PARIS, May 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Symposiums on Islam and hijab (head scarf) inundated the French capital Paris recently, as divergent opinions on hijab was the hallmark of the talk, a leading French newspaper reported Monday, May 19.

A lot of French Muslim women in the northern French city of Lyon held symposiums in their homes to tell the Muslim grown-ups about Islam and the importance of hijab, the French Le Nouvelle Observateur newspaper said.

The Muslim ladies said that it was haram (unlawful) in Islam for a woman to wear cosmetics, make friends with boys, smoke cigarettes and drink alcohols and other issues about which Muslim girls had not the faintest idea, the daily said.

“We help Muslim girls know more about their religion…We provide them with ample room to speak their minds out to tackle all kinds of issues in France with a harsh and clear spotlight on the rules and teachings of Islam,” one of the Muslim female preachers told the Observateur.

One of the recently-held symposiums in Strasbourg, however, witnessed a hot debate on hejab as one of the participants said that “we do not need hejab to prove that we are Muslims…it is enough that out hearts are swollen with faith and Islam.”

But another lady hit back by saying that “I assume you have not read about the importance of hejab for Muslim women…It protects her as if she was a gym. And I dismiss as untrue those ideas that claim that women lose their freedom once they wear hejab…They do not.”

The controversial issue of hejab took centre stage over the past weeks in France as Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, addressing the first French Council for Islamic Religion, said that the government mulled the possibility of passing a new law banning hejab in schools.

On April 19, French Interior Minister Necolai Sarkozy stressed the importance that Muslim women take off their veils while being photographed for issuing identity cards.

He had raised the problem in front of some 15000 French Muslims, half of whom are veiled young women, in

the Borjet conference.“We do not accept that French Muslim women cover their hair while being photographed for identity cards in police stations. Laws related to the Republic should not be violated,” he said.