Arab News Editorial

REPUBLICAN France was established amid cries of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” Secularity did not come into it. Yet the decision by French legislators to protect the apparently sacred secular nature of the state by banning the wearing of headscarves by Muslim schoolgirls contravenes the principle of liberty, mocks the idea of fraternity and certainly overthrows any concept of equality. Indeed, imposing a ban on the wearing of any symbol of religious belief in French schools turns the founding ideas of the republic on its head. This decision has more to do with coercion than liberty. It is more to do with alienation than brotherhood. It has nothing to do with equality but rather singles out citizens of faith for special treatment. The last European country to do that was Nazi Germany and its victims were Jews.

Yet the overwhelming majority of French parliamentarians, regardless of party, voted in Paris this week to enforce this deeply fascistic and objectionable ban. What is happening in a country that so prides itself on its freedom and tolerance? This deeply illiberal law was sponsored by President Chirac’s ruling center-right UMP party for electoral advantage. Chirac and his people saw polls indicating 70 percent of Frenchmen supported a ban. By appeasing this large illiberal view, Chirac doubtless hopes to stop the far right National Front (NF) from winning votes from the UMP.

Left of center politicians may equally have voted in favor in the hope that the NF’s leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, will be unable to use the issue to restore his divided party’s electoral fortunes. It clearly occurred to none of these left-wingers that to keep an illiberal party away from power, they were supporting illiberal legislation of which the National Front would have been proud.

The fact that the ban affects people of other faiths besides Islam, also stopping Christians from wearing crosses, Jews from wearing skullcaps and Sikhs from wearing turbans is immaterial. It cannot divert attention from the fact that this is in truth racist legislation, aimed at the largest Muslim community in Europe. It will seriously damage relations between French Muslims and the state. If the French second chamber endorses the lower house’s vote, it will not be long before Muslim girls and their families will be before the courts, being punished for upholding their religious principles.

How many devout French Muslims will need to be fined, bankrupted or jailed for their faith before this odious law is torn from the statute books? Only an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights under article nine of the European Convention on Human Rights can save the French state from blundering into a mess that will turn the country’s proud boast of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity into a sick joke.