From the Stasi Commission to the European Court of Human Rights: L’affaire Du Foulard and the Challenge of Protecting the Rights of Muslim Girls
2007; Columbia University Libraries; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2333-4339
Autores Tópico(s)International Law and Human Rights
Resumopublic schools, wearing of symbols or clothing by which students conspicuously manifest a religious is forbidden. Internal regulations state that initiation of disciplinary proceedings must be preceded by a dialogue with student. --French national law, signed into law March 15, 2004 (1) Wearing a veil, whether we want it or not, is a sort of aggression that is difficult for us to accept. --President Jacques Chirac (2) is more than time that French feminists and officials hold up their own practices to same critical scrutiny they use to examine and judge foreign cultures. For no matter what one thinks about veil, forcing women to take it off is no better than forcing them to wear it, both ways are discriminatory and undemocratic. --Raja El Habti, KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights (3) On March 15, 2004, President Jacques Chirac signed a law that prohibited the wearing of symbols or clothing by which students conspicuously manifest a religious appearance in French public primary and secondary schools. (4) The Minister of Education of France issued a circular, which Conseil d'Etat quickly upheld, (5) clarifying that [t]he prohibited signs and dress are those by which wearer is immediately recognizable with regard to his or her religion, such as islamic [sic] veil, whatever its name, kippah or a crucifix of manifestly exaggerated dimensions. (6) This ban marked latest development in a fifteen-year, ongoing controversy known as l'affaire du foulard--the Headscarf Affair. (7) The affair has proved to be an impassioned debate about integration of Muslims in France, influence of political Islam on French soil, gender equality in Muslim communities, and perceived threat posed by Muslim girls wearing headscarves in school to laicite, a complex and contested term loosely translated as French principle of state secularism. (8) While French ban is phrased generally so as to apply not only to Islamic headscarves but also to Sikh turbans, Jewish yarmulkes, and large Christian crosses, it has had a disproportionate impact on one group of students: Muslim girls. Forty-five of forty-eight students expelled in four months following implementation of ban were Muslim girls who refused to remove their headscarves when entering public school. (9) This disparate impact on Muslim girls should come as no surprise. The debates preceding passage of 2004 ban witnessed two central justifications for such a law: need to protect laicite and fight to end oppression of Muslim girls. The Commission, a group of prominent scholars, government officials, and educators commissioned by President Chirac to study laicite in France, set forth most articulate expression of both arguments in its 2003 report. (10) The Commission found that mere presence of Islamic headscarves in public schools threatened laicite and its concomitant values of state neutrality towards religion, equality between citizens, and tolerance of religious difference. (11) It also deplored coerced covering of Muslim girls by their fathers, brothers, communities, and political Islamists, proclaiming that [t]he Republic cannot remain deaf to cries of distress from these young women. (12) Deploying rhetoric of protecting students from proselytism and saving Muslim girls from their families and other members of Muslim community, Commission called upon Republic and its public schoolteachers to safeguard human rights--those of students in general and Muslim girls in particular. In contrast to Stasi Commission's certainty, feminists and women's groups in France sharply disagree over whether ban is a vindication or a violation of Muslim girls' human rights. French secular feminist Elisabeth Badinter claimed: The veil, it is symbol of oppression of a sex. …
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