ABSTRACT
The ‘headscarf affair of the city of Creil’ in 1989 attracted a great deal of attention from the French media. It led to a political controversy and was eventually dealt with in the Supreme Court. Originally, the controversy was about the wearing of headscarves in public educational institutions, but quickly it became a debate on the integration of ethnic minorities. 1 The affair began in September at the start of the new school year, when two girls of Moroccan origin and a Tunisian girl refused to take off their headscarves in class. The principal of the school saw the wearing of the headscarf as an ostentatious act of religious expression that could not be countenanced in a public school. On 21 September, after the parents had refused to accept the decision of the school, the children were expelled from the school. Two weeks later a compromise was reached. The girls were allowed to wear their headscarves at school, but not in class. Yet two weeks later, after the intervention of the Federation Nationale des Musulmans de France, the girls again refused to remove their headscarves in class. They were sent to the school library, and the principal wrote a letter to the Minister of Education requesting a clear decision.
