In recent days the French government has been piloting through the country's houses of parliament a law which makes it illegal to wear clothes or signs that "conspicuously" display affiliation to a faith. The vote by the French lower house makes it almost certain that, from next September, children in French schools will be prohibited from wearing Islamic headscarves, large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps or Sikh turbans.
The official justification for the new French law is that France is constitutionally committed to remaining a secular state, and that schools, as public places subject to government regulations, should not allow any encouragement of adherence to a particular set of religious teachings. This principal of separation of Church and State was enshrined in French law in 1905. The 1905 legislation contained the following provisions1:
These provisions removed the official role of the Roman Catholic Church in the French constitution as the religion "of the great majority of Frenchmen"3. That role had been encoded by Napoleon who, though antagonistic to the power and influence Rome held at this time, also conceded that "A society without religion is like a ship without a compass; there is no good morality without religion." Napoleonic law also guaranteed freedom of religion within his dominion.
The legislation now proposed has been widely interpreted as being targeted mainly at Islamic strictures on women's dress, specifically the wearing of the hijab (headscarf). Supporters of the ban, who include some French Muslims, argue that the wearing of religious symbols is incompatible with schools' policy of neutrality in matters of religion. It has also been argued that lack of adherence to secularist policy in schools would threaten the primacy of political and social values which the constitution is designed to safeguard. And Muslims world-wide are divided over whether the Koran dictates that women should always remain veiled in public4 or merely prohibits immodesty. Many have argued that the new French law is required to safeguard Muslim girls from oppressive treatment in their own communities.
I do agree with the French legislators that secular traditions of religious neutrality are worth defending. I don't believe, for instance, that a government that professes to uphold a constitution defined by the will of the people should allow the display of religious icons or doctrines within its courts of law. Democracy can and should be moulded by deeply-held religious convictions, but it must always remain distinct from theocracy. It is also right and proper that the laws of the secular French State should prohibit within all its territories the forcible imposition of religious practises upon persons who object to them. This new law, however, attempts to extend compulsory secularity not only to officials and agencies of the government, but also to its ordinary citizens. School children are not agents of government, and should not be made subject to principles that were imposed specifically to combat government abuses. What the current French government has done in blurring this distinction is a violation of democracy, and is in direct contradiction of the tradition of freedom of worship enshrined not only in Napoleonic law but also in the 1905 act which the current lawmakers profess to be extending.
But to my mind, what is driving this new legislation is fear. It is a fear not of Islam itself (although far-right parties in France might like to believe otherwise) but of religious extremism, fear of bigotry, psychopathy and misogyny masquerading as infallible dogma, and fear of the duty conferred by a democracy upon every individual to stand up for his or her own point of view. In attempting to take a short cut, in saying that French children can only defend their right to legitimate religious expression once they have already curtailed that religious expression, the French government has done a grave disservice to all its future citizens. The dialogue between France's republican and Muslim traditions must begin in her schools, and it cannot do so effectively if the French Republic has already decided that widely practised and inherently harmless Muslim traditions are unacceptable under any circumstances.
1
National Secular Society http://www.secularism.org.uk/france.htm2
although subsequent amendments introduced in 1941 by the Nazi-controlled Vichy regime restored Church property seized under this article (http://hist.academic.claremontmckenna.edu/jpetropoulos/church/thevichygovernmentandthechurch.htm)3
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04204a.htm4
Dr. Zaki Badawi, http://www.headscarf.net/index2.htm