Today the Headscarf, Tomorrow the Cross
President Chirac's proposal to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols in French schools and public institutions is a blatant, arrogant and insensitive act of religious persecution. The Muslim response in many countries, and in Britain last weekend, has been to demonstrate against it. And rightly so. Christians, Jews, Hindus and all those who value liberty should stand with them.
The likely impact of such a ban will be that people whose faith calls on them to wear some outward expression of loyalty will not apply for jobs in public institutions, and will try to send their children to independent schools. In effect, the law would be profoundly divisive and discriminatory and would lead to a climate in which it will be possible to reject people of religious faith in any area of employment.
To the naked eye, this looks like a clear infringement of human rights. So much for liberté, egalité and fraternité, which only seem to work if your secular 'faith' concurs with that of the state. Still, if the law is passed, left unchallenged in the French courts and allowed to stand by the European Court, it may well, in a decade or so, find itself slithering into British praxis.
Importantly, the ban reveals the intolerance and paranoia at the heart of secularism. This is also clear in Giscard d'Estaing's attempt to exclude any mention in the pre-amble to the European Constitution of the Christian contribution to European culture - as if it never happened. What are they afraid of?
Still, if a headscarf is such a potent threaten to the hegemony of French secularism, let us all wear them! The story goes that when the Nazis decreed that the Jews of Denmark should display a yellow star, King Christian X urged the whole population to wear one, and did so himself as he rode his horse through Copenhagen. Alas, it's a myth, but if I'd have been alive in 1943, then, as the son of a Jew, I would have been profoundly grateful for such a king and such a people.
Will we speak up for the Muslims or simply wait until it is our turn, and it is too late?
Mark Greene
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