French Muslim chief: Respect law
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A girl protests in Toulouse, France, against the ban.
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PARIS, France (Reuters) -- The head of France's official Islamic council has urged Muslims to respect a law that will ban headscarves in state schools and not to heed fundamentalists challenging the country's secular system.
Dalil Boubakeur, chairman of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, told journalists he opposed protest marches called by some Muslim groups even though he also did not want a law barring pupils from wearing religious attire.
An overwhelming majority of parliamentarians voted on Tuesday for a just such a bill, which should become law next month and go into effect from September. Besides headscarves, it would also ban Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.
"We have to respect the law. Muslims cannot be above the law," he said at the Paris Grand Mosque, where he is a rector.
Some Muslim leaders described Tuesday as a "day of mourning" because of the vote, but he said: "I paid homage to my community for staying vigilant and allowing a dialogue with the deputies that resulted in two amendments."
The amendments require school authorities to hold meetings with pupils before expelling them if they persist in flouting the law. It also provided for a review of the ban one year after it goes into effect.
Boubakeur, an Algerian-born moderate close to President Jacques Chirac, was one of the few Muslim community leaders to denounce the protests. Most opted to take no position, which was interpreted as indirect support.
Boubakeur called the headscarf "just a tree hiding a whole forest of problems" created by Islamist activists challenging France's strict separation of church and state.
Education Minister Luc Ferry listed some problems on Tuesday, saying Muslim pupils sometimes denied the Holocaust during history lessons or boycotted biology or physical education classes as un-Islamic.
Boubakeur said Muslim majority countries traditionally mixed politics and religion, but this was not valid for a minority in a secular Western state. He added that only 15-20 percent of Muslims in France regularly prayed in a mosque.
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
