Political correctness, French style.

• Author: Zoebelein, Lauren
• Position: Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space - Book review

Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space by John R. Bowen Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford (2007) 290 pages

In France, questions about the assimilation--or lack of it--of the country's large and often problematic Muslim minority are encapsulated in a debate about whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear headscarves in state schools and other public institutions. The issue erupted in 2003 when two French Muslim girls--Lilia Levy, 18, and her sister Alma, 16,--wore Islamic-style headscarves to their lycee. Such attire (not veils covering the face but partial head coverings that hide a woman's hair) have taken on powerful symbolic and political importance in France because some Muslims have started to wear them as a sign suggesting their special feeling of Muslim identity.

The Levy girls were sent home by the head of their school, but the incident sparked a national controversy amid mounting national concern about France's Muslim minority in the aftermath of the U.S.-led overthrow of the regime in Iraq. The girls' school was located in Aubervilliers, one of the suburbs of Paris that are home to many of the country's Muslims and have become the scene of rioting and violent protests by young French Muslims complaining that they are discriminated against. The headscarf incident, a symptomatic forerunner of this eruption of social tension, led to a government decision in 2004 for state-run schools to ban headscarves (along with any other "conspicuous" religious symbols such as large neck crosses or yarmulkes).

This measure received overwhelming political and public support in a country where the separation of church and state has been enshrined in public consciousness not just as a law but as part of a secular political system of "republicanism" installed by the French Revolution. Modern France has consistently prided itself on its "republican" model of democracy that postulates a system of citizens living together in a single society with a strong sense of national identity in which all people are treated equally without regard to race, color or creed. French leaders reject the "multi-cultural" models they see in the United States and Britain, which recognize the separate identities of minorities and sometimes takes special steps (such as affirmative action) to foster integration. Interestingly, the issue of Islamic sartorial restrictions on women has recently arisen even in Britain, where the...