French Hospitals Under Pressure From Islamic Demands

The French National College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians has issued a statement demanding that Muslims in the country bow to modern secular values and accept that hospitals are secular spaces. The statement comes after a Muslim man attacked and punched a male doctor who he thought wanted to examine his wife, who was suffering complications after childbirth.

This religiously aggravated violence points up increasingly aggressive demands from some Muslims that their religious traditions should prevail in public spaces.

The college said: “Thirty years ago, Muslim women came into our hospitals without any alarm at being taken into the care of doctors, most of whom were men, and there were none of these difficulties. Why are things going backwards? It is for Islam to adapt to the liberties that all must possess in a modern state.”

Xavier Bertrand, France’s health minister, wrote to the college offering support and expressing his “indignation” at assaults on doctors.