A French Muslim female student has protested against the stupid French law to prevent the religious symbols in schools by shaving her hair. The student told the press that she respects the law but the law does not respect her.
I called this French law “stupid” because I don’t think of hijab as a religious symbol. A crescent is a religious symbol; hijab is just a piece of clothes. Millions of Muslim women out there do not wear hijab; does that make them non-Muslims? I think deciding what someone wants to wear is a personal matter, so why the French government interferes in such a personal choice?
4 Comments
Mona:
well i always wondered if a woman is bald does that mean she stil has to wear hijab? and if no then ppl can go on wearing a barooka instead of hijab?
Someone recently made the point to me that the French oppositon to the hijab and to true intergration of the immegrant population may relate back to the two tier society mindset of France’s colonialist days in North Africa.
France is almost the most secular nation on earth. They do not want religious attire of any reason because they believe it will only lead to making people different (in the bad way like us vs. them). I believe secularism is a good thing, insofar as the government has no place endorsing a religion and that everyone should be treated equally.
I’m French and Muslim so I was very concerned by that issue. My town is very multicultural with an important Muslim minority and I was in High School when the law was debated then debated. I remember not understanding this law as for me the principe of “laïcité” (secularism) was a first of all the respect of religion and “religious symbols” were leading to a war between the student.
This law did not only put Muslim girls into trouble but also Sikh boys who had to take off their turban.
I also remember a violent argument with my maths teacher about the hijab. She finished her argument by saying that we were anyway anti-Semitic… O_O that was crazy.
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[...] unnoticed, especially by Muslims as many of them found the rule directly targeting the hijab. While I find this French rule idiotic, I find it equally if not more idiotic what some Saudi female students who got scholarships to [...]