“French foreign policy was now in an awkward position,” Villepin

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Paris Correspondent

PARIS, January 23 (IslamOnline.net) – Two weeks before the French Parliament officially begins debate on a ban on hijab and other religious apparels in schools, opposition to the move is rising in an unexpected twist in the divided legislature, according press reports Thursday, January 22.

France has provoked widespread criticism for the ban, with commentators and religious scholars accusing Paris of violating religious freedom and chiefly isolating Muslims in the rigidly-secular country.

Lawmakers begin debating the bill Tuesday, February 3 and vote on it seven days later. A law is expected to be in place for the new school year in September.

Although some MPs had declared that they could not fathom the logic of banning the religious signs, which the French President believed would strengthen secularism, the opposition is now appearing among Jacques Chirac’s own supporters.

Claude Goasguen, deputy leader for Chirac's UMP party in parliament, said he was considering abstaining from the vote on the ban.

Other heavyweights joined the club, as Christine Boutin which said the move would feed sectarianism.

Further to the dismay of Chirac in the anguished debate, the list of opponents from his party is growing, along with members of other parties and ethnic communities originally standing in the NO camp.

Centrist Francois Bayrou denounced the planned ban as “a whiff of oxygen for fundamentalists” who would exploit it to whip up protests.

Socialist parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault said the government's position “is not clear at all”.

The education Minister said Wednesday said the ban would also include beards and bandannas – worn by Muslims – and allow the turbans of Sikhs. The statements left the Muslim community further feeling singled out for discrimination.

Socialist deputy Julien Dray declared: “This is putting a comic face on a very serious issue”.

The division in the parliament is expected to continue unabated, especially after Muslims insist that their hijab is a religious obligation not a symbol that could be easily abandoned.

MP Dominique Dord told Le Monde that the debate over the ban would keep on, but he said that the opponents are no more than 10 per cent inside the legislature.

But the UMP put up defiance against the rising wave of opposition. UMP Secretary General Alain Juppe said withdrawing the ban draft would mean a defeat before the muscle wrestling by religious political groups.

The legislation perceived by many Muslims as discriminatory has sparked protests at home and abroad. Thousands marched in Paris over the weekend, while smaller protests were held from London to Los Angeles and across the Arab world.

French Muslims’ Union, who launched the campaign, warned the ban would diminish chances for integration of Muslims, which constitute the second largest French religious faction in number, with roughly four to five million adherents, or about 7 percent to 8 percent of the French population.

The debate has also angered France's 5000 Sikhs, who have turned to India and international Sikh leaders to help them keep the right to wear their trademark turbans in state schools.

Sikh leaders had threatened their school children would rather drop out rather than abandoning their turbans. Local Christian and Jewish religious leaders have also criticized it.

It prompted Pope John Paul to make a barbed reference last week to "some European countries" that endangered religious freedom, a rare criticism that provoked an equally unusual rebuke from the French official who first proposed the ban.

‘Awkward Position’

In the meantime, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said the planned ban has caused Paris problems with Arab countries and the United States.

Villepin told cabinet colleagues Thursday during a government meeting that the law had put Paris in “a very delicate situation on the international scene," government sources were quoted by Reuters as saying. 

French foreign policy was now in “an awkward position ... towards Arab countries, and also towards the United States,” they quoted him as saying.

Paris enjoys relatively good relations with Arab countries, and efforts are reportedly exerted to chill the thaw with Washington after the Iraq invasion row.

Villepin’s office later denied his private criticism of the controversial government plan to ban Muslim head scarves and other religious apparel in public schools.

Villepin recently defended the looming ban on a tour of the Gulf states, where there have been demonstrations and hostile media reaction against what was seen there as discrimination against France's Muslims.

The U.S. ambassador for religious freedom, John Hanford, voiced misgivings last month, citing Muslims who said the ban went too far.

“We are very concerned that that not be the case," he told reporters in Washington.

The planned ban, which if passed would bar Muslim hijab, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from September, has provoked protests from Islamic leaders and criticism from other religions in France.