I understand the point made in this article (Muslims are already excluded from French political life: that’s the real issue in the school abayas row, 5 September), but I feel that it doesn’t tell the whole story. Laïcité is historically a pillar of the French school system.
Since 1880, teachers have been forbidden to show any religious or political views in order to protect pupils’ rights to their own opinions without undue influence. Priests are forbidden to have any influence in schools. Pupils are not allowed to influence other pupils, and any religious or political signs are forbidden. For example, my mother was not allowed to have a crucifix necklace at school. This law was created to protect freedom of conscience. It was not created against Muslims.
If people want to carry religious symbols or wear religious attire, they have the choice to go to a private school. These are not expensive. I am not naive and I know that some political parties have racist agendas. But not everybody who wants the law to be respected is racist.
Nathalie Goursolas Bogren
Sallanches, Haute-Savoie, France
• After growing up in Italy, I moved to Germany for two years, then came to the UK for four more years, and am now settled in France. Leaving Catholic Italy – and its pervasive connections with the Vatican – for secular France felt refreshing.
But after all these years, I believe that Italy, Germany and the UK have developed a much healthier relationship with religion than France has. They now know what religious segregation and state interference really mean and where they lead; and have developed antidotes, with much pragmatism. Angela Merkel belonged to the Christian CDU party; King Charles is the supreme governor of the Church of England; the Vatican and the Quirinale, residence of the president of Italy, are three miles apart. Yet pupils can wear their kippah, their abaya, or their turban in Italian, British and German schools.
France declares itself secular and hopes to be done with the problem of religious division. But by using secularism as an umbrella while hardly questioning what the word really means, it is utterly divided when it comes to different faiths.
Antisemitism (in 2012, three Jewish children and their teacher were killed in Toulouse, while Sarah Halimi was murdered in 2017, and Mireille Knoll in 2018), Islamic terrorism (the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, the 2016 Nice attack, the 2020 murder of Samuel Paty), and Islamophobic police behaviour (Nahel Merzouk killed in 2023, Adama Traoré in 2016, Mohamed Benmouna in 2009) are all melted into a toxic cocktail – a cocktail whose effect is to forget what the true values of the Enlightenment were.
Filippo AE Nuccio
Saint-Étienne, France
• The standfirst of this article, “Abaya-wearing girls are seen not simply as students, but as envoys of global Islamism conspiring against the French nation”, shows a misunderstanding of the French state. Ever since the revolution, France has been set on a “one nation, one people” path. It’s not about fear of a conspiracy; the French just want – for right or wrong, idealistic or not – a single-class nation where everyone shares the same values, and therefore can be treated equally before the law. France is not about multiculturalism, but about assimilating immigrant cultures into a single French culture. Whether or not that’s a realistic or even desirable aspiration is another argument.
Phil Uribe
Llandrindod Wells, Powys
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