BEIRUT, 9 January 2004 — Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement organized yesterday a demonstration of about 5,000 girls, most of them in headscarves, outside the French Embassy here to protest a proposed French ban on headscarves in state schools. Most of the demonstrators were students brought in by buses. They marched from the Place du Musie to the embassy, where one veiled girl gave a letter to an embassy employee.
Men from the Lebanese movement acted as marshals for the march, as the girls carried French flags and banners demanding that French President Jacques Chirac block any ban. Demonstrators dispersed without incident an hour later, as about 100 soldiers and police officers guarded the exterior of the embassy to maintain order.
The demonstrators walked about 300 meters (1,000 feet), waving banners in French and Arabic that defended wearing of the scarves, known as hijab, as a religious duty. “France, what do you want? My hijab is my religion,” shouted the protesters. “The hijab is not a symbol, but a religious duty,” read one of banner.
Chirac on Dec. 17 came out in favor of a ban on the Islamic headscarf and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools along with Jewish skullcaps and large crosses. He wants the rules written into law by the start of the next academic year in order to reaffirm the country’s secular identity. The proposal has drawn criticism and protests from numerous Muslim countries and also from US State Department officials.
Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, has charged that Chirac’s proposal “confiscates” a woman’s freedoms and is a direct attack on human rights. In an open letter to Chirac last month, Fadlallah said wearing the headscarf is a “religious duty” for Muslim women.
But a prominent Muslim cleric in Egypt, Sheikh Muhammad Saied Tantawi, said last week that “if a Muslim woman lives in a country where laws do not permit (the headscarf), then she has to comply with those laws.”
Before dispersing, the protesters handed embassy officials a letter addressed to Chirac. “The hijab is not against French laws,” the letter said. “It is not a call for aggression or terrorism.” The demonstrators called on Arab and Muslim countries, the United Nations and human rights organizations to exert pressure on France to drop the proposed ban.
