Should the ‘veil’ be banned in higher education?

It seems that the French never tire of debating the role of religion in public life. Or perhaps the concept of laïcité, a uniquely French model of secularism, just keeps tangling them up in political knots.

The most recent dispute over the wearing of the Islamic veil by French university students has once again laid bare the problems and paradoxes of a nation struggling to apply a revered historical principle to a rapidly changing social environment. It also reveals how the discourse and practice of laïcité have become caught in a time warp.

In early August, the French daily newspaper Le Monde made public “an alarmist report and polemic proposition” prepared by the Secular Mission of France’s High Council for Integration.

Based on interviews with faculty, administrators and others, the study claimed to have found increasing incidents that threatened laïcité and left university authorities searching for a solution.

Counted among these were Muslim students refusing to remove the Islamic veil in mixed-sex sports activities, Christian evangelicals and neo-Baptists criticising Darwinian theory of evolution in favour of creationism, and others disputing course content or rejecting the writings of Voltaire, Pascal or Camus on religious grounds.

Not intended for immediate release, the ‘confidential’ report was submitted last April to the Observatory on Secularism, a 15-member advisory committee reactivated by the François Hollande administration and made up of legislators, philosophers, researchers and jurists.

Among the report’s 12 proposals, the most significant called for extending to public universities a 2004 law prohibiting any “signs or clothing ostensibly manifesting a religious affiliation” in public primary and secondary schools.

Official responses were mixed, even within the governing socialist party. Interior Minister Manuel Valls, a firm defender of laïcité, found the university proposal “worthy of interest”. The president of the observatory, Jean-Louis Bianco, seemed dismissive, noting that the question was not in the observatory’s “work plan”.

Some government and education leaders on the political ‘left’ expressed more definitive opposition to yet another law aimed at the Islamic veil.

Geneviève Fioraso, minister of higher education and research, warned against creating a controversy where there was none. She made clear that her priority rested with the young women wearing the veil. For them, she told the press, education is an “element of emancipation”.

Jean-Loup Salzmann, president of the Conference of University Presidents, or CPU, likewise opposed adopting a new law and disclaimed any worsening of the situation within French universities.

The unofficial release of the report coincided with a widely contested court decision striking down the firing of a female daycare worker who insisted on wearing the burqa completely covering her face and body.

Contrary to lower court rulings, the appeals court found that the woman was not in violation of a 2011 law prohibiting the concealment of one’s face in ‘public’ spaces; the daycare centre was ‘private’ even though it served the public and received public funds.

Hollande, despite his general support for a laïcité of ‘appeasement’, roundly disagreed with the ruling, as did numerous public intellectuals and public leaders and an overwhelming segment of the French public. While neither the current proposal nor the 2004 or 2011 laws explicitly mention Islam, Islamic practices are well understood to be the target.

That is not to conflate merely covering one’s head with concealing one’s entire face. Reasonable minds may disagree over the social drawbacks and personal implications of individuals interacting in public life without revealing their facial identity.

In contrast, at least from an outsider’s perspective, the hijab or headscarf is a far more benign and moderate departure from the norms of French mainstream society than the full burqa. Whether the government should ban either is another question.

Public opinion seems to fall in the more traditional camp. According to the French Institute for Public Opinion, close to 78 per cent of the French population oppose the wearing of the veil in French universities, with 18 per cent indifferent and only 4per cent in favour.

Even among left-leaning elected officials, opposition runs to 67 per cent. The numbers are surprisingly close to the 89per cent overall who oppose the veil worn in public primary and secondary schools.