Chiraq bans Muslim head scarves in State Schools

Best friends often point out the warts

I must congratulate you on your recent posts. Especially since you write in English...thanks.

I'm against Church bells deafening me on a Sunday morning too.

Of course all would be solved (certainly in Holland) if the school uniform for girls reverted to head scarves long skirts and clogs. I'm sure it would be very popular among the Dutch youth of today. Happy weekend.

Noone has yet offered a single reason why wearing a headscarf would make a Muslim girl less able to follow class or read a study book or participate in a group discussion.

The headscarf is a symbol, of course - a symbol of religiousness, and more specifically of a certain interpretation of that religiousness. It is emphatically not necessarily the symbolism projected on to it by the critical onlookers.

Again, you (but that's nothing personal, everybody in this argument does it all the time) make an immediate link with Afghanistan, Taliban, burqa. Honestly. Compare the often vocal young girls in France with a headscarf that barely covers their hair, and the ghosts of women facelessly wandering the Kabul streets three years ago in their prison of cloth. I cant explain just how aggravating the automatic and incessant equation of the two must be. Imagine being a mainstream Anglican, and every secular person, all the time, pointing at the cross on your necklace and pontificating about the evil of Pat Robertson, the TV evangelists, and bible-thumping hate speech and how this cross is the symbol of all that and should therefore be stopped to save the country from christian fundamentalism!

if a school wants its students to look a certain way, fine, it'd be a consistent choice. They should do that instead of singling out, from all the identity designators involved in people's dress, only the Muslim thing,

Next Target in the French Headgear Debate: The Bandanna

PARIS, Jan. 20 — And now for the bandanna ban.

The proposed French law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools was initially interpreted to include Islamic headscarves, Jewish yarmulkes and large Christian crosses. Those were the three items singled out last month in a speech by President Jacques Chirac and in a report by a blue-ribbon commission on religion and the state.

Then the issue of the turban worn by Sikhs was raised, as France's tiny Sikh community protested that its boys would quit school before removing their turbans.

Today, Luc Ferry, the Minister of National Education, went further. He told the National Assembly's legal affairs committee that any girl's bandanna that is considered a religious sign (as opposed to a fashion statement, presumably) will also be banned.

During the two-hour debate on the proposed ban, lawmakers wanted to know why the draft law was worded to ban "ostensibly" religious symbols and not everything that is "visible."

Mr. Ferry explained that the wording afforded the state the ability to broadly interpret what constitutes a religious symbol and prevent the possible subversion of the law. That's where the bandanna came in.

"If we had chosen the word `visible,' we could have seen the appearance of other signs,' " Mr. Ferry said.

For that reason, he explained, "The bandanna, if it is presented by young girls as a religious sign, will be forbidden."

He also contended that hairstyles or the wearing of certain colors could be a source of manipulation. "Signs could be invented using simple hairiness or a color," he said. "Creativity is infinite in this regard." [..]

Neither man gave a definition of what constitutes a religious bandanna, how teachers would decide what was an "ostensible" sign of religion or how the new law would be implemented.

Asked to define a bandanna, an official assigned to deal with press inquiries in the ministry, said: "There is no definition. It will be left to the discretion of the heads of schools."

The Larousse dictionary defines a bandanna as "a small cotton square of lively colors, usually worn as a scarf."

Asked about the bandanna, Catherine Colonna, Mr. Chirac's spokesman, said, "The future law must not allow people to bypass it the way certain individuals and groups already seem certain to do." She stressed that dialogue between school administrators and students would be required before punitive steps are taken.

Indeed, in an interview in today's issue of the popular tabloid Le Parisien, Mohamed Bechary, president of the National Federation of Muslims of France, a large Muslim organization, asked, "{Who will define what is ostensible and what is not?" He said he recommended "the discreet wearing of the scarf be it a bandanna, a cap or a hat."

Other leaders of local Muslim communities in France have also advised female students to find ways around the ban by wearing a head covering that could be interpreted as a fashion statement rather than a symbol of Islam.

Despite the existence for a national curriculum for all French public schools, there is no national dress code. It is left up to the discretion of each school to decide whether to allow such displays as body piercing, baseball caps, visible thongs or spaghetti straps, for example.

As for religious symbols, since 1992 the wearing of head scarves has been allowed only if it is not "aggressive or proselytizing." But individual school directors decide.

In its current draft form, the law states that in public schools, "Signs and dress that ostensibly show the religious affiliation of students are forbidden." [..]

As fashion, bandannas in France have tended to follow the American lead. Traditionally red and white or blue and white print and a symbol of the American West, they became an accessory among rap musicians and in inner city street culture some years ago.

Although some ready-to-wear designers have used bandannas in their shows over the years, such common street fashion has not been on display in the current haute couture shows in Paris. The long-haired fashion designer John Galliano, however, wears a signature bandanna tied pirate-style at the back of his neck.

Seems to me there is only one solution...bring back school uniform. It saves a lot of argument.