MARSEILLE, France (AP) — With a ban on hijabs for French athletes at the upcoming Paris Olympics garnering international attention, France’s unique approach to “laïcité,” which translates broadly to “secularism,” is increasingly stirring up controversy on fields across the country, from schools to sports.
The fight goes to the heart of how France grapples with the status of religion in public life as well as the integration of its immigrant-origin Muslim population, the largest in Western Europe.
Perhaps the most contentious issue is public schools, where visible signs of faith are banned under policies that seek to foster a shared sense of national unity. This includes the headscarf, which some Muslim women fight as a symbol of oppression while others want to wear it for reasons of piety and modesty.
“It has become a privilege to be allowed to practice our religion,” said Majida Ould Ibat, who had considered leaving Marseille, France’s second-largest city, until she found Ibn Khaldun, a private Islamic school that allowed her children to live freely and allow their faith and studies to flourish.
“We wanted our children to have a good education, with our ideals and values,” Ould Ibat added. She only recently started wearing a headscarf, but her teenage daughter, Minaneh, is not yet ready for it. Her 15-year-old son, Chahid, often prays at his school mosque during breaks.
For Minane, like many young French Muslims, understanding French culture and her spiritual identity has become increasingly difficult. The 19-year-old nursing student has heard people say there is no place for Muslims, even on the streets of multicultural Marseille.
“I ask myself if Islam is accepted in France,” she said from her parents’ apartment. There, a bright orange Berber rug woven by her Moroccan grandmother hangs next to Quranic verses written in Arabic.
Minane also cited the collective trauma that has scarred much of France, targeting schools as evidence that laïcité (pronounced la-ee-see-tay) needs to be strictly enforced. They live in fear of attacks by what many see as Islamist attacks. Prevent radicalization.
Minane vividly remembers observing a moment of silence at Ibn Khaldun in memory of public school teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by Islamic extremists in 2020. A monument to Paty as a champion of French values hangs at the entrance to the Ministry of Education in Paris.
For government officials and most educators, secularism in public schools and other public institutions is essential: they argue that it promotes a sense of belonging to a unified French identity and prevents religiously observant or non-observant people from feeling pressured into religious worship, while at the same time allowing everyone to worship freely in private spaces.
But for many French Muslims and other critics, laïcité exerts just such discriminatory pressure on an already disadvantaged minority, depriving them of the opportunity to live their full identity in their country. -ing
There is widespread agreement that tensions have risen, with growing crackdowns and challenges to France’s approach to religion and integration, leading to sharp polarization.
While there are still only a few dozen public clashes between millions of students, it has become a common sight for girls to replace their headscarves the moment they walk through the doors of their public schools.
“Laïcité laws protect and allow coexistence, but it is becoming less and less easy,” said Isabelle Torretra, principal of a public elementary school whose main gate faces the door of Ibn Khaldun’s small mosque. Told.
She takes on challenges to secularism every day. For example, children in choir class put their hands over their ears because their families told them it’s not good to sing variety songs.
“Students cannot be forced to sing, but teachers tell students they cannot cover their ears out of respect for the instructor and their classmates,” Tretola said. “They come to school to learn the values of the Republic.”
Secularism is one of the four fundamental values enshrined in the French Constitution. While the state explicitly accuses public schools of instilling these values in children, it allows private schools to provide religious instruction as long as they also teach the government’s general curriculum.
Unlike the United States, where the fight over which values should be taught in schools is divided along partisan lines, support for laïcité is nearly universal in France’s political system, though some on the right criticise it as anti-religious and those on the left say it is a vestige of colonialism.
Officials say the ban on displays of religious faith is to avoid threats to democracy that in the 19th century were seen to come from the political influence of the Catholic Church. Today, the government has made fighting Islamic extremism a priority, and secularism is seen as a bulwark against the growing religious influence in everyday life, even in beachwear.
“Public schools are for everyone, so they should behave like everyone else and not put on a show,” said Alan Sexsig, executive director of the Education Ministry’s Council on Secularism. The council has produced a guide for teachers and students, particularly in response to a rise in incidents involving scarves.
