Citizen Status Quotes
This amazing pronouncement separated the right of citizenship from religion. This was opposed by most clerics as to them excommunication meant that the person should have no rights whatsoever. There was a practical side to the Chancellor’s view. At the time there were bitter religious civil wars in France. Each sect would castigate and excommunicate its religious and often military enemies. Things had reached such a point where anybody who was anybody had been excommunicated by somebody. If citizenship were to be nullified by excommunication, then the state would have to take sides. If it treated all excommunications as equal, too many people would be denied their citizenship. Therefore the only practical solutions were to have a single state religion or to separate excommunication from citizenship. France was beyond the possibility of a state religion with Catholics, Lutherans, Huguenots--all had large established congregations of followers and there were smaller sects.
By 2005 trust of many Muslims of the U. S. government had reached such a low point that loyal American Muslim organizations were recommending total non-cooperation with the FBI which had rounded up and held many loyal American Muslims while they were searching for fundamentalist terrorists. President George W. Bush made some very important speeches explaining that all Muslims were not responsible and the FBI worked hard to establish relationships with Muslim leaders and organizations. After a few years many of the roundup practices had stopped but there was a residual of mistrust thereafter.
