For a multi-religious country, it seems to be a decent approach to religious freedom.
How would you define liberalism and is there a country that has it (or had it in the past)?
I'm a fan of secularism, and am an Atheist. And I also strongly disapprove of how some Islamic groups treat women.
However, from here in the UK, France seems strangely, even oddly intolerant. Muslim religious dress is banned in public.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
Now; I disapprove of forcing women to wear that sort of dress on religious grounds. In fact, I find it obnoxious (although, aside, Western society seems to expect women to wear makeup and look "good" at all times... so are we any better?).
However, I'm not sure banning the dress is a good solution - akin to punishing the victim...
It's illegal for a women to go topless in France (but not a man), so how is a women covering her breasts any different than a woman covering her head? I can't imagine anything less welcoming than being a recent refugee or immgrant, and then in order to receive an education you are forced to break with a core tenet of your religious and cultural beliefs, and as a poster below pointed out, feel naked in your new school.
Is it? there are tons of topless women on French beaches. I don't know about specific laws but nobody goes topless or naked while walking in a city (in France or elsewhere). I don't see this as a great restriction on my freedom. Actually, more worrying IMHO is that if a woman were to go topless in the street, she'd get more trouble from some (religious and macho) guys than the police.
> I can't imagine anything less welcoming than being a recent refugee or immgrant
Sorry, but I don't find it scandalous to ask refugee or immigrants to make minor adjustments to their lifestyle. Every society has some common value that it wants to preserve, and as a French, I want as little intrusion of religion in public life. In particular, religion has no place in public school in my opinion, and i really hope it stays this way.
"Chest and private parts must be covered except near bathing zones. Burqa banned."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing_laws_by_country
Another article I read mentioned that a particular city recently explicitly banned male toplessness, which seems to imply that the above statement about covering the chest only applies to women.
Another Wikipedia article here states that the activist group Topfreedom has protested in France, also implying that the covering the chest only applies to women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topfreedom#France
Can anyone point to the specific law? The Wikipedia article on clothing laws doesn't have a source. I was going off what I've been told by French friends, but I'd like to know conclusively.
I don't really agree with France on this, but could the ban have positive effects by reducing prejudice by anonymity (look at this person vs. look at this muslim person) vs teaching tolerance.
In France the pithy definition of political freedom is "liberty, equality, fraternity". Equality and fraternity are qualifiers on what liberty is supposed to mean, recognizing a collective responsibility component and thus helping to articulate where the line is to be drawn for when individual liberty conflicts with the long-term requirements safeguarding political liberty.
French laws don't ban Muslim dress, per se. They ban face coverings, which is only typical of some very conservative Arabic cultures. And they do so because a religious or cultural mandate that requires such dress is in direct opposition to the ideals of equality and fraternity, which are considered necessary for maintaining the liberty of the society as a whole.
We can disagree with that interpretation on many levels. But it's not illogical, per se. I don't doubt that the way it's been articulated and enforced has been corrupted by anti-Muslim and anti-Arabic animus. But it is what it is and fundamentally seems consonant with French political theory.
In the U.S. religious freedom is considered much more sacrosanct. In particular, Americans see safeguarding religious liberty as fundamental to political liberty; whereas I think the French notion is that safeguarding secularism is far more important. The reasons are historical and totally obvious--just reflect on what you learned about American and French political history in high school. In France the Catholic Church was one of the impediments to democracy. Whereas a large number of American colonists came here because of religious persecution abroad, and our political system evolved to protect religious denominations from the government and from each other.
"The wearing of all conspicuous religious symbols in public schools was previously banned in 2004 by a different law"
Your misunderstanding may come from terminology - a headscarf need not be religious at all, and headscarves which are not religious (it is easy to tell the difference) are NOT banned.
The ban in France is for face-covering only, and it applies to anybody (male/female).
There are serious reasons for this, both cultural- and security-based.
Head scarves are allowed in France, to the best of my knowledge.
EDIT:
The law bans "the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools" [1]
So you can wear a head scarf as long as it does not imply religious affiliation. As a matter of fact, head scarves have been present in high fashion (Azzedine Alaia,etc) for a while.
