French police escorted Kenza Drider, center, a French Muslim of North African descent, away from the square outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday.
What role does culture play in the ways that minority groups seek to integrate themselves (or not) into dominant societies? How do the cultural geographies of multiculturalism and globalization help us understand some of the seemingly intractable issues of cultural diversity being faced by states in the EU today?
On October 19 1989, Ernest Chenier, the headmaster of the College Gabriel-Havez of Creil, France, expelled three Muslim girls – Fatima, Leila, and Samira – for refusing to remove their headscarves, or foulards, while attending school. Although the scarf is an expression of a particular religious identity that is protected by France’s commitment to religious freedom, for Chenier it was also a symbol of beliefs that directly challenged the very idea upon which France’s principle of religious freedom was based. That idea is laicité, a term which, though difficult to translate into English, refers generally to the concept of a secular state in which freedom of religion exists, but exists in a distinctly private realm that does not interfere with the public sphere in which citizenship exists. Indeed, it was perhaps a sincere belief in religious freedom that impelled Chenier to act in the first place, assuming as he might have that the girls were being required to wear the scarf in public, presumably against their will. This, however, was not the case.
School officials and the parents of the girls had already reached an agreement
in which they were to attend class without their heads covered. But Fatima, Leila, and Samira went to class covered anyway. In this way, their act took on a deliberate character, a gesture of both identification and defiance, which was thus explicitly political. Two weeks later, the Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, took the matter to the Conseil d’Etat, France’s high court, which delivered an ambiguous interpretation of how laicité applied to the foulard. The Conseil ruled that the wearing of religious signs by students was not incompatible with laicité, but the wearing of such signs as an act of “pressure, provocation, proselytizing, or propaganda” or in a way that would disturb the normal function of public education, violated the basic principles of French law.
By 1994, the foulard was strictly forbidden in French public schools. But, 15 years later, France is more anxious about the veil than ever. Last year, a law was passed banning full-face veils in public, and that law went into effect today. A small protest was staged near Notre Dame in Paris, and the above image shows police escorting one of the protesters – Kenza Drider – away.
L’Affaire Foulard in France continues to illustrate the politics of cultural identity in a rapidly changing Europe, where the EU’s explicit calls for ‘unity in diversity’ run head on against anxiety over whether Muslims really have a place within that ‘diversity’.
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