October 17, 2000
Président Jacques Chirac
Monsieur le Président de la République
Palais de l’Elysée
55, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
75008, Paris, France
Dear Monsieur le Président,
I am writing on behalf of KARAMAH: MUSLIM WOMEN LAWYERS
FOR HUMAN RIGHTS to voice our concerns about young Muslim
women's access to education in France. We are concerned
that young Muslim women who choose to wear headscarves continue
to be denied their right to education and to practice their
religion freely. We are further concerned that the French
government, the historical seat of the modern human rights
movement, has not sufficiently marshaled its forces against
the rising tide of intolerance facing both immigrant and
citizen Muslims in France. Even the United States government
has taken note of the French debate over "le foulard
Islamique," noting in its 1999 Annual Human Rights
Report that there has been no definitive national decision
on "whether denying some Muslim girls the right to
wear head scarves in public schools constitutes a violation
of the right to practice their religion" (See U.S.
Department of State 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices, February 25, 2000).
KARAMAH is a United States-based human rights organization
that focuses on issues of human rights for Muslims. Karamah
means "dignity" in Arabic; we believe that all
human beings, regardless of race, status or gender, are
endowed with the same dignity. We are Muslim women lawyers—some
of us wear headscarves and some do not. It is in the spirit
of KARAMAH and in the tradition of the French polity that
gave birth to the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and
Citizen in 1789 that I write to you.
We commend the 1989 decision of the Conseil d'Etat, ruling
that the Criel school principal who suspended three Muslim
school girls wearing headscarves had violated the freedom
of religion of the girls, guaranteed to them by the French
Constitution. We further commend the Conseil's 1995 decision,
affirming that simply wearing a headscarf does not provide
grounds for exclusion from school and reversing decisions
that had expelled school girls in such situations.
Yet we note with concern more recent events that demonstrate
a disregard for fundamental human rights: the refusal of
teachers in Normandy to teach Muslim students with headscarves;
the statement by Interior Minister Jean Pierre Chevenement
that headscarves often mark women as inferior to men and
render their integration into French society more difficult;
and the position of the Government upholding a decision
expelling two Muslim girls who wore headscarves from their
junior high school. More importantly, we strongly disagree
with the Conseil's October 1999 decision to reaffirm a ban
on headscarves in public schools.
We are concerned that as members of a religious minority
and as young women or girls, these Muslim school children
are facing a double violation of their rights, when in fact
it is for the protection of such potentially vulnerable
communities that international human rights and domestic
civil rights norms are established. Not only is the right
to free exercise of religion being denied to these Muslim
students, but as young women, they are being subjected to
an attempted "secularization" that is not directed
towards young men. The attempts to prohibit the wearing
of headscarves in French public schools have evidenced a
gendered and religious double standard in French society,
and we urge you to guarantee to all school children in France,
religious and non-religious, boys and girls, the right to
an education.
The right to education is protected by both the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICCPR)
and the Convention against Discrimination in Education.
The ICCPR states:
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience,
and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or
to adopt a religion or belief of his [sic] choice, and freedom,
either individually or in community with others and in public
or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship,
observance, practice, and teaching. (Article 18, ICCPR,
emphasis added.)
Further, the U.N. Human Rights Committee's General Comment
clarifying article 18 noted that "when legislation
is adopted by a State party, it must comply with the requirement
of article 26 that it should not be discriminatory."
The French government policy to ban only so-called "ostentatious"
signs of religious belief in state schools, however, has
been applied in a discriminatory fashion. It has been directed
only towards Muslim schoolgirls who wear headscarves and
not to members of any other religious group who wear religious
symbols.
Critics of "le foulard Islamique" in school allege
that scarves pose a health risk to students engaging in
physical activity—particularly in physical education
classes. However, there have been no documented health studies
supporting such a claim. In the absence of any concrete
evidence of physical danger created by wearing headscarves,
excluding Muslim female students who wear head scarves is
a "solution" to a non-existent problem, a "solution"
that compromises religious freedom and gender equality.
Critics further claim that the headscarf is an attempt
at proselytizing in schools, threatening the secular nature
of French society. However, this same charge has not been
leveled at Christian or Jewish signs of distinction, only
at Muslim ones. Jewish boys or young men who choose to wear
yarmulkes are not barred from attending public school; French
schoolteachers have exhibited a tolerance of this tradition.
Young Muslim women should not be denied the same right of
religious statement.
Rather than a neutral, secular stance, restrictions on
young Muslim women's right to wear headscarves instead reflect
a patriarchal and oppressive attitude within French society
towards these young women and their bodies. More troubling
to Karamah is the French government's apparent willingness
to support such an attitude. Those in France who would prohibit
Muslim girls with headscarves from attending French public
schools have claimed that the girls have not independently
chosen to wear headscarves. Rather, they have argued, these
girls are being compelled to wear headscarves by their families
or the larger Muslim community.
First, KARAMAH strongly rejects the Orientalist gaze that
undergirds this claim—the idea that any manifestation
of religion by a Muslim must be a product of coercion or
group thinking, rather than a product of a reasoned decision
by a Muslim individual. Second, we note that the individual
agency and personal freedom to choose to wear a yarmulke
by young Jewish boys is never questioned or cited as a reason
to deny these schoolboys access to education. Fifty years
after Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, her observations
still ring true—women are still regarded as subjective,
passive beings, while males are granted both objectivity
and agency.
KARAMAH agrees with those in the French public who call
for the veiled youngsters to enter French republican society.
Yet Karamah also insists, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau once
wrote, that education is the cornerstone to the development
of the democratic citizen. Key to the development of the
French citizen is exposure to and engagement with the political
and philosophical ideals of the French republic. Every school
child in France deserves—and has the right to—a
French education. Muslim schoolgirls who wear headscarves
must be given the same opportunity as other French students
to read Rousseau and study French republican and political
thought. By denying education to these Muslim girls, the
French government blocks them from entering French civil
and political society.
KARAMAH calls on the French government to maintain and
enforce an even-handed, non-discriminatory policy for people
of all religious beliefs and of both genders. We call for
a policy that allows freedom of conscience and freedom of
statement to thrive in a diverse society. We call for a
policy that does not succumb to bigotry, conformity, and
prejudice. The headscarf worn by a Muslim schoolgirl is
not a harbinger of terrorism or extremism. It is a simple
symbol of religious faith.
KARAMAH calls on the French government to protect the fundamental
human rights of Muslim schoolgirls who have chosen to wear
headscarves, by insuring their admission to and proper treatment
in schools. KARAMAH also urges the French government to
develop a concrete, strategic plan to combat racism and
prejudice amongst school officials and teachers, through
staff training and governmental directives.
The vicious memories of the World War in Europe, and the
potential for prejudice and insensitivity to escalate into
massive violence, still remain fresh in the contemporary
collective memory. We call on France to lead Europe in confronting
the contemporary challenges at hand. Do not let bigotry,
prejudice, and hatred define 21st century Europe. Instead,
let France take its proper place as a leader in the human
rights community and to serve as a model for multi-religious
and multi-ethnic states to emulate as civil societies worldwide
become increasingly ethnically and religiously diverse.
Respectfully,
Sameera Fazili
Executive Director
KARAMAH: MUSLIM WOMEN LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
