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How does a religious minority fit within secular France?
Read this week's briefing (below) to learn about secularism in France and how Muslims, the country's largest minority population, are challenging this tradition rooted deeply in history.
Islam and French Secularism: The Roots of the Conflict
by Jocelyne Cesari
August 23, 2004
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Since 1989, the appearance of the hijab (Muslim headscarf) in French public schools has opened the most impassioned debate over the role of "laïcité" (secularism) in French society since the separation of church and state in 1905. Conflicts between Muslim adolescents and school authorities have extended beyond the schools to involve intellectuals, political actors, and religious authorities, and, as of March 2004, a new law has been passed that bans all overt religious symbols from public schools.
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| 1789 |
The French Revolution ends the Catholic Church's domination over the state.
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| 1801 |
Napoleon makes peace with the Catholic Church under the Concordat. The agreement brought the Church under state auspices, but confined it to religious matters.
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| 1905 |
Amidst renewed anti-clericalism, a law on separation of church and state is passed.
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| 1937 |
Schools are instructed to keep religious symbols out of the classroom.
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| 1989 |
Two Muslim girls refuse to abide to their school's rule and remove their headscarves. The French Court of Appeals ruled that religious signs are allowed in schools as long as they are not "obtrusive."
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The Conflicted Beginning of French Secularism
The term "laïcité" implies more than the legal separation of church and state; it is also a philosophy of public life and a fundamental principle of French culture. At the dawn of the twentieth century, when La Loi Sur La Laïcité, the law separating the French church and state, was born, legislators' chief objective was not to regulate the domain of religion, but to sequester it. The Catholic Church dominated the French state before the revolution of 1789, and the Church opposed liberal values into the 20th century. Laïcité thus emerged as much from a desire to "undo" the religious sphere as to reconcile it with the public sphere.
Like in the United States, French secularism now involves the protection of religion from government interference, but unlike in the United States, secularism initially also meant the protection of the state from religious interference. The French political figures who established the laïcité law of 1905 were continuing the legacy of the Enlightenment, which held positivism -- a belief in the power of secular humanism -- as a central tenet. They followed a doctrine that confirms the triumph of the rational human being over the forces of religion, in which the state may function as a counter-model to religious faith. Laïcité, then, was seen as the means for cultivating a "new man" committed to reason, science, and progress.
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Inside This Episode
 Explore the everyday lives of French Muslims in the Photo Essay.
Take a look at the numbers of Muslims in the West in the Info-Graphic.
Use the Interactive Map to learn about headscarf controversies around the world.
Men praying at the Islamic Cultural Center of Courcouronnes in Evry, France.
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Why do Muslim women wear hijabs? Is it a symbol of suppression or liberation? Discuss the issue!
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