France’s head-scarf ban begins quietly

PARIS – A teenage girl wearing a turquoise pantsuit and a flowered head scarf crowded behind classmates at the entrance to Jacques Brel High School in a Paris suburb Thursday. When she arrived at the door, she showed a monitor a photo identification card and slid the kerchief from her head.

It was a scene played out at many public schools around the country Thursday, the day 12 million students returned for a new semester. By pulling off her head scarf as she rushed into the building past a phalanx of reporters, the girl was complying with a new law banning Muslim head coverings in public schools. The ban also prohibits all overtly religious garb, including crucifixes, Jewish skullcaps and Sikh turbans.

The ban triggered massive demonstrations in France and protests in several cities around the world earlier this year. Critics condemned the law as an attack on religious freedom and said it would stigmatize the estimated 5 million Muslims in France. Some Muslim groups pledged further protests, calling the restriction anti-Islamic.

But Thursday, the first day of with the ban in effect, went quietly. Muslim groups called for compliance with the law, and there were no reports of public demonstrations. The matter became a life-and-death issue when kidnappers in Iraq threatened to kill two French journalists if France did not rescind the law.

A delegation of French Muslim community leaders spent Thursday in Baghdad contacting Iraqi religious figures in hopes of enlisting their help in freeing Christian Chesnot of Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot of the daily newspaper Le Figaro. Late Thursday, an editor at Le Figaro said the men had been handed over to an Iraqi group that has said it favors releasing them, Reuters reported.

But at Jacques Brel High, a sense of injustice prevailed among Muslim students, even among those who favored complying with the new regulations. The school has 1,000 students, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants. Some who had once given little thought to their religious identity were thinking about it Thursday and wondering what their place was in French society.

“I wear the scarf for my religion, but I will remove it because it’s the law,” said Jubaida Mohammed, 17, born in France to Indian immigrants. “I don’t think the law is right. I don’t think we do any harm,” she said. “It seems aimed at Muslims and makes us uneasy.”

Associated Press

A Muslim student puts on her head scarf as she leaves school Thursday in Lille, France.

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