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Emmanuel Macron has been declared the President of France after early vote counts:
France has a new president. Emmanuel Macron – an independent centrist who has never held elected office – has won a resounding victory over far-right, nationalist Marine Le Pen in the most important French presidential race in decades, according to early vote counts by the French Interior Ministry.
In early returns, Macron had won an estimated 65 percent of the vote to Le Pen's nearly 35 percent, according to the French Interior Ministry. Le Pen has already called to congratulate Macron and conceded defeat to a gathering of her supporters in Paris.
Also at The Guardian (live), Washington Post, NYT, Reuters, and The Local.
From CNBC: Euro hits six-month high on Macron victory
CNN editorial: Why Macron's victory is reassuring ... and yet not
BBC has an article about Macron's potential choice of Prime Minister.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arslan on Monday May 08 2017, @07:32AM (1 child)
I have to point out that this is impossible. There's no such thing as a "non-practicing Muslim"; that's like a "non-practicing Catholic". Either you are or you aren't. It's not like being Jewish. If you aren't practicing the religion, then you aren't part of the religion any more.
I don't think that is accurate, please provide a citation. I grew up in a predominantly Muslim country but officially a secular country (non-Islamic state officially) and there are "non-practicing Muslims". In general they do what most non-pious folks would do, avoid going to the mosque regularly, don't or minimally observe Ramadan (although they try to do it inconspicuously as much as possible for obvious reasons) and some I've observed even eat pork. Given it is not officially an Islamic state (though there are Syariah courts for muslims but not over non-muslims) the policing is pretty laxed especially in the major metropolition cities where population is too large for the syariah folks to police and the mosques to keep attendance tally. Lots gamble and have pre-marital coitus as well.
In small villages, yea no way one can get away with it but in the big cities with large urban sprawl and overpopulation anything goes. There's a least a couple of countries in South east asia that are like this.
So unless, your comment is specifically about France, which I can't really comment on, your claim surely is not accurate as a generalization.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 08 2017, @02:55PM
It sounds to me like all those "non-practicing Muslims" you speak of only claim to be Muslims because of social pressure, not because they actually believe it. If you're going to break all the laws (eat pork, have pre-marital coitus, not attend Mosque), then what's the point of claiming you're an adherent of the religion? Simple: social pressure. You don't want to anger your parents, or it'll negatively affect your job or housing, or you'll lose your friends, etc. So that means that you're really a fraud. If you don't believe in a religion, then don't claim to be an adherent. Of course, if that's going to seriously affect your quality of life (or even quantity), then it does make good sense to falsely claim to be a follower, but at least acknowledge to yourself that you're really a fraud, and hopefully work towards changing your society so that that social pressure is gone and people have the freedom to be non-adherents if they choose.