France women’s minister expresses support for university headscarf ban

‘I’m not sure the headscarf is part of higher education’ says Pascale Boistard, but university head says discriminating against wearers would be illegal

France is embroiled in a fresh row over the state’s attitude to the Muslim headscarf after the Socialist minister for women’s rights expressed support for banning students from wearing veils at French universities.

In a video for Le Figaro, Pascale Boistard was asked if she was against the wearing of headscarves at university, and said that she was. Asked if the government should take formal measures, she said it was up to university presidents to talk to students about the issue, but added: “I’m not sure the headscarf is part of higher education.”

Her comments come as Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing former president seeking to run again in 2017, proposed a headscarf ban in universities despite opposition from certain figures within his UMP party. Earlier this month Éric Ciotti, a UMP MP, proposed a law to ban the headscarf from higher education, while opponents accused mainstream conservatives of trying to chase after voters from the far right.

University leaders themselves have expressed strong opposition to any ban, saying students should be able to do as they please. Several ministers in the Socialist government distanced themselves from Boistard’s comments, saying it was not a debate that should be opened.

The issue of Islamic head coverings has long been a highly contentious political issue in France, which has some of the hardest-hitting legislation on veils in Europe. In 2004 it banned girls from wearing veils in state schools, along with other religious symbols such as crosses or turbans. In 2011, Sarkozy controversially banned the niqab (a full-face Muslim veil) from all public places. State workers in the public service must by law be impartial and neutral, and so cannot show their religious belief with an outward symbol such as a headscarf.

The latest row comes as the government tries to calm tensions and deal with rising antisemitism and Islamophobia afterJanuary’s terrorist attacks, which began with a massacre at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended with a bloody siege at a kosher supermarket.

Recently there have been several incidents in which individual university teachers singled out students wearing veils and refused to teach them. Earlier this month Jean-Claude Radier, a lawyer and visiting lecturer at Paris-XIII university, said after seeing a veiled law student in the front row that after the Charlie Hebdo attacks he did not expect to have to teach a student with a covered head. He was removed from his post.

In an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro he was unrepentant, saying: “I explained that I was hostile to outward religious symbols and that I didn’t expect, in the post-Charlie context, to have to deliver lectures faced with veiled students.”

In January, a barrister lecturing at a law school asked a student wearing a headscarf if she would agree to take it off and walked out after the rest of the students expressed outrage. He is no longer teaching there. In September, a Sorbonne professor asked a veiled student if she was going to keep on wearing “that thing” in class. The head of the Sorbonne later apologised for the professor’s comments.

University presidents have been clear that discriminating against students in headscarves is illegal. “I don’t see in what name we would ban young women for expressing their religious convictions, including in universities,” Jean-Loup Salzmann, head of France’s conference of university presidents, told France Inter radio.

Elsa Ray, spokeswoman for the Collective against Islamophobia in France, said she found Boistard’s comments surprising and very disappointing. She said any ban on headscarves would be unconstitutional and against freedom of expression enshrined in law. She was surprised that “at a time of rising Islamophobia, the only response of government, instead of protecting Muslim citizens, is to propose a measure that directly targets Muslims”.

See more on this Topic