After 100 years, France questions its secularity

By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2005

PARIS The centenary of France's unique and strict brand of secularity passed quietly this month as the government, deeply divided over the issue and still rattled by the recent riots involving many youths of North African origin, shied away from celebrating a law that has repeatedly irked the country's sizable Muslim community.

In recent years, the law on the separation of church and state has made national and international headlines, mainly when it was used to ban Muslim head scarves in public schools.

First adopted in December 1905, the law granted citizens full freedom of religion in predominantly Roman Catholic France and withdrew financial support and formal recognition from all faiths.

Nowhere else in the West is this division of church and state applied as diligently as in France. Public schools and government offices are kept free of all ostentatious religious garb, state funerals take place in deconsecrated churches, and a "God bless France" at the end of a French presidential address is just as unthinkable as seven weeks of vacation would be in the United States.

The French concept of "laïcité" - a term for which secularism is only an imperfect translation - has become an integral part of the identity of the French Republic, which in theory is blind to color and creed. Indeed, with President Jacques Chirac calling laicism "a pillar of the republican temple," some people say that it has become a state religion itself.

The French are re-evaluating the concept, even more so since the November rioting. A growing recognition of the discrimination and poverty suffered by immigrants and their descendants, many of them Muslim, has prompted calls from across the political spectrum for a looser interpretation of the 1905 law.

On the right, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has openly challenged the head scarf ban, which was sponsored by Chirac last year. Sarkozy has also lobbied for state funds to help build mosques and train imams.

On the left, a Socialist lawmaker, Manuel Valls, has spearheaded similar demands. Both men have argued that the cultural and religious face of France, home to Europe's largest Muslim community, has changed with immigration.

"We have to re-examine the French model and not be afraid to learn from others," said Jean Baubérot, a sociologist at the Sorbonne in Paris, a specialist on laicism. "Recognizing cultural diversity and fighting discrimination has to be a priority today," added Baubérot, who served on an independent commission that was asked by the government to evaluate how the concept was being applied.

As Christmas trees light up at schools across France and students prepare for the holidays, some Muslims complain about double standards. Lhaj-Thami, president of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, argues that the 1905 law is not incompatible with Islam, but that it needs to be applied fairly.

"In theory we are all equal, but in reality we are not," said Brèze, who was born in Morocco. "Why is a Christmas tree allowed when a discreet head scarf is not? All we're asking is for France to be true to its values."

Last year's head scarf ban was greeted with incomprehension in neighboring European countries, where Muslim girls do not face such restrictions, and with outrage in the Arab world. But opinion polls in France show that an overwhelming majority favor the ban and other secular provisions.

According to Martine Barthélémy at the Paris-based Institute for Political Studies, history goes some way toward explaining the French attitude toward mixing God and politics. For centuries, France was savaged by wars of religion. Then after the French Revolution in 1789, the Catholic Church refused to accept the values of the new republic, deepening a sense among political leaders that the state needed protecting from religion.

In the United States, where many early immigrants settled after fleeing religious persecution in Europe, the separation of church and state is in many ways perceived to be serving the opposite purpose, Barthélémy says, namely to protect religion from the state.

"We all have our founding myths," she said. "Our founding myth is the republican idea, and laicism is an essential part of that. In America, religious freedom is an important part of their founding myth - that's why we sometimes don't understand the Americans and vice versa."

That is also why, in France today, the head scarf ban is seen by many as protection from pressure at home for those Muslim girls who would rather go to school unveiled. Giving in on this issue, they argue, could be seized upon by religious Muslims to demand further concessions at odds with France's secular tradition, like separating girls and boys in swimming and sports classes, or taking girls out of biology class - requests that schools in Germany and Britain are grappling with.

"Where do you draw the line?" Barthélémy asked.

One of the first senior politicians to speak out recently against a strict interpretation of the 1905 law was Sarkozy. He has lobbied to provide financing to Muslim communities, arguing that they do not have the financial resources of Christian and Jewish communities and that an absence of state support would leave them vulnerable to fundamentalist donors abroad.

"It's not the minarets that are dangerous, but the garages and the basements that become secret prayer rooms," he said last year in a book, "The Republic, Religions and Hope," that caused a stir here. "Muslims should not have more rights than others. But let's make sure they don't have fewer."

Sarkozy was also one of the first politicians to refer to North African immigrants as Muslims, a shift in language that some say risks reinforcing a sense of religious, rather than secular, identity.

As François Heisbourg, head of the French Foundation for Strategic Studies, points out, the riots were not committed by youths who were particularly religious, nor did they target churches or synagogues.

"A lot of integration is about economics and not religion," he said.

The real issue, Heisbourg said, is not the head scarf but the pair of costly Nike sneakers that sets apart children whose parents have money from children whose parents do not.

"If we were serious about establishing a truly neutral space in schools," he said, "we should introduce school uniforms."