| Cairo fruit sellers have a Ramadan tradition of giving nicknames to their various selections of dates during the fasting month, and the "Jacques Chirac" carried the highest price in town last year. But France's controversial ban in state schools this year on the Muslim custom of women wearing headscarves, has seen the French president demoted. "Last year we had named the most expensive dates after Chirac, but this year we did not grant him this honour," said Ahmed Idriss, from the central Al Sahel wholesale market where Egyptians, were shopping Thursday on the eve of Ramadan, which began here on Friday. "He fell from grace because of his position against the headscarf and also because he presented a resolution against Syria at the United Nations," Idriss explained, amid the din of shouting vendors and honking cars. The controversial law banning headscarves, which went into force last month, has sparked a barrage of protest in the Arab world, where the French government had enjoyed tremendous popularity for its opposition to the war in Iraq. Then, relations between Paris and Damascus were strained after France co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution that implicitly demanded an end to Syria's political and military dominance of Lebanon. |