Author: Elizabeth Bryant, Chronicle
Foreign Service
Publication: SF Gate
Date: June 7, 2003
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/07/MN284192.DTL
Every morning for two years, Samira
Makhlouf removed her Islamic-style head scarf before entering her public
school in the southeastern French city of Lyon.
When she donned a modest black bandanna,
she was sent home. Finally, in frustration, the Algerian- born student
dropped out at age 16, finishing high school by correspondence.
"Removing my head scarf was like
tearing something away," said Makhlouf, now a 22-year-old theology student
at Lyon University. "I felt my rights were being abridged. There were students
who wore all black and were part of a satanic sect, but nobody bothered
them."
Since then, the controversy over
veils, as the French call head scarves, has become more heated. Calls are
growing to ban veils in public schools, and the issue is dividing many
camps, from politicians to feminists, as well as France's estimated 5 million
Muslims.
"The problem is not so much the
growing number of veils but their significance," Francois Baroin, vice
president of the ruling Union for the Parliamentary Majority, told Le Figaro
magazine.
In France -- home to Europe's largest
Muslim population -- the controversy reflects widespread fear of growing
Islamic fundamentalism. It also pits France's fiercely secular credo against
European Union human rights laws pertaining to freedom of religion.
A recent poll found that more than
one-third of French people want to ban Muslim women from wearing head scarves
anywhere in public, and 49 percent believe the scarves should be forbidden
in schools.
Some French ministers, in addition
to Baroin, have declared their personal opposition to veils in schools,
and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has called for a national debate
on the matter. No less than four parliamentary bills have been proposed
that would forbid public school students from wearings veils, skullcaps
or crosses.
The problem first surfaced in 1989,
when three girls were kicked out of a French school in the northern town
of Creil for wearing head scarves. By the mid- 1990s, educators were fighting
thousands of veil battles annually.
"There isn't just one veil in France
-- there are several," said Francois Gaspard, a sociologist at the School
of Advanced Social Studies in Paris. "There's the veil imposed by the family.
The veil taken on willingly. And the veil that's worn for protection against
boys in tough neighborhoods."
The official response -- murky rules
permitting head scarves in schools so long as they aren't ostentatious
and students don't proselytize -- is no answer, critics say.
"The government must intervene,"
said Juliette Minces, a sociologist who has written a number of books on
the veil and Islam. "Teachers have a hard time with these girls who come
to school wearing the veil, who refuse to attend gym or biology courses,
or won't read Voltaire because he was a nonbeliever."
Hanifa Cherifi, spokeswoman on the
issue for the French Ministry of Education, said more Muslims in France
are donning the veil than ever before.
"It's very obvious on the streets,"
she said. "It was rare to see women veiling 15 years ago. That's no longer
the case."
The government is clearly concerned
at what it regards as this and other signs of a fundamentalist trend among
France's Muslims.
In April, interior minister Nicolas
Sarkozy coaxed long-squabbling Muslim religious leaders to create the country's
first representative Islamic council -- partly as a counterweight to foreign
imams who preach what Sarkozy has dubbed "an Islam of the caves."
But when he reminded a meeting of
conservative Muslims that under French law, women must remove their veils
for driver's license pictures, he was roundly booed.
The new council is already deadlocked
on the head scarf issue, reflecting a larger split between moderate and
conservative Muslims in France.
"Women should be allowed to wear
whatever they want on the streets, but not in public schools or state institutions,"
said Khadija Khali, President of the Union of Muslim Women. "If we allow
that, we're giving the extremists what they want. They preach moderation
publicly, but what they say privately is another matter."
On the other side of the debate
is Noura Jaballah, who heads a group working to help immigrant women fit
into their adopted country. Jaballah's husband is a leading member of the
conservative Union of Islamic Organizations of France.
Her bespectacled 19-year-old daughter,
Alla, began wearing the veil four years ago. Her other daughter, 9- year-old
Sara, is still bareheaded but shyly announces that she will soon follow
suit.
"To me, veiling is a personal choice,"
said Tunisian- born Jaballah, as she poured tea and offered Turkish cookies.
"Islam is new in France, and I can understand the difficulties that can
exist. But this is the country of liberty and human rights. Banning the
veil would be an infringement of personal freedom."
Others agree. Banning veils in school,
they argue, violates constitutional liberties and Europe's human rights
charter, and it may spawn an extremist backlash.
"I can't predict the future," said
Gaspard, the sociologist, who opposes veil legislation. "But banning the
veil may lead to new Koranic schools. And it's unlikely they will teach
French values of secularity. Or about equality between men and women."
