An official of the Queneau College in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, near Lille, northern France, preventing a woman wearing a headscarf from entering the college on Sept. 2. (Photo: AFP)

PARIS: A law banning Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from French public schools took effect peacefully on Sept. 2, transforming the first day of school into a nationwide show of defiance of a demand by the kidnappers of two French journalists in Iraq that the law be rescinded.

About 100 to 200 Muslim girls in the eastern Alsace region of France, however, defied the law banning headscarves in schools, the education minister, Francois Fillon, said. But, he said, “I think we will be able to convince almost all of these young girls to change their minds.” Students face expulsion if they refuse to abide by the law. In Bobigny, near Paris, about 30 Sikh boys have refused to remove their turbans in schools.

Most Muslim schoolgirls arrived bareheaded at the country’s 70,000 elementary and high schools, and most of those who had swathed their heads in varying pieces of fabric removed them on request. Although the ban on “conspicuous” religious symbols also applies to Jewish skullcaps and large and Christian crosses [including Sikh headgears or turbans], there was never any doubt that it was primarily aimed at France’s five million Muslims and what is widely perceived as creeping fundamentalism in their midst.

The education minister toured a number of schools with large numbers of Muslim students on the outskirts of Paris on Sept. 2, saying at one of them thatng day was “marked by fraternity, the idea that all children are treated fairly and equally.” Still, much of the Muslim world remains convinced that the new law is an unfortunate affront to Islam.

(By Permission, The New York Times)