Remember all the talk about France banning the burqa and niqab Muslim veils for women a few months ago? That project is now in the parliamentary inquiry phase, a six-month fact-finding mission expected to wind up late this year and produce a draft bill to outlaw them. That’s the way France handled it in 2003 when it wanted to stop Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to state schools. But the process seems more complex this time around. There’s less passion and more hesitation in the debate. A smooth progression from the inquiry to the ban and to its implementation no longer looks assured.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab outside a public library in Ronchin, northern France, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

To get a feel for the debate, I dropped by the panel’s latest open hearing late on Tuesday and listened to the arguments being made. Five mayors from suburbs with Muslim minorities were due to speak to the panel, which is led by a Communist deputy named André Gerin who makes no bones about his view that a ban is needed. Mayors like these men play a key role in an issue like this, because they are on the front lines dealing with social change and are taken seriously when they clamour for change. Several are also deputies in the National Assembly - France allows them to occupy multiple offices - so they can easily lobby at the national level for something they want.

Sitting alone at the press table in the committee room, I soon saw why the drive towards a ban seems to be hitting some bumps. The mayors don’t know what they want. All think something has to be done, but most are worried that an outright ban wouldn’t work. Here’s my news story on the session.

This was the fifth of 16 hearings planned by the panel, which is officially called the Mission d’information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national (Fact-finding mission on the practice of wearing the full veil on national territory). They’ve already heard representatives of women’s right groups, spokespeople of associations defending France’s secular system, a Muslim women’s rights advocate and two Muslim intellectuals and they plan to visit the ethnically mixed suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille and Marseille. You can often predict what will be said, but not always - some of the militant secularists turned out to be against a burqa ban because it meant the state interfered with personal choice.

(Photo: A televised session of the panel/National Assembly)

To give you a better feel for the debate, here’s a summary of my notes and quotes from the session:

*Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois and chairman of the Association of Mayors of French Cities and Suburbs, said “the veil concerns the issue of women’s dignity and it’s clearly a brake on integration”. Within his association, though, “views (about a ban) are divided. Lots of officials are talking about the risks of passing a law. They’re concerned about political and civic risks.”

“Who’ll be responsible for enforcing this law? There’s a lot of concern about this.” France did not necessarily need a law, he said, but “it’s important that the Republic reasserts its values in a strong symbolic manner … It would be a mistake to look at the full veil just from the religious angle. There are socio-economic causes as well.  People are taking refuge in identities.”

“We’d have lots of difficulty trying to enforce a law on the ground. Now, the police in Clichy-sous-Bois don’t even issue parking tickets in some areas at some times… There has been a strong rise in religious demands. We mayors can’t be left alone with this. This is happening several times a day. You can’t make a strong statement defending the Republic now without being called an Islamophobe.”

*Jean-Pierre Blazy, mayor of Gonesse north of Paris, admitted: “I’m hesitant. I can’t say today that we need a law. But we shouldn’t just dump the problem on the mayors. We need a firm dialogue to make secularism come alive in this country.” He stressed that he supported the 2004 headscarf ban and was concerned about growing religious demands by Muslims for exceptions to the usual municipal services. “If we have a law, we have to have accompanying measures with it,” he said, to make the measure more palatable to Muslims. One measure he suggested was to teach Arabic in state schools.

(Photo: Veiled woman shopping in Roubaix, near Lille, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

*Renaud Gauquelin, mayor of Rillieux-La-Pape near Lyon, said there were very few veiled women in his town but growing problems with Muslim demands in pools, hospitals and schools. On veils, he said: “Is this a regression for the rights of women in France? Certainly. Is there a parallel development for men? No.”

“I’m tending towards a law,” he said, noting that laïcité, the legal separation of church and state, was written into the constitution, as were women’s rights, and failing to ban the veil would amount to a failure to defend those rights. “What sign would we give to women around the world? To Iranian women fighting for their freedom? To Saudi women who want to be able to drive a car?”

