France: Contemporary Affairs

The entrenchment of secularism as a central principle of the modern French state has led to political and social discrimination against France’s religious communities, and its sizable Muslim minority in particular. In February 2004, the French National Assembly voted in an overwhelming majority to ban students attending public schools from wearing ''ostensibly'' religious signs, including Islamic head scarves, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps, and in July 2010 France’s National Assembly approved a complete ban on wearing a face-veil (niqab) in all public spaces in a near unanimous vote. Famous French politician Nicolas Sarkozy, who served as President of France from May 2007-May 2012, insisted that the ban was not intended to persecute Muslims but rather to protect the rights of women and preserve French national values. According to official estimates, only two-thousand French women wear the face-veil and French government officials have argued that the ban will continue to discourage fundamentalism from taking root in the country. Opinion polls suggest that nearly eighty percent of French citizens support the veil ban, and as of September 2012, approximately 425 Muslim women had been fined up to $180 for wearing the forbidden veil since the law was passed. Several prominent Muslim leaders have voiced their support for the veil ban, including Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, while other Muslims leaders, like Mohammed Moussaoui, the leader of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) have opposed the ban due to its singling out of Muslim women. In March 2012, four Muslim soldiers serving in the French military and three Jewish school children and a Jewish teacher were tragically killed in two separate terrorist attacks carried out by extremist Mohammed Merah. The French government voiced concern about extremism in the country, and in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, banned a string of international Muslim clerics from entering France for an April 2012 conference of a fundamentalist Islamic group.