PARIS, 4 February 2004 — French parliamentarians were yesterday debating one of the most controversial draft laws in modern French history — a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols in public schools.
In the seven weeks since a blue-ribbon commission recommended to President Jacques Chirac that such a law was necessary, a debate has raged in the country that had one commentator describing the issue as a “national psychodrama”.
The discussion has been loud and divisive, pitting moderate Muslims against their fundamentalist coreligionists, defenders of France’s secularism against defenders of its Constitution and clerics from many religions against politicians.
For all that, poll after poll has shown that a large majority of French men and women are in favor of the law, and that most believe that it would be effectively and fairly applied by school administrators.
In addition, despite suggestions from a number of deputies in the ruling center-right coalition that they would not vote for the bill, it is a near-certainty that it will become law and come into effect when schools reopen after the summer.
However, the three-day debate in the National Assembly, which is scheduled to culminate in a formal vote on Tuesday, is likely to be just as inflammatory as the discussion carried out for nearly two months via the media.
Some 150 speakers were scheduled to address the issue, and, as a sign of its importance to the government, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin himself was opening the debate.
One point of contention is the phrase banning the wearing of “conspicuous religious symbols” in the current draft of the law. The Raffarin government used the word “conspicuous” to enable students to wear discreet religious symbols, such as a small cross.
However, the opposition Socialists prefer the word “visible”, in order to avoid stigmatizing Islam and making it appear that only Muslims were targeted by the ban.
As Socialist deputy Jack Lang put it, the law should simply mean “neither cross, nor headscarf, nor kippa”.
But no one is fooled. The ban on religious symbols is aimed at the Islamic headscarf and has a single political purpose: To fight the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in France.
As philosopher and social critic Bernard Henri-Levy wrote in the weekly Le Point, “The headscarf is a not a religious symbol, but a political one.”
The law comes in a context when many French politicians and citizen, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, see the country’s republican ideals menaced by a growing Islamic fundamentalism that is making disquieting headway among France’s disenfranchized Arabic youth.
This has led to an increase in everyday anti-Semitism and outbursts of Islamic proselytizing in public schools, which has on occasion made it difficult for teachers to discuss the holocaust, the history of religions or various science lessons.
For many supporters of the headscarf ban, the law represents no less than a vital weapon in the fight for Western values.
“The combat against the headscarf is a combat for the liberty of women, therefore for human rights, which will not cease at the reaffirmation of the principle of the separation of church and state,” Henri-Levy wrote.
But there is a practical side to the law as well, since important regional elections are coming up in March.
A ban on Islamic headscarves will reassure those French voters likely to be attracted by right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen’s warnings against the growing “Islamic menace” to French identity and culture.
What is not certain is the effect of the law on the relations between France’s secular society and its Muslim community, estimated at five million.
It remains to be seen how many laws will be necessary to stem the growth of fundamentalism among French Muslims. Or if another strategy, such as affirmative action, will eventually become necessary.
