Dinner at the Seven Times Restaurant

In Vaulx-en-Velin, a small town in France, a halal restaurant with the name Seven Times has just opened. Within the restaurant is a room for women customers only. This has caused a stir among the local officials that this constitutes faith-based discrimination. The restaurant’s owners, however, in their defense claim that both sexes can sit everywhere else in the restaurant, so what’s the fuss?

More on this sign of Sharia’s soft encroachments can be found here: “Lyon. A restaurant opens a room reserved for women: ‘Nothing to do with Islam,'” translated from “Lyon. Un restaurant ouvre une salle réservée aux femmes : “Rien à voir avec l’islam,” by Nicolas Zaugra, ActuLyon, December 12, 2025 (thanks to Medforth):

A restaurant in Vaulx-en-Velin, near Lyon, has opened a room exclusively for women. The controversy is growing on social media. The manager explains his approach.

Does a restaurant in Vaulx-en-Velin (Rhône), in the Lyon metropolitan area, separate men and women? The “Seven Times Lyon” restaurant, which presents itself as the city’s “largest food court” and is certified halal, highlighted a space reserved for women in a promotional video. In this video, broadcast on TikTok and Instagram, an influencer is seen approaching this room and then covering his eyes. The employee invites him to sit “over there” in a space possibly reserved for men.

Let’s start with the restaurant’s curious name: Seven Times. That is a reference, that only Muslims would understand, to the requirement made of Muslims making the hajj to circumambulate the Kaaba counterclockwise seven times, and this walking widdershins seven times round the Magic Wonderstone is called the tawaf. So Muslim customers are being signaled that this isn’t just a halal restaurant; the restaurant’s owners want to semaphore their own deep commitment to the faith.

What is wrong with having a room for women only? This is what is wrong: It makes it easier for Muslim men to consign their womenfolk — daughters, wives, mothers — to a room where they will only be with other women. The restaurant’s owners are aiding and abetting gender discrimination. Some women, and their husbands, may be enlightened enough to let the women eat with men, but most Muslim wives and daughters will be relegated to the women-only room. In fact, that room will be a selling point for the restaurant. Muslims, firm in their faith, will no doubt be delighted to find not just a new halal restaurant, but one where gender discrimination is made easy.

This violation of the equality of the sexes makes sense for Muslims. They know that men and women are unequal. In Islam, a son normally inherits twice what a daughter inherits. In the justice system, the testimony of a man is worth twice that of a woman. A Muslim man can take up to four wives simultaneously; a Muslim woman can have only one husband. A Muslim husband can divorce his wife merely by uttering the world “talaq” three times; a Muslim wife must go through a complicated and often expensive procedure to divorce her husband.

If this single-sex-only room arrangement at Seven Times is allowed to stand, then other restaurants will follow suit. Some will have rooms set aside only for women; others may decide to be open to women only during certain hours. Still other halal restaurants may be open only to men. The equality of sexes enshrined in French law will be chipped away at, while Sharia is slowly being introduced into the French social, economic, and political system. French authorities must call a halt to this development at the very start, by demanding that the owners of Seven Times restaurant in Vaulx-en-Velin cease to have a for-women-only room. If Muslims want gender segregation, there are 57 countries where that is permissible. Move to them.