“What do we say to a girl who says, ‘I don’t want to wear it because I feel pressured into it?'” she added, and the school is on her side.
For many teachers and principals, strict government rules have helped them cope with the growing challenges. Everything from music to evolution to sexual health has become a new curriculum target, while all public school students receive a “secularism in schools” guide that forbids them from speaking out against faith-based education.
About 40 percent of teachers report self-censorship in the wake of the attack on Paty and another teacher, Dominique Bernard, who was killed by a suspected Islamist extremist last fall, according to Didier Georges, who is in charge of secularism issues for SNPDEN-UNSA, the union that represents more than half of France’s school principals.
Laurent Le Drezen, a school principal in a small town about an hour from Marseille and leader of another education union, SGEN-CFDT, also believes social media is having a negative impact on the growing number of Muslim students who challenge secularism in schools.
“I am a firm believer in laïcité because it contributes to national unity, to national community. It does not negate religion,” Le Dresen said.
From my experience teaching in Marseille’s Quartier Nord district (a run-down suburban area with housing estates populated primarily by families from North Africa), I learned that it’s important to show students that schools won’t corner them just because they’re Muslim. I learned that too.
Sarah Bariki, who has been working with city officials on interfaith issues at Marseille’s Sedre Mosque, said young people are suffering from a very real sense of rejection from France.
“What do they want us to do? Do they want us to see the Eiffel Tower instead of Mecca?” Baliki quipped. Nine out of 10 young women in the area now wear veils, she added, “more for identity than for religion.”
To avoid a vicious cycle, Rabbi Chaim Bendao argued that there should be more (not less) discussion about religion in schools. He runs a small conservative synagogue nearby and hopes to work with an imam to give talks on integration in public facilities, as he routinely does in private facilities.
“Establishing peace requires daily efforts. Speaking in schools is very important,” Ben Dao said. He attended both Ibn Khaldun School and St. Joseph’s, a Catholic school across the street, which also has a large number of Muslim students.
The school’s principal, Cédric Couleur, said private schools have the advantage of allowing students to grapple with questions they might have about God, and that as the son of Mauritian immigrants, the “Republican” school helped him integrate into France. “Within the framework of
“The school welcomed me. It gave me the keys to love this country without having to tell me,” Krull said. “The French state does not recognize whether you are a Christian or a Muslim, a Jew or a Buddhist. It recognizes that you are French.”
But several families in Ibn Khaldun said they chose the private school because it could support both identities, rather than exacerbating all-too-wide doubts about whether being Muslim is compatible with being French.
“When I hear discussions about compatibility, I turn off the television. Fear pervades the world,” said Nancy Chihane, president of the Ibn Khaldun Parent Association.
At a recent spring break, where hijab-wearing girls, their hair blowing in the fierce local wind known as the mistral, and boys mingled, a high school student wearing a headscarf was inspired by Ibn Khaldun. He said changing schools means both freedom and community.
“Everyone understands each other here and we don’t feel left out,” said Asma Abdellah, 17.
Her history and geography teacher, Nouari Yassin, was born in Algeria, which was under French colonial rule until it won independence in a violent struggle in 1962, and grew up in France from the time she was seven months old. His parents would have considered it treason to identify as French in the context of anti-colonialism, but his daughter, a public school student, said she did not know of any other identity. I tell him no.
“We are among the people. We don’t ask that question, but they ask us that question,” Yassin said.
Started in 2009 with 25 students, Ibn Khaldun now enrolls around 400 students as one of the few private Islamic schools contracted by the French government. This means that although they are financially supported, they must follow strict curriculum and behavioral requirements.
Mohsen Ngadzou, the school’s founding director, imam and president of the French Muslim Association, is equally adamant about respecting religious and educational obligations.
He recalls that “there was a big fuss” once when he saw a student wearing an abaya over his pyjamas – student rules prohibit pyjamas, shorts and low-cut clothing.
“I told her I wasn’t ready for classes,” Ngadzu said. “Abaya doesn’t make a woman religious. The important thing is that she feels good about who she is.”
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. and is supported through a collaboration between The Associated Press and The Conversation US. AP is solely responsible for this content.
