France's Crisis of Faith in Laicite

Let us pause for a moment to consider this charge. Substitute "Islam" for "laïcité"—the French term for secularism—and you've got a rationale that would satisfy the members of Saudi Arabia's own reviled vice squad, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vices. Indecency may be in the eye of the beholder, but women are nearly always the main culprits, whether in Cannes or Riyadh. The acts of identifying and punishing such indecent women—clothed in too little or too much—are how these cultures remind themselves of what they stand for.