A demonstrator holds a banner reading the 8th article of the French constitution, during a protest in Paris on February 7

Additional reporting by Hadi Yahmed, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, February 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Around 1500 people demonstrated in front of the French National Assembly (parliament) Saturday, February 7, against a government bill to ban hijab in state-run schools, as two veiled girls continued their hunger strike.

Several demonstrators carried the red-white-and-blue national flag and some of them wore it around their heads, to symbolize attachment both to their religion and the French republic.

Police said about 900 people took part in the demonstration, though organizers put the figure at more than 10,000.

Some 70 people, mostly hijab-clad women, also took part in a similar protest in the eastern city of Dijon, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

One woman carried a placard inscribed "my grandfather was a road-builder, my father built houses, you haters of Islam seek to destroy me."

Others carried banners reading "Proud to be Muslim and French" and "Positive or Negative, Discrimination is Racism".

The rally was organized by a group called the Movement for Justice and Dignity which is made up of different associations.

Before the protest got underway, a young woman read a statement in the name of the organizers denouncing the draft law.

"The law under preparation... is not only a challenge to basic freedoms but is discriminatory and directly attacks a religion, Islam," Hayat Hamidi said.

Rally organizers have sent a letter to the French parliament calling on legislators not to vote in favor of the mooted bill.

The National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, is scheduled to vote Tuesday, February 10, on a bill to ban "conspicuous religious insignia" from state schools.

President Jacques Chirac, his conservative government and some Socialist opposition MPs claim the bill will preserve the separation of state and religion enshrined in France's constitution.

Some 30,000 French Muslim women, many of them wearing hijab, and men took to the streets of Paris Saturday, January 17, to mark the world hijab day and protest the hijab ban.

Unlike the December protest organized by schoolgirls and attended by around six thousand women, the Saturday protest brought together a myriad of Muslims and non-Muslims from different cross-sections in society.

World capitals also witnessed seas of demonstrators Saturday outside the French embassies and diplomatic missions to protest at the discriminatory planned law.

Hunger Strike

Young Muslim women with headbands in the colors of the French flag (file photo)

Within the context of the ongoing protests, two hijab-clad French veiled girls entered Sunday, February 8, their fifth day of hunger strike.

Hagar Agamy and Sophia Rahim have started their hunger strike Wednesday, February 4, protesting the controversial bill.

In a joint statement published on their own website – launched to mark the strike - the girls said: "The Stasi (former French minister Bernard Stasi) Commission (assigned by Chirac to report on the application of secularism in France) has deprived us from our basic human rights, guaranteed by the 18th article of the International Charter of Human Rights."

The two girls – in their statement entitled "I Need To Know" - further asserted that "every person is entitled to freedom of thinking and religion."

They pressed for "launching dialogue (on the issue), based on the fact that human rights are not limited to one government or one continent, but rather guaranteed to humanity at large."

Poised To Vote

Despite international and domestic opposition, the parliament is likely to approve the proposed bill this week after a deal between Chirac’s ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the opposition Socialists (PS), AFP said.

Socialist deputies promised to back the bill after the UMP accepted two amendments: one allowing for a period of mediation before a pupil is punished for wearing the hijab, and the other setting in place a mandatory review of the law after one year.

The text of the bill makes it illegal to wear clothes or insignia that "conspicuously" display religious affiliation.

Though the law does not state what items would be considered as illegal, Stasi’s recommendations listed "large" Christian crosses, Jewish skull-caps and hijab.

Members of France's 7,000-strong Sikh community have protested after learning that their turban is also likely to be outlawed in the classroom.