The debate was expected to be noisy as lawmakers hunkered down yesterday to review a bill banning Islamic head scarves in public schools that was also intended to help draw France's huge Muslim community into the mainstream.
But there are fears the effort to end a long quandary over how to deal with Muslim girls who refuse to remove head scarves in the classroom could stigmatize the Muslim population.
The bill to ban "conspicuous" religious symbols in public schools is composed of only three brief articles. However, some 140 lawmakers in the National Assembly, the lower house, have signed up to comment -- an exceedingly high number.
The bill would also ban Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from public schools, but French authorities have made clear that it is aimed at Muslim head coverings.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was to open the debate, a measure of just how important the government considers the legislation. A vote is tentatively set for Tuesday next week.
The bill's third article stipulates that the law would take force at the start of the new school year in September.
President Jacques Chirac has fiercely defended the need for such legislation, which some Muslims view as discriminatory.
A ban is seen as a means of guaranteeing respect for French values, notably secularism, ensuring a strict separation of church and state in the public domain. However, it also is a tool to help bring an increasingly militant Muslim population into the mainstream, and help dampen a rise in Muslim fundamentalism.
With an estimated 5 million Muslims, France has the largest such population in Western Europe and Islam is the second religion in this mainly Roman Catholic country.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS