Weaponising secularism: French politicians accused of utilizing ‘laicité’ to focus on Muslims

[ad_1] When conservative members of the French Senate printed a report on combating “Islamism” in late November, their proposed options got here as all too acquainted studying for representatives of France’s giant and numerous Muslim neighborhood.

The 17 measures put ahead by senators from the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) social gathering ranged from a ban on headscarves for moms accompanying faculty journeys to the prohibition of Ramadan fasting for teenagers aged below 16. The report additionally referred to as for a blanket ban on hijabs in sports activities, together with on the newbie degree, within the identify of France’s cherished precept of laïcité, loosely translated as state secularism.

Such measures have been essential to fight the “veiling of younger ladies”, the senators argued, describing Muslim headscarves as “banners for sexual apartheid”.

For critics, nevertheless, the report smacked of a rising tendency to focus on not Islamism, however quite Muslims as an entire – an estimated 5 million folks in a rustic with a complete inhabitants of over 68 million. It additionally violated the very laïcité it professed to defend, by curbing the liberty of worship enshrined in laws handed 120 years in the past at the moment.

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<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/5e6bd8ee-d11e-11f0-aca1-005056bfb2b6/w:1280/p:16x9/ENG-NEWS-04-12-2025-11-59-ING17-PGM-N3-Sub-01.jpg" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/5e6bd8ee-d11e-11f0-aca1-005056bfb2b6/w:388/p:16x9/ENG-NEWS-04-12-2025-11-59-ING17-PGM-N3-Sub-01.jpg 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/5e6bd8ee-d11e-11f0-aca1-005056bfb2b6/w:720/p:16x9/ENG-NEWS-04-12-2025-11-59-ING17-PGM-N3-Sub-01.jpg 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/5e6bd8ee-d11e-11f0-aca1-005056bfb2b6/w:1024/p:16x9/ENG-NEWS-04-12-2025-11-59-ING17-PGM-N3-Sub-01.jpg 1024w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/5e6bd8ee-d11e-11f0-aca1-005056bfb2b6/w:1280/p:16x9/ENG-NEWS-04-12-2025-11-59-ING17-PGM-N3-Sub-01.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 639px) calc(100vw - 32px), (max-width: 1076px) calc(100vw - 44px), 850px" width="1280" height="720" alt="FRENCH CONNECTIONS" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> FRENCH CONNECTIONS © FRANCE 24 A day after the report’s launch, Muslim non secular leaders, neighborhood representatives and grassroots activists wrote an open letter to Senate President Gérard Larcher, a member of Les Républicains, expressing their “weariness” on the repeated “stigmatisation” of France’s Muslims.

“This umpteenth report is a part of a sample that has grow to be sadly acquainted to hundreds of thousands of French Muslim residents, that of the systematic political exploitation of their non secular practices,” the signatories wrote.

Weaponising laïcité The authors of the Senate proposals argue that such measures are essential to fight the affect of radical Islamism. They base their arguments on a report on the Muslim Brotherhood commissioned by the federal government, which recognized a “menace to nationwide cohesion” within the growth of an ill-defined “Islamism” on the grassroots degree. Printed in Might, the report highlighted a “large and visual enhance within the variety of younger ladies carrying the veil”.

On November 24, Les Républicains’ prime lawmaker within the lower-house Nationwide Meeting, Laurent Wauquiez, tabled a draft invoice calling for a blanket ban on headscarves for ladies below 18.

Like most of the proposals put ahead by his Senate colleagues, Wauquiez’s invoice seems to contradict Article 1 of the hallowed 1905 regulation on secularism, which ensures residents’ “freedom of conscience” and “free train of faith, restricted solely by […] the curiosity of public order”.

The proposals by Les Républicains lawmakers “goal just one religion, one class of French residents, and don't apply the identical guidelines to different faiths. It is a clear case of unequal remedy that violates the precept of equality,” says Nicolas Cadène, a former senior member of the now-defunct Observatoire de la laïcité, a physique tasked with advising the federal government on tips on how to uphold the ideas of state secularism.

Cadène argues that such measures comply with an more and more frequent sample of politicians weaponising the precept of laïcité as a “software to curtail the rights of Muslims”.

‘Combative secularism’ Marine Le Pen's far-right, anti-immigrant Nationwide Rally social gathering – whose ideological predecessors as soon as opposed laïcité as an anti-clerical conspiracy – has lengthy used France’s secular guidelines to focus on Muslims, typically conflating Islam and immigration. So has her rival Eric Zemmour, a former TV pundit and presidential candidate who argues that Muslims should select between Islam and France, ignoring the overwhelming majority of French Muslims who cherish the nation’s legal guidelines and values.

<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/042bfa8e-1aef-11eb-860a-005056bf87d6/w:980/000_1M57IP.jpg" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/042bfa8e-1aef-11eb-860a-005056bf87d6/w:246/000_1M57IP.jpg 246w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/042bfa8e-1aef-11eb-860a-005056bf87d6/w:388/000_1M57IP.jpg 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/042bfa8e-1aef-11eb-860a-005056bf87d6/w:720/000_1M57IP.jpg 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/042bfa8e-1aef-11eb-860a-005056bf87d6/w:980/000_1M57IP.jpg 980w" sizes="(max-width: 1023px) calc(100vw - 32px), (min-width: 1024px) 850px" alt="A banner reading "French and Muslim: proud of our two identities", at a rally in Paris." style="max-height:567px" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> A banner studying "French and Muslim: pleased with our two identities", at a rally in Paris. © Geoffroy Van der Hasselt, AFP Progressives on the left and centre of the political spectrum are additionally torn between rival understandings of French secularism, which disagree on how far the state ought to go in asserting non secular neutrality within the public sphere. Divisions got here to a head within the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 terrorist assaults in 2015, which fuelled requires a extra “combative secularism” within the face of a murderous ideology that repeatedly shed blood on French soil.

“It was a time of nice confusion, with many politicians exploiting official fears of Islamist terrorism to justify measures that curtailed the freedoms of a part of the inhabitants,” says Cadène, a frequent goal of advocates of this laïcité de fight, who have been particularly influential throughout President Emmanuel Macron’s first time period in workplace (2017-2022).

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Macron’s former training minister Jean-Michel Blanquer declared in 2019 that “the veil will not be fascinating in our society”, and continuously railed in opposition to what he described because the “devastating results” of “Islamo-leftism” in universities – a notion vehemently rejected on the time by the overwhelming majority of lecturers. His successor Gabriel Attal would later ban pupils from carrying abayas, long-sleeved clothes of Center Japanese origin, in state faculties.

In 2021, then inside minister Gérald Darmanin secured passage of a invoice on combating “separatism” within the French Republic, which rights teams warned would stigmatise minorities and Muslims specifically. It notably allowed the federal government to exert larger management over charities and NGOs.

The identical 12 months, the federal government scrapped Cadène’s Observatoire de la laïcité, which critics accused of “disarming” laïcité with its liberal, by-the-books tackle France's secular guidelines.

A present to Islamists? Surveys have proven that the French public itself has solely a partial understanding of laïcité – although a big majority consider it's below menace. This sketchy understanding of what's meant to be a cornerstone of French regulation and the concept of vivre ensemble (nationwide cohesion) has left lots of room for rival interpretations to thrive and collide, resulting in vitriolic debates – and typically public embarrassment.

In 2019, a Catholic nun was mistakenly informed she may solely keep at a retirement dwelling within the city of Vesoul if she stopped carrying non secular clothes, prompting the native mayor to apologise. It got here days after a politician in close by Dijon requested a Muslim mom on a faculty journey to take away her hijab, igniting a fierce debate. There was extra turmoil in 2020 when a number of French lawmakers walked out of the Nationwide Meeting in protest on the presence of a pupil union consultant who wore a hijab.

In none of those instances had France’s secular guidelines – which require the neutrality of civil servants, academics and pupils in state faculties, however not of most people – been infringed upon.

Cadène – who ran, unsuccessfully, as a left-wing candidate in parliamentary elections final 12 months – says years of debating Islam in France have led to a “nice confusion” over secularism legal guidelines and shifted public discourse in the direction of a stricter understanding of laïcité. He warns that proposals focusing on Muslims are each discriminatory and “counterproductive”, aiding the very radicalism they profess to fight.

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“Radical indoctrinators feed off this rhetoric, which supplies them with arguments to again their claims that Muslims are discriminated in opposition to,” he explains, including that measures particularly focusing on Muslims “solely intensify their withdrawal from a public house they really feel excluded from”.

Inside Minister Laurent Nunez has voiced comparable concern about Wauquiez’s proposed ban on minors carrying headscarves in public, describing the invoice as “very stigmatising in the direction of our Muslim compatriots who could really feel damage”. He mentioned the authorities wanted to be “extraordinarily cautious” and deal with focusing on radical Islamists who search to impose “non secular regulation over the legal guidelines of the republic”.

However his view will not be shared by all cupboard members, with Gender Equality Minister Aurore Bergé, whose portfolio consists of the struggle in opposition to discrimination, notably talking in favour of a ban on minors carrying hijabs in public.