*Jean-Yves Le Bouillonnec, mayor of Cachan south of Paris, thought existing laws would be enough to deal with the burqa issue. “If we pass a law, how would we enforce it? What would the sanctions be for violating it? There could be no worse message to send than to pass a law and tell people to obey it without saying they will be punished for not obeying it… I can’t see a ban working. It’s extremely complex and almost completely inapplicable.”

He suggested the National Assembly might want to pass a strong resolution reaffirming republican principles.

*Xavier Lemoine, mayor of Montfermeil east of Paris, said some Muslims in his town were becoming “reislamised” and this was visible in a rise in veil wearing and pressure some Muslims put on co-religionists who don’t fast during Ramadan. “It’s not always in the poorer areas, but also in the middle class areas that you see these demands,” he said. He noted that the full veil was not required by the Koran “but it’s in the Sunnah”, France had to take a strong position against the veil and understand how Islam was different from Western traditions. “In Judeo-Christian society, the individual is predominant. In the Muslim world, the individual exists through belonging to a community. The weight of the community is terrible.” At the same time, officials should separate Islam from its fundamentalist fringe when analysing religious issues.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Still, he was also hesitant about voting for a ban. “I prefer to do nothing for a good reason than something for a bad reason.”

Several panel members had questions or observations for the invited mayors.

*André Gerin, a Communist deputy, head of the fact-finding panel and former mayor of Venissieux suburb of Lyon, called full veils “medieval customs spread by salafists”. The veil was the I in an Islamisation drive by radical Muslims. Gerin said France should not only consider a ban on full veils but also go after “the gurus” who are not in these neighbourhoods but are spoiling everything”. (BTW Gerin gave no details about who he meant by “gurus”, a term usually used by Hindus and Sikhs. But they call all full veils burqas, using the Afghan term, even though almost all of them worn here are Arab-style niqabs. Go figure.)

*Jean Glavany, a Socialist deputy, said fundamentalism was part of all religions these days. “This idea of separating the fundamentalists from the religion doesn’t work. To say that fundamentalist excesses have nothing to do with the religion is like saying hooliganism has nothing to do with football or doping has nothing to do with the Tour de France.”

“We should refuse to make legislators into exegetists.”

*Jacques Myard, conservative UMP deputy and mayor of Maisons-Lafitte northwest of Paris, warned against turning into a  “soft democracy” that could not stand up for its own values. He argued for a ban with punishments for violators. “Sanctions have to be rehabilitated. Not cutting off of heads and hands, of course.  But this is the order of things in a structured society with its own values. It has to be respected. They can’t impose their personal order.”

“Is Islam compatible with laïcité? That’s not my problem.  It’s not for us to decide if it’s compatible, it’s up to them. In the Muslim world, you find all kinds of interpretations. It’s not our role to solve this.”

Understanding the French approach to its Muslim minority has often proved difficult for outsiders. Does this make it any clearer?

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Last week, a college in Mangalore in India banned a student wearing a burqa from attending class. The principal told local media the college had a policy of not allowing symbols of religion.

The media did not say if there were students on campus with a 'bindi' (dot) on their foreheads or crucifixes around their necks or turbans on their heads, other symbols of religion one commonly sees in India, besides the ubiquitous "Om" scarves and t-shirts.

Mangalore, a cosmopolitan city, is no stranger to controversy; it was recently in the news for attacks on bars and women by a fundamentalist Hindu outfit that declared they were against Indian culture.

Nor is the controversy over headscarves and burqas limited to India. UK's Jack Straw sparked a heated debate when he asked Muslim women in his constituency to remove their veils to promote better relations between people.

Turkey last year lifted a ban on women wearing headscarves at universities, ruling it violated the country's secular constitution.

More recently, French president Sarkozy said burqas have no place in the country because they are a symbol of the subjugation of women. The issue has divided France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, over how to reconcile secular values with religious freedom.

A 2004 French law bans students from wearing "conspicuous" signs of their religion in state schools, prompting Sikhs to launch a protest to allow them to keep their turbans on.

Sikhs have also fought in some countries for the right to carry the "kirpan", a dagger mandated by their religion and have called on the U.S. Army to end a ban on men with turbans.

How about India, a secular country which allows its citizens the right to follow any religion of their choosing? Can a college or a workplace impose its own rules about religious symbols? And who gets to determine what's conspicuous or not?

