In a television interview last month, President François Hollande made a point of condemning the undermining of judges by politicians. But this does not seem to apply to those who criticise legal rulings, such as interior minister Manuel Valls, who recently expressed his “regret” over a ruling by the Cour de Cassation, France's highest court of appeal, that a woman was wrongfully dismissed from the Baby-Loup private nursery for refusing to remove her Islamic headscarf.
In the interview Hollande went further than just defending his interior minister and called for an overhaul of legislation in this area. He has asked prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to hold talks with the political parties' parliamentary groups on the possibility of a law extending France's state school ban on wearing conspicuous religious symbols to those workplaces "where there is contact with children" and in particular to publicly-funded day care centres. In the Baby-Loup case, he has therefore come down firmly on the side of those arguing for a strict application of France's cherished secularist principles.
The Cour de Cassation's ruling on March 19th was based on the law on how these secularist principles are applied in the workplace. It found that although a crèche such as Baby-Loup carries out a public interest function, it is a private institution and therefore cannot be regarded as the operator of a public service nor be subject to the same obligation of religious neutrality as civil and public servants. The court also said the organisation's rules and regulations could not be used to justify any restrictions on religious freedom. Freedom of religion and the separation of church and state are the two core principles of France's 1905 law on secularism.
The country's constitutional council also recently ruled that French secularist principles involve "the neutrality of the state, no official recognition of any religion, respect for all faiths, the equality of all citizens before the law without any distinction on the grounds of religion, a guarantee of freedom to practise one's faith and no state financing of any religion".
But Hollande said there is still a need to "lay down some rules", although he said these should not lead to anyone feeling that they are being discriminated against or the object of prejudice. He said a new law would need to apply to all bodies carrying out public interest tasks whereas the current law just applies to public service operators. The president also made a point of referring to public ombudsman Dominique Baudis, who recently asked the government to clarify the secularism law. Baudis wrote to Ayrault after the Baby-Loup ruling, noting that it is difficult for employees to know whether they are working for a public service operator or an organisation carrying out a public interest role. "These uncertainties lead to misunderstandings and conflicts that are detrimental to the cohesion of the French Republic," he wrote.
At a time of deepening economic and social difficulties, many politicians and top academics are pushing for legislative reform. And although Hollande denies that he wants to stigmatise any particular group, such a move would clearly be targeted mainly at Muslim women who wear headscarves. The interior minister cut short the debate by explicitly calling for a new law, and this paved the way for opposition MPs to put forward a bill on March 28th on religious neutrality in companies and non-profit making organisations. The bill was signed by UMP party parliamentary leader Christian Jacob, UMP president Jean-François Copé and former prime minister François Fillon.
'I don't believe that secularism is threatened'
But the socialist interior minister has not only aligned himself with figures from the right. Traditional political allegiances mean that he enjoys cross-party support. On the left of the Socialist Party (PS), Alain Vidalies, who is in charge of the government's relations with parliament, supports Valls' position, as does the radical-left Parti de gauche, which is closely in tune with PS first secretary Harlem Désir.
There has been a string of editorials and columns on the subject, and magazine Marianne has published a petition calling for a new law on religious symbols, which has already been signed by philosophers Elisabeth Badinter and Henri Pena Ruiz, essayists Caroline Fourest, Alain Finkielkraut and Malika Sorel, former ministers of both right and left Jacques Toubon, Jean Glavany and Jeannette Bougrab, and Jean-Michel Baylet, leader of the centre-left Parti radical de gauche. The petition says the law should be changed to ban women from wearing head scarves in organisations dealing with small children on the grounds that "children are our most defenceless and impressionable citizens, so they have a right to an environment of religious neutrality, to ensure that they are able to exercise free will during their education".
Those calling for a more conciliatory approach have maintained a lower profile in the public debate. Urban affairs minister François Lamy expressed his reservations during a visit to the Paris suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, where Baby-Loup is based. "We should not legislate in haste, as the previous government often did. I do not believe that there is a threat to secularism. A rushed law could end up leading to a situation where women who wear the headscarf no longer work, or to crèches run on denominational lines," he said.
Socialist MP Razzy Hammadi told news agency AFP he would oppose any bid to introduce new legislation on secularism, seeing any such move as an attempt to stigmatise part of the population. "I would vote against any proposal on this, irrespective of where it comes from, because it would be a response to news trivia, bar talk and an impulse which we know has its roots in a hatred of others," he insisted. "We did not get rid of Nicolas Sarkozy to see his sort of policies introduced by the back door."
And in contrast to Elisabeth Badinter and Alain Finkielkraut, intellectuals such as historian Jean Baubérot, social demographer Patrick Simon, sociologists Vincent Geisser and Raphaël Liogier, and Marwan Muhammad, spokesman for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, have argued in an article in Le Monde against a rush to legislation that would end up limiting fundamental freedoms. Instead, they say politicians need to focus on the rise of Islamophobia in France and "take stock of the racism, and even hatred, that is targeted at Muslim citizens nowadays".
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English version by Steve Whitehouse
(Editing by Michael Streeter)