PARIS, 9 December 2003 — A long-awaited official report due out this week on relations between religion and the state is expected to reignite a bitter row in France over whether there should be a law banning the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools and other public establishments.
A special commission on secularism headed by former minister Bernard Stasi is to deliver its findings to President Jacques Chirac on Thursday, following several months of hearings with teachers, religious leaders, sociologists, politicians and historians.
After considering the report, the government will then decide whether to introduce into law a formal prohibition on wearing religious insignia in schools — with Chirac himself showing signs of favoring a tough assertion of France’s secular identity.
Speaking on a visit to Tunisia on Friday, Chirac said “France felt in a certain way under attack as result of the display of ostentatious religious signs, which is totally contrary to its secular tradition.... We cannot accept ostentatious signs of religious proselytism, whatever the religion.”
Last month aides said Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin would push for a “very strict” new law to be brought in early next year.
With France’s Muslim population estimated at more than five million, the issue is highly divisive — pitting left-wing champions of French secularism against defenders of immigrants’ rights, and Muslims who support assimilation against other Muslims who want to maintain their separate identity.
According to the latest opinion poll, some 57 percent of the population favor a law banning all religious insignia in schools with 41 percent opposed, and the argument cuts across traditional political divisions.
In government the powerful Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is said to oppose an outright ban — arguing that it would foster a sense of alienation that is already strong among young immigrants from North Africa in France’s poor and often violent suburban estates.