A crucial part of gunman Mohammad Ajmal Kasab’s confession at the Mumbai attack trial has been censored by the judge on the grounds that it could inflame religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India. After stunning the court on Monday by admitting guilt in the the three-day rampage that killed 166 people, Kasab gave further testimony on Tuesday that included details about his training by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group on U.S. and Indian terrorist lists.

The front-page report in today’s The Hindu, which noted the judge’s gag order in its sub-header, put it this way:

Ajmal made some crucial statements on Tuesday as part of his confession. They pertained to the purpose of the attack as indicated by the perpetrators and masterminds and the message they wanted to send to the government of India. Ajmal also wanted to convey a message to his handlers. However, this part of his confession faces a court ban on publication.

In view of the communally sensitive nature of Ajmal’s statements, judge M.L. Tahaliyani passed an order banning the publication and broadcast of Ajmal’s statement recorded on Tuesday by any media or person, except the part which pertains to the CST. Mr. Tahaliyani remarked that the trial was at “a delicate stage.”

Given the complex mix of religion and politics in India, it’s not unusual to see the media playing down the communal aspect of tension and violence. In the recent general election, the party that usually plays up these differences, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hardly used the “religion card” in its losing campaign. But that doesn’t mean things are getting better. According to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, the “unfortunate year of 2008 … proved to be worse than 2007.” See their two-part report on 2008 here and here.

But Kasab’s testimony could shed important light on what role religion plays in Islamist militancy. How could a young man who wanted to become a dacoit (bandit) be convinced by Islamist militants to try to become a shahid (martyr) instead? Was he actually convinced, or did he do it for other reasons?

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel burns, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

Kasab told the court on Monday that he originally approached the militants to get weapons and training and won (surprisingly easy) admission to their office by saying he wanted to wage jihad. He was taken in and given extensive training in preparation for the Mumbai attack last November. All of this is detailed in published accounts of his statement in court on Monday. In earlier statements, police say, he showed little understanding of Islam or jihad, saying the latter was “about killing and getting killed and becoming famous.”

What role did Islamist ideology play in this, and what part the confused ambitions of a poor and impressionable young man? In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad?, Lashkar-e-Taiba listed its goals as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.

Did his handlers stress all this to Kasab? Did he want to do any of the above? What did his Islamist handlers say about Hindus? If they fed him a diet of anti-Hindu hatred, might it be better to publicise the details so they can be debated and discredited? Some of the most interesting contributions to such a debate could come from Indian Muslims, who live in the kind of secular democracy the LeT rejects.

(Photo: Kasab in detention, 3 Feb 2009/video grab from CNN IBN)

I’d be especially interested to hear the reaction from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is a traditionalist Sunni school but has urged Muslims to reject terrorism and vote in elections against extremists.

Right now may not be the best time to publish Kasab’s censored confession. But revealing it at a later date, for example after the verdict, might do more good than the harm Judge Tahaliyani fears. What do you think?

“Bewildingerly diverse” is the way Asghar Ali Engineer describes his native country, India. This 70-year-old Muslim scholar has written dozens of books about Indian politics and society, Islamic reform and interreligious dialogue. As head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, he works to promote peace and understanding among religious and ethnic communities through seminars, workshops, youth camps, research and publications. The centre even organises street plays in the slums of Mumbai to teach the poor about the dangers of communalism.

Our long conversation at the Centre in Mumbai’s Santa Cruz neighbourhood of Mumbai during a recent visit to India provided a few key quotes for my earlier analysis and blog post on religion in the Indian election campaign. Since these issues are crucial to the general election taking place in India, I’ve transcribed longer excerpts from his answers and posted them on the second page of this post.

(Photo: Asghar Ali Engineer, 14 April 2009/Tom Heneghan)

(more…)

Hindu nationalism, Muslim “vote banks”, anti-Christian violence, caste rivalry — Indian politics has more than enough interfaith tension to offer populist orators all kinds of “religion cards” to play. Coming only months after Islamist militants killed 166 people in a three-day rampage in Mumbai, the campaign for the general election now being held in stages between April 16 and May 13 could have been over- shadowed by communal demagoguery.

