French President Jacques Chirac ignored strong criticism from leaders of France’s six million Muslims on Wednesday and called for legislation barring the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious signs from state schools.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith called the president’s decision ”disastrous”. It is afraid that this and other steps to restrict Islamic practices will worsen race relations.
Chirac is trying to end a dispute that has gone on for more than 10 years, during which several Muslim pupils have been banned from classes for wearing the hajib.
His announcement was accompanied by a call for a strong reinforcement of secularism throughout the public service, confirming an integral part of republican thinking dating back to the the French Revolution.
The proposed legislation is seen as the most popular reform the president has sponsored since he was first elected in 1995.
Wednesday’s opinion polls showed 69% of voters in favour of a ban on the conspicuous display of Islamic headscarves, Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps in schools and the public services and opposed to the introduction of public holidays to celebrate Muslim and Jewish feasts. Two thirds of left-wing and National Front voters approved the moves, and 75% of the centre right.
Chirac said that his conscience had persuaded him that ”clothing and signs which conspicuously show membership of a religion must be forbidden in schools”, adding that the state system, where the teaching of religion is banned, ”must remain secular”.
The ban was recommended by a commission appointed by Chirac during the summer to consider the issue.
The president said that ”discreet signs” of religious affiliation, such as the cross, the hand of Fatima and the star of David, should be allowed. But he has left it to Parliament to decide how big these can be before they contravene the ban.
Although Chirac included Christianity and Judaism, most of his 35-minute address to an invited audience of 400 community leaders at the Elysée Palace was implicitly aimed at curbing the spread of fundamental Islam.
A government watchdog will be set up to control any drift away from secularity, and legislation will be introduced to reinforce sexual equality in all areas: an indirect reference to Islamic opposition to feminism.
”We must be vigilant against any backward movement,” the president added .
Among the practices he wants banned is women’s refusal to be treated by male doctors in public hospitals.
His decision on schools is unlikely to dampen the headscarf controversy, even though the only Muslim woman in the government, Tokia Saifi, who oversees sustainable development, said she was in favour of the ban.
The strongest endorsement on the left came from the former families minister Ségolène Royale, a potential presidential candidate, who said moderate Muslims must oppose traditionalists who ”encouraged the headscarf as a method of imposing their life style on women”.
”We have been too tolerant in the past,” she added.
One teaching union called it ”a setback for dialogue”.
The main concern will be the hostile attitude of Muslim leaders.
The imams’ council said they had not been consulted on ”a purely religious matter” and would ”oppose legislation by every legal means as an anti-constitutional attack on personal freedom. — Guardian Unlimited Â