As to the facts, well, I don't think one can doubt that the organisation, Solidarité des Français, fairly stinks of '(white) Catholic France' chauvinism, but it's hard to conclude from the that a liberal society (of course France is not a liberal society as such...) should ban them from serving properly labelled pig soup. I suppose if they only serve pig soup there is an air of discrimination against Jews and Muslims, although it is a rather precious air.

The volunteers who ladled it out to the homeless of Paris called it “pig soup”. Now it has been taken off the menu following accusations that the dominant aroma wafting up from the bowl was xenophobia, not pork.

The Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest authority on administrative law, has banned an organisation called Solidarité des Français from distributing its soup containing pig ears, feet and tails to the capital’s rough sleepers.

On Friday night, the court announced that it had upheld an earlier decision by the Paris police chief to shut down the soup kitchen, which has been accused of discriminating against Muslims and Jews, whose religions forbid the consumption of pork.

This decision had been suspended on appeal, prompting the interior ministry, led by presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, to demand that the Conseil d’Etat intervene. Bertrand Delanoë, Paris’s mayor, also pushed for a ban, claiming that the handouts stank of xenophobia.

Sarko is of course doing a bit of premptive credential burnishing, although it somewhat goes against his usual approach to things.

The volunteer group claimed the recipe was a hearty expression of traditional rural French cooking. However, Solidarité des Français has a clear political agenda. Its website criticises the use of government funds to teach French to immigrant women, while also attacking aid to Morocco, Senegal and Algeria.

Queer choice that selection of countries, why they happen to Muslim majority.

I found the website too much of a pain to actually sift through to see if they are as concerned about Congo, Cameroun or Cote d'Ivoire.

It has described its opponents as “watchdogs” of Islamic Sharia law trampling on the secular tradition of the French republic.

Islamic law seems to be the new cover for general religious bigory aimed at Muslims.

Of course, I recall as a small lad Christian Identity types being all bent out of shape over the mysterious markings certifying Kosher on certain foodstuffs, grumbling darkly about Jewish plots.

Of course, this was before the Judeo-Christian identity item won out.

Odile Bonnivard, the group’s leader, admitted to the FT that she was a member of Bloc Identitaire, an extreme-right political group. She claimed that there was a tendency in France to prioritise the needs of outsiders rather than those who shared her culture and civilisation.

Ahem, meaning white Catholics.

She said Muslim or Jewish homeless people were not obliged to eat her organisation’s soup, arguing that there were plenty of other groups that would feed them.

Which is true enough.