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Controversy over the law drags on in France
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PARIS,
October 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In the first case
since the activation of the controversial law banning conspicuous
religious symbols, two French Muslim schoolgirls were expelled from
their school in eastern France over hijab.
Dounia
and Khouloude, aged 12 and 13, both in seventh grade, were expelled
Tuesday, October 19, from the Jean Mace school in the eastern French
city of Mulhouse for refusal to take off their hijab, Agence France
Presse (AFP) reported.
“The
disciplinary council has decided to definitively exclude the two
pupils from the school,” Reuters quoted Michelle Feder-Cunin, the
school headmistress as saying.
She
added meetings with the two students to urge them to comply with the
French law had proved futile.
“In
the past two months we have had several meetings with the families and
with these students.”
France
has triggered a controversy by adopting
a bill banning hijab
and religious insignia in public schools that went effective mid
September.
Risking
Expulsion
Around
70 Muslim schoolgirls risk expulsion from school over refusal to take
off their hijab, according to French education minister, Francois
Fillon.
“The
law applies to everybody,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
There
are at present 72 school students within the state school system in
France who are breaking the new law, according to education ministry
figures.
The
father of one of the expelled students said he could not understand
the school decision to shun out his daughter.
“She
was a top student last year, first in her class, she had no problems,
she went to gym class, did everything, was even her class delegate,”
Lazhar Fortas told Reuters.
The
parents of the two Muslim students have eight days to appeal the
school decision.
Islam
sees hijab as an
obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol
displaying one’s affiliations - unlike the symbolic Christian
crucifixes or Jewish Kappas.
Controversy
The
issue of hijab has sparked much controversy in France and worldwide.
On
Saturday, December 6, French President Jacque Chirac antagonized the
around 5-million-strong Muslim community in France describing hijab as
“sort of aggression.”
Former
French Interior and incumbent Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for
his part, has long opposed the law, warning it would provoke a
backlash among Muslims, who would view it as an “insult
and punishment”.
The
US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) dismissed the French move as “discriminatory”.
Early
October, a French Muslim schoolgirl has shaved her head in protest at
the ban on hijab.
Cennet
Doganay, 15, took off her
hijab as she was entering the Louis Pasteur Lycee high school in
Strasbourg, eastern France, only to reveal a bald head.
An
armed group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq kidnapped two
French journalists, Chesnot of Radio France and Malbrunot of Le Figaro
newspaper August 20, demanding the French government to revoke its law
banning hijab in public schools.
