Headscarf ban is judged success as hostility fades

[emad]

September 05, 2005

Headscarf ban is judged success as hostility fades
From Adam Sage in Aubervilliers



FATHIMA stood outside her lycée chatting and joking with friends. She paused briefly to lift a long, beige scarf off her head and then walked into the playground — an excited teenager back in class after the two-month French summer holidays.

Yet a year ago here, at the Lycée Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, the mood was very different.

France’s centre-Right Government had passed a law banning religious symbols from schools and girls such as Fathima were at the centre of a fierce national controversy.

The law applies to all visible symbols, including kippas, turbans and large Christian crosses. But no one ever had any doubt about its main target — the Muslim headscarf that was the focus of a long and bitter struggle between Islamic extremists and the secular state.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1765080,00.html

[riderinthestorm]

1. I hoped it would come out like this

These are children and frankly, as an atheist it does make me uncomfortable seeing children forced to wear religious symbols (remember the law was sparked by many incidents in France of children being forced to wear the headscarf against their will).

Big breath of relief that the anticipated craziness did not manifest itself over this.