ABSTRACT
In 2004, the French national assembly overwhelmingly approved a ban on Muslim headscarves and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in public schools (Los Angeles Times 2004b). The measure was preceded by school officials’ repeated efforts to force Muslim girls to remove their headscarves, even after France’s State Council upheld the right of religious expression in public schools (Le Parisien 2003). Critics of the veil viewed the garment as a symbol of Muslim society’s refusal “to engage in what were taken to be the ‘normal’ protocols of interaction with members of the opposite sex” (Joan Wallach Scott 2007, p. 154). Additionally, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the ban represented an effort to defend the principle of secularism and the principle of gender. Opponents accused Sarkozy of fostering Islamophobia and using the law for political gain (Alison Culliford 2010).