(Photo:Voters show IDs at a polling station in Ayodhya, 23 April 2009/Pawan Kumar)

But in this election, the “religion card” doesn’t seem to be the trump card it once was. It’s still being used in some ways, of course, but the main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has played down its trademark Hindu nationalism in its drive to oust the secular Congress Party from power in New Delhi. A BJP candidate who lashed out at the Muslim minority saw the tactic backfire. During a recent three-week stay in India, I found religious issues being discussed freely and frequently in the boisterous election campaign. But they were usually not the main issues under debate and not isolated from the pocketbook issues that really concern voters. Click here for the rest of my report quoted above.

(Photo: BJP leader L.K. Advani, 8 April 2009/Amit Dave)

This is one of those stories where context is king. Thanks to the internet and India’s lively English-language media, anyone around the globe can find Indian reports highlighting the religion angle. One of the news magazines, The Week, ran an interesting cover story about the “high priests of hate.” On balance, I think it looks a bit overdone — it was written at the height of the Varun Gandhi controversy — but it had this classic anecdote:

“A former BJP minister once said that he had won five times in a row using a simple trick: his men would make an issue of a Muslim boy marrying a Hindu girl or the death of a cow in a Muslim area on the eve of elections. He lost the last Assembly election when he campaigned with a development agenda.”

But religion isn’t just on the politics pages. Outlook, another news weekly, reported that an American investor long associated with the Hare Krishna movement has offered to build a huge Hindu temple in a planned Himalayan ski resort as part of a project previously nixed by religious leaders who feared it would desecrate the mountain home of their gods.

(Photo: Elderly voter helped to cast her ballot in Puri, 23 April 2009/Jayanta Shaw)

The Economic Times reported on its property pages that “more and more Indians want to have homes in religious centres.” Real estate developers and analysts differed on whether the financial crisis would hurt this trend, some seeing a lack of faith in the market while others firmly believed these investments were good. And the tabloid Mumbai Mirror had this story about a court defending religious names on clothes.

While in Mumbai, I went to see Asghar Ali Engineer to talk about the role of religion in politics in India. He explained the central role of communalism — the use of religious, ethnic or other loyalties to mobilise social groups — in Indian politics. A noted Muslim reformer, interfaith dialogue advocate and head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Engineer said:

Communalism is not actually a conflict between two religions but between the interests of two or more communities. It is using religious identity for political mobilisation. That is where religion becomes a tool. Religion is not a fundamental cause, religion per se does not cause any problem. Nobody is fighting whether Islam is right or Christianity is right or Hinduism is right. The main point is what the government does for Muslims, for Christians, for Hindus… The BJP bases its whole politics around accusations that Congress uses Muslims as vote banks and inclines towards them, does a lot of favours for them. ‘The Muslims vote for Congress and we are against vote bank politics,’ that’s what they claim. But the BJP itself is basing its politics on the Hindu vote bank.

India is not a nation in the classical sense as in Europe. France, for example, is built on the French language and culture. But India is a bewilderingly diverse country and we have made it one nation. Declaring it a nation was easy, but in the process of nation-building, all these forces have come into play. Whatever development takes place is not based on justice. It is highly skewed. Some religious communities get much more than others, some castes or regions get much more than others. That is why this question of identity has become so important. Those who are left out use their identity to mobilise their people. Similarly, those who are privileged see a threat when other communities mobilise, so they also have to use their identity to ward off this threat from lower castes and backwards religious communities. This is the interplay of religion and politics.

More from that interview in a later post. For more on the Indian election, see the Reuters India website and its special section on the 2009 election. Click here for a slideshow of election pictures.

Here’s a video from the second round of voting on April 23:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a Utah city can refuse to put a religious group’s monument in a public park near a similar Ten Commandments display. You can see our story here.

The justices unanimously sided with the city of Pleasant Grove, which had said a ruling for the religious group would mean public parks across the country would have to allow privately donated monuments that express different views from those already on display.

The Summum religious group, founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, sought in 2003 to erect a monument to the tenets of its faith, called the “Seven Aphorisms,” in a park where there are other monuments, including a Ten Commandments display.

