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In
the run-up to Parliamentary debate on the bill banning all
“conspicuous” religious signs from being worn at school, the
Masonic allegiances, the Ligue des droits de l’homme (Human
Rights League), Libre Pensée (Free Thought), and the Ligue de
l’enseignement (League for teaching) are facing off against
each other. Such divisions are also affecting these movements
internally.
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Michel
Tubiana of the LDH is considered by many an “Islamoleftist.” |
The
prospect of a law against wearing “conspicuous” religious
signs at school has left the secular camp faced with internal
divisions. The world of militant secularism has seen rifts grow
over the past weeks between partisans and opponents of the bill
now in preparation. At times the split has cut through some
organizations and teaching associations. Michel Tubiana, head of
the Ligues des droits de l’homme (LDH), sees confrontation
emerging from this conflict between “advocates of a form of
secularism reduced to the anticlerical struggle” and those for
whom the new secular battleground has to be lodged on the
“equal rights” issue and the struggle “against forms of
discrimination tainting the social contract.”
Patrick
Kessel, former Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France (GODF),
who joined forces with Jean-Pierre Chevènement for the 2002
presidential campaign, reproaches the bill’s opponents with no
longer taking “secular stances but neocommunitarianist
ones.” He was speaking on behalf of the Comité laïcité République,
which was founded in the wake of the first “hijab scandal,”
occurring in a junior high school in Creil (Oise) in 1989.
Kessel reckons that “if we have reached this point, it’s
because one part of the Left has given up on secularism,” a
turnabout he dates to the 1980s. “The public school system
must become a center for equal rights and equal duties,” he
added.
There
are secularists who stand against discrimination that taints the
Social Contract… |
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Yet
for another former Grand Master of the GODF, criminologist Alain
Bauer, “nobody is in favor of having the hijab worn at school;
everybody is secular, but applies it to different degrees.”
The debate has been waged above all on how to proceed with
banning religious signs and the side effects ensuing from this
act, rather than on the content of the ban per se. “Banning a
student is a disaster for the public education system,” Mr.
Bauer contends.
Mr.
Tubiana acknowledges that his hostility toward the bill is not
unanimously approved by the LDH. Broadly speaking, mobilizing
the secular world against the law has been hampered by
initiatives from Islamic groups - the French Muslim Party, most
notably. Such was the case with the protest march held in Paris
on Saturday January 17. “To picture yourself amidst
undesirable types tends to chill the fervor,” admits Tubiana.
Nonetheless he says he has had enough of “the violence and
anathema the debate has triggered.” His hard-line stance has
earned him the nickname of “Islamoleftist.” But he remains
critical of the Socialist Party’s position, which has declared
itself favorable to a law banning “apparent religious signs,
whether political or philosophical, from being worn at all
public school establishments.” (Le Monde, November 13,
2003)
The
Jean Zay Circular
…and
there are “militant” secularists who take the hijab crisis as an
anticlerical struggle. |
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If
Jean-Michel Ducompte, head of the Ligue de l’enseignement, has
distanced himself from the LDH and MRAP’s positions, and
considers the Stasi report as “up to 90%” positive, he still
believes that “enacting a bill is not the right thing to
do.” Internal opposition to the Ligue’s official line
remains that of a minority, in his view. But some initiatives
have been discreetly stalled. This was the case for the “Islam
and Secularism” commission, which had associated Tariq
Ramadan, the controversial intellectual, to its work. It was
suspended from the Ligue’s auspices at the end of 2000.
(Today, the LDH and Le Monde diplomatique are its co-titularies).
“Mr. Ramadan has informed us on how his stances have changed
since our work together,” confirmed Mr. Ducompte, “and we
have taken account of this.” “But he doesn’t belong to our
group,” he went on to specify.
More
unexpected is the anticlerical militants’ refusal to seek
specific legislation-on completely other grounds. “When Chirac
speaks of secularism, it’s a fake job,” observes Christian
Eyschen, General-Secretary of the Fédération nationale de la
libre pensée (French Libre Pensée). This organization
advocates re-activating the contents of a circular published by
Jean Zay, education minister during the Front Populaire
government (1935-38). It “banned all proselytism and religious
signs from the public school system.”
“Locking
Up the Women”
“[T]he
lines of our culture are based on women’s liberty and equality.”
-
Marie-France Picart |
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Many
of secularism’s protagonists, most of whom appeared at the
Stasi commission hearings, circulate between Masonic
organizations, associations and allegiances, which thus ends up
blurring the picture. Mr. Ducompte, for instance, had been
approached for the position of Grand Master of the GODF. It was
finally awarded to Bernard Brandmeyer in September 2003. Within
this allegiance, France’s largest support for the bill has not
been unanimously approved. Moreover, the stances of the Grand
Orient leaders have themselves evolved. They have shifted from
hostility toward a law that risked stigmatizing Muslims alone,
to feeling the “need to legislate,” as expressed today by
Mr. Brandmeyer. A year ago, the Grand Orient pledged its
opposition to a law dealing exclusively with the hijab. Mr.
Bauer preferred having the 1905 law applied which separates
Churches from State. He had also pled for extending it to the
“lost territories of the Republic”: Mayotte, Guyana and
Alsace-Moselle, all of which have been given special
dispensation in matters of collective worship.
The
Grande Loge féminine de France (GLFF-Women’s Grand Lodge of
France) was the first one to break with consensus during the
275th anniversary celebrations of Freemasonry, held in Lyon on
June 26, 2003. On that occasion, the Grand Mistress,
Marie-France Picart, refused to endorse any distinctive signs
from being worn at school. During the Stasi commission hearings
on Freemason allegiances, Mrs. Picart kept arguing that “the
lines of our culture are based on women’s liberty and
equality.” She even suggested distinguishing the question of
the hijab from that of other religious signs. “Locking up
women in the hijab must not be made ordinary,” she commented
today. In October, greeted along with ten other allegiances by
Parliament’s information panel on religious questions at
school, headed by the president of the French National Assembly,
Jean-Louis Debré, Marie-Françoise Blanchet, Grand Mistress of
the GLFF since September 14, 2003, is apparently still the only
leader to request “strong wording” for the bill.
Last
fall, most other allegiances, the GODF foremost among them,
ended up rallying to the idea of a bill. Does the proposed
bill’s wording respond to the expectations of all Masons? Mr.
Bauer still has his doubts. If he is “quite agreed” on the
Stasi report, he adds that “we had the choice of having very
short wording and a big law,” but that “a medium-length law
has been opted for. For the time being, everything remains at an
incantatory level, with wording that has not solved very
much.”
*Translated
for IslamOnLine by Norman Madarasz, from Le Monde,
under the title “Law Banning Hijab From French Public School
System Divides the Secular Camp,” January 16, 2004.
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