Muslim school girls brace for fresh challenges in France

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Paris Correspondent

PARIS, June 23 (IslamOnline.net) - A famous French writer said on Sunday, June 22 that the recent controversy about Hijab (Islamic headscarf) has been triggered by whom he called the Islamophobic lobby.

"The lobby, formed after the September 11 hijack attacks on the United States, attempt to raise the issue of preventing Muslim students from wearing Hijab in schools to mislead the public opinion and win over more supporters," said Xavier Ternisien, an expert on Islamic affairs and a writer in Le Monde daily.

In an interview with IslamOnline.net, Ternisien noted that some members of the lobby authored a number of books against the Islamic religion after the September 11 attacks, blamed by Washington on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

"They attempt to deliberately mix the spread of violence and racism in schools and the presence of Hijab-donned girl students there," he said.

Not a supporter for Muslim girls wearing Hijab in schools as it exposes them to pressures and hate waves, the French writer said, "what really does matter for those girls is to integrate in the French culture, get education and then work."

But, Ternisien noted, if a law is enacted to ban wearing Hijab in schools it should necessarily include a similar action on all other religious symbols in the rigid secular country.

"Otherwise, we would slip down to mayhem of racism," the French writer warned.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said earlier in May that a law to ban Muslim girls from wearing Hijab would be possibly issued in an effort to allow secularism restore its strength in the European country, drawing large outcries among the more than five million Muslims in the country.

Asked why the controversy focused on the Islamic headscarf rather than on the Christian and Jewish symbols, Ternisien said that "Hijab is much more perceived as well as it is imposed by fathers on their minor girls."

Two Secular Trends

Ternisien said there are two secular trends in France, one standing against symbols of all religions and the other Islamophobic calling for a specific ban on Hijab.

Debate on Hijab has escalated widely recently after the establishment of the first French Islamic Council and the French prime minister's declaration of the possible ban.

A hundred French secular personalities, including academics, philosophers, human rights activists and representatives of women organizations, issued a petition on May 24, to assure the right of Muslim women and girls to wear Hijab, contending that secularism opposes segregation.

“Issuing a law that prohibits Hijab represents a punishment that will deprive thousands of Muslim French girls the right of education, as it is considered an exposed call for segregation,” the petition stated.

France is a rigidly secular state, and it regulates its relations with the other main religions through official bodies of the type it is finally creating for Islam.

In spite of their large numbers, Muslims complain that the French refuse to accept the Muslim presence and consider Islam an alien force which "should be eliminated."

Struggling for more rights and acknowledgement of Islam, most Muslim families were confronted last year with a new policy, which makes the abortion-pill freely available to teenage school-girls, "making illicit sexual activity routine and subverting parental authority," something acting against the Islamic Law or Sharia'.