The French government’s law banning Muslim women from wearing traditional face-covering veils in public places looks like being delayed.

President Sarkozy is said to have received advice that the legislation may be “unconstitutional”

He is also under pressure from lobby groups like “Human Rights Watch”, which calls the proposal “a lose-lose situation” — saying that it “violates the rights of those choosing to wear the burqa, while doing nothing to help those compelled to do so . . . at a time when Muslims in Europe feel more vulnerable than ever . . . .”

Mr  Sarkozy has called the burqa “an assault on women’s dignity” and “a rejection of French values”. But, being a man who likes to have two bob each way, he called Islam in 2008, “one of the greatest and most beautiful civilisations the world has known”.

Are we witnessing here an embarrassing failure of nerve?

* * *

Likewise, American president, Mr Obama, recently asserted his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country”.

Australia seems to be joining the same club, with Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Laurie Ferguson, saying in August 2009 that “Muslim Australians have contributed to almost every sphere of community life, helping our nation to become more open, enterprising, innovative and creative.”

British pop-atheist writer, Christopher Hitchins, author of the book “God Is Not Great” is currently associating himself with a low-risk act of non-daring, proposing to humiliate the Catholic religion by arresting the Pope. His courage, however, never reached the point of naming his book “Allah is not great”. Had he done that, he would be dead by now.

* * *

From the beginnings of Christianity, until the disastrous Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s, the Catholic Church sought always to create Catholic States.

 After the Second Vatican Council, however, the Church itself started putting pressure on traditionally Catholic States to “secularise” themselves.

As a result, in today’s world there are now 57 (approximately) Islamic States.

And there are zero Catholic States.

Zero.