In the court’s opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the placement of a permanent monument in a public park was not subject to scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech clause.

The public display of religious objects is a frequent flash point in America’s never-ending “culture wars.”

What do you think? Does the decision violate the group’s right to free speech? Or were attorneys for the city right in arguing that a favorable decision for the Summum group could force cities and states to remove long-standing monuments or result in public parks nationwide becoming cluttered with monuments.

(Photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed, June 27, 2005, USA)

Of all the things to get exercised about, yoga would seem to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. But such has been the case in Malaysia this week.

Malaysia’s prime minister declared on Wednesday that Muslims can after all practice the Indian exercise regime, so long as they avoid the meditation and chantings that reflect Hindu philosophy. This came after Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council told Muslims to roll up their exercise mats and stop contorting their limbs because yoga could destroy the faith of Muslims.

It has been a tough month for the fatwa council chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, who in late October issued an edict against young women wearing trousers, saying that was a slippery path to
lesbianism. Gay sex is outlawed in Malaysia.

The council’s rulings, and other religious controversies, might at first blush seem to indicate a growing strain of conservative Islam in mostly Muslim Malaysia. But it could also
reflect the growing unease of Islamic authorities in defending the faith in a rapidly modernising Malaysia where non-Muslims constitute 40 percent of the population and are increasingly
asserting their rights.

The yoga fatwa stirred up a hornet’s next, not only in the blogosphere where that could be expected, but in another deeply conservative Malaysian institution — the sultans.  Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who presides ceremonially over the central state of Selangor, said Abdul’s fatwa council should have consulted the nine hereditary Malay rulers who take turns being Malaysia’s king before announcing the ruling.  The highly unusual comment from one of the sultans on a
policy matter suggests some discord about who speaks for Malaysia’s Muslims on matters of faith. Islam is the official religion in multi-religious Malaysia and the constitution designates the nine sultans as guardians of the faith. The (rotating) king is the head of Islam in Malaysia.

The sultans, for their part, have seen what remains of their secular powers eroded over the years, particularly under the two-decade administration of former prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad. They could be defending a last bastion of royal prerogoative in the religious arena.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badaw, who has been preaching a moderate brand of Islam called Islam Hadhari, moved to contain the damage saying Muslims can do exercises like the “sun
salutation” so long as they don’t start chanting.

The fatwa council’s rulings, in any case, are not legally binding until they are adopted as national laws or sharia (Islamic) laws in individual states. There seems to be little appetite for that. No laws have been made against young women wearing trousers. The government in May dropped a proposal to restrict women from travelling abroad by themselves after a storm of derision from women activist groups.

But even as the flap over yoga is relaxing, the government is crossing swords with Christian groups.

A Christian federation  claimed Bibles were seized at entry points earlier this year. Malaysian Catholics are having an ontological argument with the authorities about the word “Allah”.
The government banned the Malay-language section of a Catholic weekly newspaper from using the word, saying it creates confusion among Muslims. Catholics say Allah is simply the Arabic word for
“God”, and has long been used in Malay-language Bibles. (A Dutch bishop has stirred debate in Europe with a similar argument)

Non-muslims, who constitute 40 percent of Malaysia’s population, sometimes worry that things such as the fuss over fatwas and words for God, may augur a mini-clash of civilisations in Malaysia, which last year saw a harsh crackdown on Indian rights protesters. It was one year ago that 10,000 ethnic Indians defied tear gas and waterr cannon to voice complaints of racial and religious discrimination in its biggest ever anti-government street protest.

A non-religious Kansas soldier is suing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the grounds that his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to attend military events where “fundamentalist Christian prayers” were recited.

Specialist Dustin Chalker’s cause has been taken up by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which is joining him in the suit.

The MRFF said in a statement that Chalker, a decorated Iraq war veteran stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, “was forced to attend three events in late 2007 and in 2008  at which the battalion chaplain …  delivered  sectarian Christian prayers”.

