves of radical Islam.

MINI-SKIRT: NOT WELCOME IN EXTREMIST ENCLAVES IN PARIS

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