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French Teachers’ Strike Rekindles Hijab Controversy
PARIS, March 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies)- A strike in a French school by teachers protesting Muslim schoolgirls wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf has once again sparked controversy about the possibility of a multi-cultural society within a secular system.
Study resumed Tuesday, March 26, at the school north of Paris, following a four-day strike by the French teachers who refused to do their work because a number of Muslim schoolgirls refused to take off their head coverings saying, “Our religion commands us to wear hijab.”
The teachers view the Muslim girls’ practice of their right to wear hijab as part of French Muslims’ taking pride in and confirming their Islamic roots.
“They [Muslims] feel rejected and persecuted in France and seek to show their solidarity with Muslims in other parts of the world,” said the French geography teacher at Lycee Lunar De Vincent School.
“We are here to teach citizens of the future whom we hope will become part of the society, be they Muslims, Jews or Catholics,” said the physics teacher. “We insist the school remains neutral.”
The French law reflects the majority’s viewpoint: immigrants should become an indivisible part of the French culture, not form closed ethnic groupings.
However, teachers and unions representing Muslims in France say Muslim youths are increasingly turning towards Islamic appearance in an attempt to distinguish themselves from a system that treats them as aliens.
“Muslim students in France usually feel persecuted,” said the teachers’ union representative. “The Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation has rendered Muslim youths more insistent than ever on their religious identity.”
Muslims in France, who number four to five million, complain from increased segregation and sarcasm in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Veiled Muslim schoolgirls, who had earlier been expelled from school for wearing head coverings, filed a lawsuit and were able to return to their school. However, no national decision has been taken in this respect to guarantee the same right for other Muslim schoolgirls in France.
The case in the Lycee is quite simple, though.
“I wear hijab because I’m a Muslim,” said Soad. “The problem is not about this piece of cloth that covers my head; the problem lies in the bias that says I’m not allowed to wear it.”
The crisis in the school started when a 17-year-old girl was expelled in January 2002 for her refusal to take her hijab off.
French teachers went on strike last week after civil authorities ruled that the girl must be allowed back to school. They resumed work only after a compromise solution that forces Muslim girls to wear a lighter head cover more in the western fashion.
Hijab in France sparked much controversy all throughout the past decade until a law was passed that commits schools to respecting religious freedoms and school children to respecting the state’s secular system.
But the hijab crisis resurfaced after two French schoolgirls converted to Islam and started wearing the head covering ordained by their religion.
Though the French Constitutional Council – the highest judicial authority in France – passed in 2000 a law that stipulates there is no contradiction between hijab and the laws of the French Republic, the controversy still persists in political and popular circles.
A school affiliated with the French Embassy in Alexandria, Egypt, has notably prevented Azza Amr Mohammad Saad, a preparatory student, from going to school because she wears hijab. The school claimed there was no agreement between the Egyptian Ministry of Education and the French Government that forces French schools in Egypt to respect Islamic teachings and traditions.
Islam is the second religion in France after Christianity. Muslims in France total four to five million.
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