News, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
France Ponders Banning Headscarves in Schools
Reuters, Arab News
PARIS, 29 November 2003 — The French government plans to ban the headscarf from public schools to protect teenage girls from “fundamentalist pressures” to wear it, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said yesterday.
Raffarin told his center-right UMP party defending women’s rights would be the guiding principle in any law the government passes about the veil, a prominent issue pitting fiercely secular France against some of its five million Muslims. Women politicians have been especially keen for a ban on the headscarves, saying conservative male family members were pressuring teenage girls into wearing them in violation of France’s principle of sexual equality. “The legislative decision we take will be good if it protects women, all women, from all pressures,” Raffarin told a party meeting in the Paris suburb of Villepinte.
“That is the main point. This is not about religion, it’s about lifting a constraint on women.” Pressure to ban what are called ostentatious signs of religion has been mounting in France as Muslim women and girls are ejected from schools, denied jobs and even turned down for jury duty because they insist on keeping their heads covered.
Muslim girls caught in the headscarf controversy deny their veils are exaggerated or proselytizing and argue that banning them would infringe on their freedom of religion.
Calls to ban headscarves have also increased amid a wave of “anti-Semitic” attacks which authorities blame on a growing Islamic identity among Muslim men angered by Israel’s tough military strategy against the Palestinians.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
 |