[1] Wikipedia: The bill passed France's national legislature and was signed into law by President Jacques Chirac on 15 March 2004 (thus the technical name is law 2004-228 of 15 March 2004) and came into effect on 2 September 2004, at the beginning of the new school year. The full title of the law is "loi no 2004-228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics" (literally "Law #2004-228 of March 15, 2004, concerning, as an application of the principle of the separation of church and state, the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools").
It was widely debated. I'm still not sure what was the best thing to do.
At some point, you also have to ask how far we can tolerate things in the name of religion. Just because something is of religious nature doesn't mean that it has to be accepted.
Just because something is preferred by a subpopulation's religion and culture, doesn't meant it is a proselytic threat to the freedom and safety of others.
The French heafscarf law is populist demagoguery that threatens the integrity of the French Constitutional principles, and is near-universally condemned as bad law by legal scholars
> If you are passing laws saying that girls are required to show their hair in school
That's not what the law is about. It bans religious signs in public schools. It's not specifically about muslims covering their hair.
I can't speak for all the French, but I think it's fair to say that overall we like religion to stay in the private field.
Little anecdote here. When I was in high-school (25 years ago), some American mormons offered to visit our English class to teach English. Our teacher agreed on the condition that they don't wear their uniforms, and don't mention any religious topic. They declined.
Just to say that the laws we are discussing here go far beyond "populist demagoguery" or xenophobia and maybe it's misunderstanding French culture to think it is.
> and is near-universally condemned as bad law by legal scholars
That sounds like an argument of authority. I don't know what law scholars say but I think a country should be able to legislate on the place of religion in public schools, and the way it has been done seem pretty fair to me.
When I was school, there were about 10% of north african immigrants in my classes (most of them muslims) and never the headscarf had been an issue. Back then, you actually didn't see any headscarfs in street, except maybe for older muslim ladies. I'm not sure what has changed since then but it has became commonplace (and as an atheist, I'm pretty sad about this).
France goes to the extreme level of saying "You can't even wear your religious clothing inside the school, even if you feel naked without it."
How would you define liberalism?
I guess Americans would take offense to this view, but I find wearing religious clothing in a public institution such as a school incredibly obnoxious and pushy -- it's akin to your professor suddenly starting to push his/her political views onto you in an unrelated lecture, or something.
It's not that it's bad to wear religious clothing or have political opinions -- it's just that a school should be a place of learning, not propaganda.
As an American, I think of nothing when people wear hijab or whatever, and trust me, I am an atheist who think religion is irrational and that humanity would be better off without it.
Maybe the French would be better off thinking nothing of it when someone wears religious clothing, just as we are starting to think nothing of it when people are gay or transgender or whatever.
I see it as clearly unnecessary/voluntary (so it's quite different from being gay like in your example), so it's an attempt to advertise, which leaves a bad taste in a place like a school.
You'd get a bit of flack if you wore a conservative shirt in an extremely liberal environment and vice versa.
Still, if you'd want to put up legal barriers to displays of religion, you'd certainly need to find better reasons than "it makes people seem very arrogant" ;)
Schools, being places of science, might mandate non-religious clothing in the same way monasteries and temples should be free to set clothing regulation inside their premises.
But prohibiting the wearing of religious clothing IS pushing political views.
Je suis Charlie
I think they go way too far, and a that some of it is bigotry hiding behind the excuse of secularism, but it illustrates that determining what sufficiently negatively "affects others" to be worth sanction can be used to reach widely different conclusions..
I think we should throw all this religion in the toilet and flush.
The principle governing French secularism - laïcité [1] - has its origin in freeing people from being subjected to the influence of the Catholic church. It's a such a direct reaction to religion being pushed onto people in the public sphere by putting in place restrictions aimed at severely curtailing religious influence in government and education.
In this context, it's worth noting that Turkish secularism was explicitly modelled by Ataturk on French laïcité. E.g. Turkey, like France, is constitutionally a secular republic.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/03/hengame...
Democracy is like technology, morally neutral yet capable of great good or terrible inhumanity.
But my point was not that one system is 'better' or 'worse' but that religious head-wear should not be seen as some inalienable right that we have to accommodate to remain a free society. Even if many young Iranian women may feel 'naked' without it, it only took the religious dictators there one generation to make them forget how it used to be.