Secular, Muslim Culture Clash Ensnares French Doctors
Jun 10th, 2008 | By admin | Category: CultureThe office of Bernard Paniel on the outskirts of Paris has for years been a mandatory stop for many Muslim women nervous about getting married.
An obstetrician-gynecologist for France’s public health system, Dr. Paniel performs an operation to reattach the hymens of women who want to appear as virgins. For such patients, virginity is a prerequisite for marriage.
The 68-year-old surgeon is among a number of physicians who help members of France’s large Muslim population try to meet the demands of their religious traditions even when, by engaging in premarital sex, they have lifestyles more consistent with the modern secular culture in which they live.
A recent court ruling has exposed the tensions inherent in that culture clash. A court in the northern city of Lille in April annulled a marriage between a French engineer who had converted to Islam and a French woman of North African origins, after the husband discovered on their wedding night that his bride wasn’t a virgin.
The verdict unleashed a torrent of denunciations after it was made public a week ago. Women’s rights groups hit the streets of Paris and Marseille on Saturday to protest the decision on the grounds that it supported what they see as a tradition intended to subjugate women. Justice Minister Rachida Dati, the daughter of North African immigrants, who had her own arranged marriage annulled, filed an appeal of the ruling last week. Some 150 members of the European Parliament denounced the ruling as an act of “serious regression” because they considered it to be gender-biased.
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