Chirac Proposes Ban on Head Scarves

President Jacques Chirac proposed a law Wednesday to ban Muslim head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes in public schools, stepping into a divisive cultural conflict by reaffirming the secularism at the core of the French national identity.

The proposal follows months of political debate and increasing tension in schools, hospitals and other public institutions as religious practices, primarily those of a fast-growing Muslim community, clash with the secular tradition of the French state.

Although the president said France must work harder to integrate Muslims, he said the time has come to reassert the separation of religion and state to defend tolerance, women’s rights and national values.

“School is a republican sanctuary that we must defend to preserve the equality of acquisition of values and knowledge, the equality of boys and girls,” Chirac said in a televised speech from the presidential palace. The proposed law is needed “to protect our children, so that our youth are not exposed to the ill winds that separate, that divide, that pit one against another.”

Chirac, a cautious political veteran, has cultivated ties with the Arab world. His opposition to the war in Iraq enhanced his image with French Muslims, about 10% of the population.

But Wednesday he ventured onto terrain where French politicians tend to be uncomfortable: the harsh, immigrant-dominated, working-class neighborhoods that, as he acknowledged, can breed lawlessness, Islamic extremism and resentment of the state.

The president’s initiative has a political angle, commentators said.

The rightist National Front is the foremost challenger to his center-right party in coming regional elections, according to polls.

A firm stance on a hot cultural issue will help blunt the appeal of the Front, whose nationalistic campaign emphasizing issues related to crime, immigration and Islam propelled it into the presidential runoff election last year.

In addition to the proposed law, which is expected to pass parliament and could go into effect by September, in time for the new school year, Chirac laid out a plan to defend secularism in the private sector. He said the government should assist it in establishing appropriate regulations for religious symbols and customs in the workplace, though he did not provide details.

The response was mixed in a nation whose Muslim population numbers more than 5 million. France has the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Western Europe.

Muslim leaders said they feared that their community, already confronting racism and socioeconomic woes, would be further stigmatized and alienated.

“This is a version of secularism that excludes, a version of secularism that limits religious expression to the maximum,” said Fouad Alaoui, secretary- general of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, in televised comments after the president’s speech. “This is a state that is afraid of religion.”

Despite France’s rapid demographic change, the president made it clear that he rejects the social model, associated with the United States and Britain, wherein governments recognize and deal with groups based on ethnic and religious differences and accommodate their disparate identities and demands.

The French approach, on the contrary, envisions total integration by an impartial, egalitarian state that aspires to tolerance by ignoring distinctions of race, creed or origin.

In 1789, the French Revolution did away with a monarchy allied with the Roman Catholic church. The landmark law separating church and state was passed in 1905 and established a secular republic assuring all types of religious expression.

“The danger is division, discrimination, confrontation,” Chirac said, declaring that unnamed “societies structured around communities are often full of unacceptable inequalities. [The community-based model] will never be the choice of France.... I refuse to engage France in that direction. It would sacrifice its heritage there. It would compromise its future there. It would lose its soul there.”

Chirac based his proposal on a well-documented report last week by a special commission that depicted a “guerrilla assault” on the secular state, a fundamental concept in French history. The commission of notables and experts, appointed by the president, worked for months conducting interviews and holding public hearings.

The commission reported that many public schools have become cultural hot spots where Muslim students and families question the authority of women educators, forbid girls to play sports, assault Jewish students and disrupt classes about historical issues such as the Holocaust.

Personnel in public hospitals told the commission about Muslim men demanding that only women doctors treat their wives and daughters, and about other patients, whose ethnicity was not identified in the report, refusing to be treated by doctors “because of their perceived religion,” according to the report.

The report described an alarming rise in sexist abuse of girls in schools and housing projects where young men, threatening ostracism and violence, intimidate girls into wearing veils and other religious garb. Islamic extremism -- Chirac referred Wednesday to “fanaticism gaining ground”-- contributes to a vicious cycle of discrimination and alienation of jobless youths of Muslim descent, who retreat into the refuge of hard-core Islam, according to the report.

“It was important that he did this now,” said Antoine Sfeir, an expert on Islam who edits the Cahiers de l’Orient periodical here. “It had become necessary. It’s unquestionable that there is a rise in Islamic extremism.”

Although head scarves and other symbols are technically not permitted in schools, the lack of an explicit prohibition had led to complaints from educators and to a number of disputes around the nation.

The popularity of conservative Islamic garb, with girls as young as 10 now donning veils, emanates not from older immigrants but from a frustrated, French-born third generation, said an intelligence official who monitors the Islamic community.

Some older Muslims blame young extremists for Chirac’s proposal, which had been widely expected after the recent debate, the official said.

“They say that if the youth weren’t so aggressive, it wouldn’t have come to this,” the intelligence official said. “You have more and more girls wearing veils or chadors. And it’s not their parents, it’s their brothers who are demanding that they put it on.”

Chirac’s legislation would prohibit highly visible religious garb or symbols including the Islamic head scarf, Jewish yarmulke or large crucifixes in schools. But students could still wear small Stars of David and other discreet religious symbols, he said.

Critics said Chirac could end up accentuating the ethnic and religious divisions he lamented.

“I heard a speech with a very strong political connotation reaffirming a certain number of principles of open and tolerant secularism,” said Mouloud Aounit of MRAP, a human rights group.

But if “a law excludes a number of girls, they will be deprived of the possibilities offered by the school system.”

Chirac insisted that he understood the difficulties and needs of French Muslims, citing a liaison council his government created to help integrate a faith whose rapid growth forces many worshipers into improvised mosques in trailers or abandoned factories.

“Muslims in France must have the possibility of houses of worship that permit them to practice their religion in dignity and tranquillity,” Chirac said. “Despite recent progress, it must be recognized that much more remains to be done in this area.”