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Unveiled: French answer to overt faith

It is two years since France banned headscarves, veils and other religious signs from state schools. There were mass protests by French Muslims and dire warnings the new law would radicalise Islamic opinion and deepen already volatile divisions within French society.

Some 120 schoolgirls initially defied the law and one 15-year-old beat the ban by shaving her head.

Today, the ban on veils - which crucially extends to large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps and Sikh turbans - is accepted and obeyed.

"We didn't have a single young girl showing up veiled this year for the rentree [start of the school year] which was very satisfying," government education spokesman Samira Bonvoisin told The First Post. "The only ongoing problem is with four Sikh schoolboys who still refuse to remove their turbans." So how did the French pull it off?

With the veil debate raging, susan bell in Paris reports on the French solution

Ms Bonvoisin puts it down to the fact that families were granted a long period of dialogue the first year.

But the key is France is a fiercely secular society; a strict separation of church and state underpinned the French Revolution and is one of the core values of the Republic. So, despite demonstrations by Muslims (left), the law had huge support with three-quarters of teachers and two-thirds of the public behind it.

Current events also played into the government's hands. In August 2004, just before the new law kicked in, Iraqis kidnapped two French journalists and demanded France repeal its headscarf ban. There was national outrage which was shared within the French Muslim community.

But maybe the most overwhelming factor was that the girls themselves, however determined to keep their veils, were finally not willing to be expelled over the issue.

FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 17, 2006