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Godsick · 11th December 2003, 07:36 PM

This is an issue that has been around for quite some time :-

January 1999: French Teachers Strike Over Muslim Headscarves, RENNES, France (Reuters) - Tensions between Muslim fundamentalists and France's lay school system bubbled to the surface Wednesday as teachers at a junior high school in Normandy refused to teach Muslim students wearing headscarves. Teachers at other schools in and around the northwestern town of Flers announced plans for a mass demonstration and strike Friday in support of the teachers who have refused to report for work at the College Jean-Monnet since Monday. The majority of the school's teachers walked off the job after education authorities ordered the school to take in a 12-year-old student of Turkish origin whose family insisted that she wear an Islamic headscarf to class. Tuesday a second Muslim student sought to be enrolled after presenting a letter from her parents saying she too planned to cover her head with an Islamic-style scarf in school. Segolene Royale, junior minister for secondary education, sent a government mediator to Flers Wednesday morning. The current controversy has divided Flers, with a minority of teachers favoring the Muslim girls' enrollment and the town's association of Turkish residents criticizing the girls as isolated cases. Islam is France's second largest religion after Catholicism, estimated at four to five million people, most of them from former French colonies in North Africa. Controversy has simmered in France for years over the extent to which the school system had to accommodate Muslim students. But the dispute in Normandy marked the first time the issue had flared up since the current leftist government took power in mid-1997. In 1994, the conservative government then in power issued rules banning "ostentatious religious symbols" from secular state schools. It said the ban applied only to Islamic-style headscarves, however, and not to similar religious symbols like crosses worn on necklaces or Hebrew skull caps. Over a hundred girls were subsequently expelled from their schools while several hundred others defied the ban. The girls and their families said they were merely observing the Muslim religion but the French government and many teachers argued the scarves, as symbols of Islamic fundamentalism and the repression of women, were preventing their wearers from becoming integrated into French society.

This means basically that someone else is deciding exactly what someone should wear, different side of the same coin?

11th December 2003, 07:36 PM	#2 (permalink)
Godsick Registered User Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Dumpdee Posts: 396	This is an issue that has been around for quite some time :- January 1999: French Teachers Strike Over Muslim Headscarves, RENNES, France (Reuters) - Tensions between Muslim fundamentalists and France's lay school system bubbled to the surface Wednesday as teachers at a junior high school in Normandy refused to teach Muslim students wearing headscarves. Teachers at other schools in and around the northwestern town of Flers announced plans for a mass demonstration and strike Friday in support of the teachers who have refused to report for work at the College Jean-Monnet since Monday. The majority of the school's teachers walked off the job after education authorities ordered the school to take in a 12-year-old student of Turkish origin whose family insisted that she wear an Islamic headscarf to class. Tuesday a second Muslim student sought to be enrolled after presenting a letter from her parents saying she too planned to cover her head with an Islamic-style scarf in school. Segolene Royale, junior minister for secondary education, sent a government mediator to Flers Wednesday morning. The current controversy has divided Flers, with a minority of teachers favoring the Muslim girls' enrollment and the town's association of Turkish residents criticizing the girls as isolated cases. Islam is France's second largest religion after Catholicism, estimated at four to five million people, most of them from former French colonies in North Africa. Controversy has simmered in France for years over the extent to which the school system had to accommodate Muslim students. But the dispute in Normandy marked the first time the issue had flared up since the current leftist government took power in mid-1997. In 1994, the conservative government then in power issued rules banning "ostentatious religious symbols" from secular state schools. It said the ban applied only to Islamic-style headscarves, however, and not to similar religious symbols like crosses worn on necklaces or Hebrew skull caps. Over a hundred girls were subsequently expelled from their schools while several hundred others defied the ban. The girls and their families said they were merely observing the Muslim religion but the French government and many teachers argued the scarves, as symbols of Islamic fundamentalism and the repression of women, were preventing their wearers from becoming integrated into French society. This means basically that someone else is deciding exactly what someone should wear, different side of the same coin?