French attitudes on head covering are veiled in arguments about secularism, reports Jeremy Landorfrom paris When the mother of a four-year-old near Paris showed up to chaperone a nursery school day- trip she was told by the class teacher she could not come on the outing. The reason given was that she was wearing an Islamic headscarf. The head of the nursery explained: "It is the law. It is the rule of secularism. She would be helping to look after a school group, not [just] accompany her child on an outing." According to the mother, Natifa Bergeron, who is of Algerian origin, last year she accompanied school groups with her other two children, who are in primary school, without incident. But this year there is a new rule. Her story is not unique. Two sisters, 15 and 18, arrived to a school in the Aubervilliers suburb of Paris wearing Islamic headscarves recently. A teacher sent one of them home, declaring herself "upset" by how much of the student's head was covered. It took the intervention of the head teacher to have the student returned to class. Fatima Senousi, a Paris social worker, who has worn a headscarf at work for the last three years, was sent home by her employers this month because she was, "showing her religious beliefs in an inappropriate way", according to the mayor of Paris. Clearly, the veil is exposing divisions in France regarding the definition and meaning of a public religious symbol. There is no specific law against wearing a headscarf in school or at work, but the French republic's 200- year-old separation of church and state leads to a rigorously secular attitude against the display of religious symbols in public services and institutions. President Chirac has set up a commission chaired by the national mediator, Bernard Stasi, to look into legislation to enforce secularism. The Stasi Commission's material is nothing new, in any case. The debate has been running for 14 years now. The first school exclusions date from October 1989, when two teenagers of Moroccan origin wearing headscarves were barred from attending school in the town of Creil near Paris. The girls' family was working class and the father a strictly observant Muslim. This encouraged a popularly held view that the veil was imposed on them and that the republic should defend their citizenship rights by liberating them from it at school. Human rights and anti-racist groups rallied round the Moroccan family and a compromise was finally negotiated that allowed the girls to wear their headscarves everywhere in the school except in the classroom. Then it was "discovered" that all over France there were young women and girls of North African origin who also wanted to wear the veil in school but were being prevented from doing so. Political parties were divided and remained silent. Muslim groups in France were divided too. Some urged the girls to continue wearing the veil no matter what; others pointed out that the veil was a personal choice not an obligation. They are equally divided today. Muslim organisations in France, concerned about their relationship with the government, are not ready to defend the two students from Aubervilliers. Even a body like the Union of Islamic Organisations in France, which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood and has previously taken up the cause, is unwilling to do so. Is the real issue concealed behind this controversy, as some claim, the discrimination against people of Arab-Muslim origin in France? Many of them live in ghetto-like housing blocks on the edge of French cities, suffering high unemployment and exclusion from French society. France has failed to provide democratic representation to people of North African origin. They have no MPs and just three representatives in the European parliament. Just as allowing the veil in schools or public services is said to threaten republican principles of citizenship, any attempt to act positively to further enfranchise ethnic minorities is seen implicitly as recognition of communities of different backgrounds -- bursting the myth of a culturally homogeneous nation. President Chirac has recognised that the support of millions of Franco-Maghrebi voters helped him to defeat the extreme right Jean- Marie Le Pen of the National Front in the May 2002 presidential elections. He appointed a number of them to minor roles in his administration, but co-opting a few individuals has had little impact on widespread anti-Arab discrimination, particularly against young men. The Stasi Commission, which says its objective is to "lay down clear rules for applying secularism" for confused public officials, has begun to hear evidence. This has ranged from anecdotes about Muslim women rejecting examination by male doctors and veiled pupils bearing medical certificates to get them out of physical education classes, to arguments from the Teachers' Union, FSU, which is against a law imposing secularism. Most teachers believe that any such legislation would be seen as an anti-veil law. But they do favour secularism as "the basic tool for living together", said FSU Secretary-General Gérard Aschieri. Cracks in their position appear around the disagreement of head teachers, the majority of whom favour a law that would allow teachers to sort out "what is religious and what is not". The trade union, Force Ouvrière, which represents many civil servants, was adamant that there should be no discussion, just a ban on the veil in public services and schools. "A sort of fundamentalist secularism", journalist Philippe Bernard called it. The anti-racist organisation, SOS Racisme, is also against a law which it said would "carry the risk of stigmatising" Muslims. A potential obstacle to a law enforcing secularism is the European Court of Human Rights, which could rule that it violates basic freedoms. But the vice president of the court, Paul Costa, has told the Stasi Commission that such a law would not be contrary to the European Declaration of Human Rights because, "In a democratic society the state can limit the freedom to demonstrate religious affiliation by, for example, wearing the Islamic headscarf, if by exercising this freedom the objective of protecting the freedom of others is threatened." He went on, "If you want to ban religious symbols in school you must have a law." Discretionary decisions made by officials like head teachers would be regarded as untenable without legal backing, he added. In May this year a group of intellectuals and activists wrote an open letter opposing exclusion. They argued that secularism laws promulgated at the end of the 19th century govern educational institutions and their practices, not their students. Wearing a veil does not "prevent teachers from teaching, nor pupils or students from studying". It is by excluding a pupil that she is "condemned to repression". The punitive approach of some schools can only "accentuate the injustices which working class youth suffer in the districts where they live, especially those who are children of post- colonial immigration". Veiled pupils, they wrote, are a scapegoat for the problems in French schools: bad behaviour, a high level of truancy, sexist and racist insults and graffiti (anti-Semitic, in particular). It is false to say that the problem is one of a clash of identities -- between France and immigrants, between the Republic and Islam, or between religions -- they said. "The main problems are socio-economic and political: liberalisation of the economy, mass unemployment, instability of employment, growing social control and security-driven policies, racial discrimination and social inequality between men and women," they argued. The case of the two girls in Aubervilliers challenges the stereotype of the submissive Muslim female. Their father is a lawyer of Jewish origin who is secular. He is separated from their Algerian mother with whom the two daughters lived until recently. They now live with their father. Deciding to wear a veil is a form of protest which their father does not agree with, but he does not want to drive a wedge between himself and his daughters. The girls said, "We would never wear it in a country where it was compulsory." A mediator told the press, "The tension that exists concerning Islam is inflaming the situation, leading to all sorts of unfortunate assumptions." Their father protested to the school, "What they have inside their heads is more important than what they put on them."
