Hijab Ban Sharps Muslim Isolation

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Hijab Ban Sharps Muslim Isolation

IslamOnline.net & News Agencies


The French hijab ban has deepened the isolation of the French Muslims.

PARIS — A French law banning hijab in state schools has deepened the Muslim isolation from the broader community, experts said Saturday, September 16.

"Some (Muslims) are enrolled in informal parallel structures. That makes them even more isolated from the broader community," said Samy Debah, spokesman for the anti-Islamophobia group CCIF, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

France has triggered a controversy in 2004 by adopting a bill banning hijab and religious insignia in state schools.

French Muslims — a sizeable six-million minority — along with practicing Jews, Sikhs and international human rights groups strongly condemned the law, saying it violated the freedom of religion right in secular France.

In the same year, some 30 girls under the age of 16 dropped out of the French school system altogether, said Nora Rami spokeswoman for a committee opposing the law.

She said the number, though is tiny compared to the hundreds o thousands of Muslims in French schools, has a major significance.

It illustrates a "break between some young Muslim women and a country where "they no longer feel at home," she said.

Other young Muslim women have also either left to study abroad, including in Belgium, or have signed up for distance learning courses, Rami added.

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.

Problems Deepened

Many French Muslims believe the French law would lead to a boom in private Muslim education in the coming decade.

"This hasn't solved the problem, it has just moved it elsewhere," said Makhlouf Mameche, deputy head of the private Lycee Averroes in the northern city of Lille, one of France's two sole Muslim high schools.

The French education ministry says the law has been largely accepted in the country, citing only four cases since the start of the school year this month, involving Sikh pupils who refused to remove their turbans.

The government says the figure -- a far cry from the 639 recorded in 2004, when 47 youths were expelled for refusing to comply with the ban -- is proof the measure is working.

But Hubert Tison, a teachers' representative, disagrees.

"It's true the law reduced tensions, but it has not solved the deeper problems" he told L'Express magazine recently.

Over the past decade, more and more French Muslims have increasingly adopted hijab, especially in run-down suburbs with large Arab and black populations.

Many, however, complain that they face hostile looks from strangers who associate their hijab with terrorism and extremism.