France and its Muslims: a hot rentrée?

The start of the school year will rekindle France's impassioned debate about the Muslim headscarf

WHEN French schoolchildren return next week for the first day of the new term, anxious parents will not be the only ones watching carefully at the gate. The start of the school year brings into force a new law, approved earlier in the year, to ban the Islamic headscarf in state schools. The government has promised to clamp down firmly on any pupils who flout it. Yet defiant Islamic groups are calling on Muslim girls to do just that.

When President Jacques Chirac decided last year to push through a law banning “conspicuous” religious symbols and dress in state schools, he hoped to end the confusion about what was allowed, and what not. The original 1905 law that separates church and state, whose 100th anniversary falls next year, was designed to protect schools from religious interference. But whereas that entrenchment of secularism was aimed at the Catholic Church, the recent quarrel has been with Islam.

France is home to Europe's biggest Muslim population, some 4.5m-strong, and a growing number of young girls have taken to wearing the headscarf. Until now, religious symbols in state schools have not been forbidden, so long as they are not “ostentatious”. By hardening that word to “conspicuous” in the new law, and explicitly naming “the Islamic headscarf, the kippa or a crucifix of manifestly excessive size”, the government had hoped to end the argument once and for all.

Not if some groups have their way. Even before the holidays, the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF), a hard-talking lobby group, had called on all Muslim girls to “turn up to school in the dress of their choosing”. The new law, it judged, does not forbid all religious symbols, nor even all visible religious symbols, so there is room for negotiation. The UOIF will support, both morally and legally, any schoolgirl who gets into trouble at school over the headscarf.

A showdown seems likely. Franois Fillon, the centre-right education minister, has promised to be uncompromising in applying the law. “I will personally keep watch, there will be no exception, the republic will be firm,” he has declared. He has also distributed to schools a brochure called “The Republican Idea Today”. It is designed to explain in simple terms such notions as secularism or anti-Semitism (last weekend a Jewish community centre in Paris was burnt down, the latest in a string of anti-Semitic attacks across France, many of them blamed on Muslim youths). The brochure consists of essays by sociologists, philosophers and other intellectuals. The point is to reinforce the idea that the headscarf ban is not aimed at Islam, but reflects broad French principles and traditions.

In theory, there are clear guidelines about what schools should do if the law is flouted. Before suspending or expelling a child, schools must undertake “dialogue” with the pupil, to educate her about secularism. This phase is not, the rules make plain, a time for negotiation. But some Muslim groups are preparing to intervene at this point on behalf of pupils. In a bid to avert trouble, Dalil Boubakeur, the leader of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM) and rector of the Paris mosque, has called on them to be “careful”.

If confusion prevails, this could be what some people want. The conviction among some French officials is that the headscarf row is part of an organised plan by radical Islamic groups to secure a stronger position in France. “They want to use the headscarf ban to create disorder, and promote themselves,” says one. Further demands will follow, such as dispensation for Muslim girls from gym or science lessons. This analysis suggests that many Muslim girls who wear the headscarf do so not for reasons of religious conviction or even teenage rebellion, but under pressure. The ban, and the problems enforcing it, may just be valuable publicity.

The saga has also exposed the risk that the government took when it created the CFCM as an official voice for French Islam. Although the cautious Mr Boubakeur is, for now, its head, harder movements swept elections to its regional branches. The argument was that bringing groups such as the UOIF inside the system would make it harder for them to work against it. But unity has been short-lived. On behalf of the CFCM, Mr Boubakeur has called for the headscarf ban to be respected. The UOIF has broken ranks to defy it. To outsiders, it may look like a fuss over a hairline. To many in France, it is a test of the republic's ability to integrate radical Islam.

The start of the school year will rekindle France's impassioned debate about the Muslim headscarf.

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