alexist

I haven't liked this idea since it was proposed, and the comments on the BBC Have Your Say forum have not only failed to change that, they just make me shake my head at how damn ignorant people are.

First there's the question of principle. I don't like the French conception of laïcité, at least as it's being interpreted here. I'm in favor of government secularism and keeping religion out of school. I don't agree, though, that secularism precludes all public religious expression. To me it means governmental neutrality. The French laïcité is almost a religion in itself.

I understand the nature of laïcité, as brought up by apologists for the ban. It’s a response to Catholic domination of the country, just as the American "separation of church and state” arose from the variety of Christian groups that came to settle here. But that isn’t the real issue. What this is about is France’s failure to cope with multiculturalism. For centuries, France has denied it exists. First it denied its existence in relation to minority groups within the country (such as Bretons) and then to post-colonial immigrants. The official line is “we are all French”, and that immigrants should integrate. Statistics on race and religion aren’t even collected.

Officially, the law bans all religious symbols. But in reality, it targets Muslims. Who was bothered by crosses or kippot before? (And the latter is a non-issue: almost any Jewish boy who is religious enough to wear a kipa full time is enrolled in a Jewish school, so he can have religious studies--this is true all over the world, not just in France.) (Although it could descend into a grotesquely amusing farce if such a ban were ever widened past schoolchildren. Observant Jewish women cover their heads as well, once they’re married. What would the authorities do? “Oh, you’ve just had chemotherapy, so your wig is OK. But you, you’re Orthodox, so take it off.”) In practical terms, I’m afraid it will backfire. Many French Muslims already feel alienated by the state, which increases the attraction of radical Islam. How much more attractive will it become if the government targets Islam? For girls who are from traditional families, being allowed to wear the hijab in school is a measure of freedom. Their parents might not let them go to school at all without it. The law will probably increase the number of private Muslim schools in France, thereby lessening integration.

Girls don’t just wear the hijab because their parents make them. Many choose to. Two of the girls kicked out of school for refusing to take theirs off are the daughters of a non-practising Muslim and an atheist Jew. I’m a feminist, and I don’t believe any woman should be forced to cover her head, but I find it incredibly patronizing for Western women to try to tell Muslim women they’re being oppressed by a square of cloth on their heads. Muslim (and Orthodox Jewish) women have a point when they retort that we’re just as oppressed by modern fashion and standards of beauty.

It’s not easy for countries and newcomers to adapt to each other. The United States has been doing it for centuries, and we’re still working it out. But there I do believe it’s a mutual process. Immigrants need to adapt to their new countries, and those countries need to learn how to meet the needs of a changing population (and, lest you get the idea I’m completely slamming the French, some places in France have quietly done so; the Economist went to one). You can’t simply say to immigrants, “fit in, be French/British/American”. And it certainly doesn’t work when people don’t even understand each other. There were people on the BBC saying “it’s just a scarf, you can take it off for school”. They didn’t understand that the hijab isn’t like wearing a cross; it’s a religious obligation.