“Being nonreligious, Chalker objected  … and asked to be  excused from the events.  The requests to be excused were denied.   After the denials, Chalker was forced to attend other events with  sectarian Christian prayers.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas last week, seeks an injunction to prevent such  sectarian prayers from being delivered at mandatory military events.

It is the second such suit filed by MRFF and the other is still pending in a federal court. A spokesman at the Department of Justice, which is expected to defend the Department of Defence, said it had not been served with the papers yet.

Prayer and military events often coincide in the United States. Prayers are often evoked at homecoming ceremonies when soldiers return from overseas tours; off base, civilian events such as rodeos often feature marching soldiers and prayers.

Some activist groups such as the MRFF say evangelical Christianity is being promoted in the U.S. military through peer pressure, calls to prayer and other means.

Critics say this violates the separation of Church and state and creates a potential diplomatic minefield with U.S. forces waging wars in two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.  

The Department of Defense’s watchdog has in the  past taken action on the issue, for example when it chastised a U.S. army general a few years ago for making speeches in which  he described the “war on terror” as a Christian battle against Satan.

The answer is Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. At least that was the conclusion of the latest Pew Research Institute survey of attitudes about religion around the world — a look at 24 countries based on thousands of interviews. Indonesia came in first with 99 percent of the population rating religion as important or very important in their lives — and it topped everyone else in the “very important” slot at 95 percent. Beyond that 80 percent of those surveyed in Indonesia say they pray five times a day every day — adhering to one of the five pillars of Islam.

Indeed Islam is well represented in the top five countries where religion is valued in life — with Tanzania, Jordan, Pakistan and Nigeria following Indonesia.

At the bottom of the chart was France, where only 10 percent saw religion as very important and 60 percent said they never pray.

Indeed the wealthier, more developed nations in the world seem to care less about religion. Does that means circumstances trump faith? Or does it say more about the kind of faith involved? The Pew report drew few conclusions on that front but did say that Muslims consistently rated religion as central to their lives. By one estimate every fourth person on the planet is a Muslim, many living in some of its poorest quarters.

One anomaly in the new report involves the United States — and it may help explain to puzzled outsiders why faith is often wrapped in the the flag when it comes to politics and elections. In the list of countries rating the importance of religion, America, wealth not withstanding, lands about in the middle — with 55 percent saying religion is very important. That compares, for example, to 13 percent in Japan, 18 percent in Britain and 22 percent in Germany. In addition, 33 percent of Americans say they pray at least once a day, and only 11 percent say they never do.

During a Vatican briefing this week on Pope Benedict’s trip to France, a television producer got up and asked the question that surely was foremost in the minds of many photographers and television crews struggling to hold back yawns as subjects such as France’s secular history were discussed:

Will Carla Bruni be at the airport to welcome the pope?

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi smiled. He said Carla Bruni’s husband — who happens to be Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France – had made it known that he might be at the airport. But he said he did not know if Bruni would be there. Heads of state usually wait for popes at their palaces but sometimes, to show their added respect for the pontiff, they also go to the airport.

In Paris, government officials confirmed Sarkozy would break protocol and greet Benedict at Orly airport, something he is not required to do because this is an official visit rather than a more formal state visit. They said they expected Carla to be there … but didn’t want to be quoted on that.

It seems wherever Sarkozy goes these days,  the visual media is less interested in him than in his current wife, the fomer Carla Bruni. The Italian-born singer, song writer and former supermodel who has been the darling of the media since she entered Sarkozy’s life late last year. Bruni, 40, married Sarkozy in February after a whirlwind three-month romance that started one month after Sarkozy, 53, divorced his second wife, Cecilia.

Carla, who has said she sees herself as being akin to the late U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was not married to Sarkozy when he last saw the pope in Rome in December, so she did not — to the disappointment of the media — accompany him. Sarkozy considers himself a “cultural Catholic” and attends mass only occasionally. Under Church law he is not allowed to take communion since he has not received annulments from his previous marriages.

The pope’s trip to Paris and Lourdes begins on Friday and the media surely will have more weighty political and religious subjects to consider. But for the visual media at least, the moment to die for– whether it takes place at the airport or the Elysée Palace or in Notre Dame Cathedral– will be that of Carla and the pope.