A field trip and a hijab set off a furore in France

A heated debate over France’s values reignited across the country this week, the latest fight in a culture war that has raged for years in universities, the halls of government and even on the beach.

This time, it started with a mother wearing a hijab on a school trip.

Veils and headscarves are political and social lightning rods in France, touching on issues so sensitive — secularism, feminism and the integration of Muslims — that they seem to inspire anger wherever they appear. Although the mother broke no laws by wearing the garment, which does not cover the face, she enraged far-right members of the local assembly that the schoolchildren were visiting.

During the visit last week, in the central city of Dijon, one of the politicians, Julien Odoul, asked that the woman uncover herself.

“Madame has ample time to wear her veil at home, on the street, but not here, not today,” he said, citing France’s values of secularism, known as laïcité.

In a post on Twitter that included video of the incident, Odoul said wearing the veil was a “provocation” that couldn’t be “tolerated” after a fatal attack on Paris police officers this month by a Muslim among their ranks.

A commotion broke out. Other members of the assembly, including the president, objected to the request. The far-right politicians, who belong to the National Rally party, stormed out. And in a moment captured by a picture that soon spread widely, the woman’s son cried in her arms.

She has declined to speak to the news media, but the confrontation quickly gained national attention. Battle lines were swiftly drawn.

On one side, there are those who say the veil is a symbol of female submission or religious radicalism, an archaic garment that has no place in France’s secular republic. On the other are those who argue that veiled women are subjected to barely hidden racism and religious discrimination by people who refuse to accept French multiculturalism.

Valentine Zuber, a historian at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris who specializes in the study of religious tolerance in Europe, said that these two “intellectual and political camps are now at loggerheads.”

“There is a brutalisation of the discourse, even at the elite level, that is quite frightening,” she said in an interview.

Since 2011, it has been illegal to wear a face-covering veil in public in France. Many French people also agree with laws that bar state employees and schoolchildren from wearing “ostentatious” religious symbols.

But the consensus stops there. Over the past few years, disputes have focused on university students, burkinis and sports hijabs, to name just a few.

Whether mothers on school outings should be allowed to wear headscarves has become a particularly charged question, partly because French schools are seen as “sanctuaries” that shield children from external influences, religious or otherwise, Zuber said.

Some politicians want to extend the clothing restrictions currently applied to teachers and students to parents who sign up for class trips. A recent poll, conducted before the incident in Dijon, found that 66% of French people agreed.

“The veil should be banned on all school time,” Christian Jacob, the newly elected head of the right-wing Républicains party, told Le Figaro newspaper Friday. “Not just on school premises.”

The government has shut the door on such legislation, and President Emmanuel Macron, trying to avoid a political minefield, has refused to weigh in with a formal speech on secularism. Last year, Macron said that although he respected a woman’s decision to wear the veil, he was “not personally happy” about it.

Macron, who in the aftermath of the Paris police attack called for a “society of vigilance” against the “Islamist hydra,” said this week that his priority was to fight “radicalisation” and “communitarianism.”

“These fights are serious, they entail not to divide, not to stigmatise, and to work together,” he said.

But Macron’s government and his party are split.

Some, like the education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, and the economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, say that the veil, while legal, is not “desirable” in French society. Others, like government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye and the lawmaker Aurélien Taché, have supported a mother’s right to wear a headscarf on school trips.

Zuber, the historian, said tensions over the Muslim veil were rooted in a long-standing cultural aversion to public expressions of faith.

Enlightenment philosophers in the 18th century and the founding fathers of republican France largely rejected the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes fiercely, she said. That thinking, bolstered by a feminist rejection of the veil as a symbol of “submission,” is still present.

Zuber said that the “resurgence of religious visibility in the public space” had made many French feel “that our freedoms are threatened.” She said some people saw the veil, “in and of itself, as proselytising” for a faith.

A string of attacks by Islamist terrorists in recent years has only worsened such fears, especially on the far right. Marine Le Pen, for instance, who heads the National Rally party, told Europe 1 radio this past week that “the veil is not a trivial piece of cloth, it is a marker of radicalism.”

Some commentators have gone even further. One columnist, Yves Thréard, said on television that it was his right to hate a religion, and that he would sometimes get off a bus if a woman wearing a headscarf got on. Another journalist suggested that the veil could be considered a “political sign” similar to the Nazi SS uniform. Both later said they had misspoken.

To some, the tone of the debate has become increasingly alarming. One group of public figures, including actors, artists and academics, asked in an open letter in the newspaper Le Monde this week, “How far will we let the hatred of Muslims go?”

“How long are we going to accept that citizens be insulted, assaulted, attacked, stigmatised because of their religion?” they asked. The letter was later turned into a petition, which has gathered over 180,000 signatures so far.

In an interview with the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, an advocacy group, the mother who went to Dijon said the incident had “destroyed her life.” The mother, identified by the group as Fatima E, also intends to file a legal complaint.

“Today, I have a negative opinion of what we call the republic,” she said, arguing that the episode would reinforce the belief held by some descendants of immigrants that “France is against them.”

“I have always argued against that discourse,” she said. “When we left the regional council, they came up to me to say: ‘You see, we told you so! They don’t like us!’ And then, I couldn’t even speak. The children had come there to learn: What did they learn?”

© 2019 New York Times News Service