A radio news story about a Luton 15-year-old who's taking her school to court for banning her from wearing the long "jilbab" dress worn by some Muslims -- also told at the children's BBC ('Girl fights for religious rights') -- reminds me that I'm often asked what a "Franglish" thinks of Chirac's "headscarf ban".
It took more thought than I expected, but I'm strongly against it.
Outside France, this legislation to keep religion right out of the secular education system has already been widely criticised, as Tom Heneghan reports (Al-Jazeerah):
"The overwhelming 494-36 vote for the anti-veil law on its first reading by the National Assembly on Tuesday showed legislators saw the ban as a way to uphold those traditions and defend France's secular system.
It did not look that way to many Arab and European commentators reacting to the law, which will bar emblems of faith such as headscarves, Jewish skullcaps or large Christian crosses from public classrooms from September."
Foreigners who see the French move as an aberration and an incomprehensible repression of personal freedom could find it hard to grasp the strength of popular feeling that lies behind last week's remarkably one-sided vote in favour of the ban.
Several of my French friends find my opposition to the dress code as difficult to understand as outsiders do what they see as an attack on human rights.
The many reasons for this include the historical fact that the French Revolution -- and "liberty, equality, fraternity" and all that -- was as much about breaking the grip of the Roman Catholic church on the country as overthrowing the monarchy that went hand in hand with the religious establishment.
For more than a century, France has been a profoundly secular country, politically speaking, and many of its people have a gut opposition to organised religion as a social force.
The Islamic faith of the millions of north and other Africans who live and work here is respected and upheld in law and often in practice, but deep-rooted prejudice also exists and is part of the cause of the relative strength of France's outrageous extreme right.
Political relations have never been easy between France and Algeria since the mainly Muslim country won independence in 1962 after a savage war, and you see echoes of this in French daily life, where many immigrants still feel different and excluded -- though this situation has changed considerably, for the better, in the 24 years I've lived here.
As a colonial power, France took a very different approach from Britain. Over a long period before independence came to the country's colonies, some -- including Algeria -- were considered an extension abroad of the French state, sending their own members of parliament to sit in the mainland national assembly.
The idea, among those who had "progressive" notions, was social and political integration. The colonised were expected to understand and appreciate the benefits of France's culture and revolutionary heritage and become a part of it.
That, on the whole, they didn't and wanted to rule themselves caused genuine bewilderment among some French intellectuals, writers, teachers and philosophers.
Four decades on, French supporters of the Chirac ban can't see it as a crackdown on civil liberties and human rights, but regard it, on the contrary, as a normal step, a part of the building of a more tolerant society, in that it protects women and girls in particular from what are seen as the deeply intolerant, socially constricting regulations of fundamentalist Islam.
Thus, what goes for Muslims who want to live here must also go for Jews, Christians and now the French Sikhs, who got forgotten in the haste to get this law on the statute books and pose the most thorny problem with their opposition to haircuts and the requirement to wear turbans.
The outcome is a mess! Writing in 'The Guardian' on February 5, with some insight into mutual incomprehension and memories of the bomb blasts that have wreaked disaster in Paris several times since I moved here, Tim Garton Ash took a perfectly plausible look at what could just happen in the next five or six years:
"At last, we have the inquiry we need: a full, independent inquiry into the Paris bombing of 2009. As we all know, in that appalling attack, a large area between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the River Seine was devastated by a small nuclear bomb, detonated by suicide bombers linked to the Algerian-based Islamic Armed Group (GIA). Some 100,000 people were killed or wounded. The supremely cultured heart of one of the most beautiful cities in the world was reduced to smouldering ruins. None of us will ever forget the photograph of Rodin's statue of Balzac, looming as if in tortured grief above the half-dismembered but recognisable corpses of a young couple on the Boulevard Raspail."
This little exercise in future history ('Who was to blame?', Guardian Unlimited) is worth digesting as a thoughtful projection of the state of today's paranoid world into what could happen.
I'm opposed to the ban not because of fear that it could sow the seeds of further hatred or because I share an alarmist view of its possible outcome. I can even see some excellent reasons for imposing it, which Garton Ash mentions. I'm deeply hostile to extremism of all kinds and very wary of any organised religion which imposes its "laws" on believers in a misguided and often downright wrong interpretation of the basic tenets of the faith at issue.
However, Jacques Chirac and Britain's Tony Blair, though often supposedly far apart on the political spectrum, both frequently make the same very serious mistake, and I see little difference between the headscarf ban here and the Labour government's anti-foxhunting drive the other side of the Channel. Both are symptoms of the increasing incursion by politicians into areas of public life which are absolutely none of their business.
Both are manifestations of the 'Big Brother' mentality that genuinely thinks it knows best, that governments have the right to determine social behaviour where they would do far better to leave well alone. The long-term impact of such measures, both a matter of immediate political expediency, has not been considered and thought out.
I have other French friends who share my opposition to the "headscarf ban" because they see it as unwarranted interference in social and ethical issues that should be no part of the political domain but instead debated and resolved by the parties directly concerned. The ban will do nothing to make the lives of French teachers any easier, and it is bound to backfire as a supposed attempt to promote secular values and increase social integration.
My sympathy for the 15-year-old in Luton is limited, nevertheless. In her case, from what I heard this morning, the school has already made sensible concessions regarding an intelligent compromise on dress code. This kid is not exercising her "rights", she is asserting her "individuality" to a degree which is simply impractical and ultimately anti-social. There are undoubtedly plenty of other ways in which she can "be herself" without waging war on false premises, that other great mistake of our times whose outcome will profoundly affect us all for far, far longer than the passing political leaders of the day are willing to envisage.
It's not because very large numbers of people insist on behaving like sheep that control-freak governments have the slightest right -- let alone duty -- to treat them as such by legislating for social changes which are far beyond their grasp, competence and real ability to affect.
Such governments are generally long since gone and merely a part of the historical record by the time humanity is reaping the cruel harvest of the dangerous seeds they have sown.
1:08:20 PM link 
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