Less than a month after it was instructed by President Jacques Chirac to take “urgent action to defend the values of the republic”, the French Government today presents to the National Assembly its proposal for a new law banning the use of all “ostentatious religious signs” in state schools. So as not to appear anti-Islamic, the law will also ban crucifixes and Jewish skullcaps, but the target of this alarmist legislation is the hijab, the headdress worn by some Muslim women and known in France as le foulard islamique.

The hijab issue has been hotly debated by the French Establishment for more than a decade, spawning at least 100 books and pamphlets, and countless acres of newspaper polemics, mostly hostile to the foulard. Things came to a head in December when Chirac invited France’s top 500 officials and dignitaries to a special session at the Elysée and, in long speech televised live, called for national mobilisation in defence of the republic’s “secular values”.

The way the French media hyperventilated over the occasion would make one believe that Chirac had raised the banner of national resistance against a foreign invader: something like Vercingetorix standing up to Roman conquerors in Gaul, or Charles Martel stopping the Saracens at Poitiers. The truth is that the proposed law is making a mountain out of a molehill.

To start with, it is wrong to see the hijab as a symbol of conflict between Islam and the West. The foulard in question is not even a religious symbol. Inspired by the headgear that St Vincent designed for his convent nuns, the foulard was first introduced to the Shia in Lebanon in 1975 and imposed by force in Iran in the 1980s. But it has never been sanctioned by any Islamic religious authority in France or anywhere else. Radical Islamist groups, however, use it as one of their political symbols.

To justify the hijab, Islamists claim that women must cover their hair because it emanates special rays that drive men wild with sexual passion. That idea has led to some niche marketing from some designers. A transparent hijab by L’Oréal allows the woman’s hair to be seen while keeping its dangerous rays under control. Another, designed by Calvin Klein, covers the hair while allowing the woman’s less dangerous ears and neck to show.

Even then, the foulard concerns few Muslims in France, or anywhere else for that matter. French government statistics show that no more than 2,000 out of 1.8 million Muslim schoolgirls wore it in 2002. Studies in 11 Muslim-inhabited suburbs in France show that more than two thirds of girls wearing the hijab do so because of intimidation by Islamist gangs. But, instead of passing laws to protect those girls, the Chirac Government is preparing to punish them at the school gates.

Many other studies completely disprove the fears behind this silly law. Fewer than 13 per cent of French Muslims describe themselves as “practising”. Some 40 per cent of French Muslims marry non-Muslims (for women the figure is 30 per cent). The government-sponsored election to form a “French church of Islam” last year attracted only 40,000 voters, less than 1 per cent of the Muslims eligible to take part. The French would do well to look to Britain, where the hijab, far from being regarded as a front line of a clash of civilisations, is just a political fashion statement in a multicultural society.

But Chirac’s real motives may be connected with the declining popularity of his Government. His centre-right coalition faces local elections in May and feels threatened by the rising tide of both left and right extremism.

The extreme right — especially the National Front, which won 18 per cent of the votes in the presidential election two years ago — portrays Islam as a threat to “Christian” France. The Left, for its part, claims that Islam is the only religion that can endanger France’s secular traditions.

Chirac may well be using this law to chip at the support base of both extremes. It may be a clever tactic in electoral terms. But it leaves the real issue untouched: France is threatened by a number of extremist groups and parties, of which the Islamists are but one.

The author is an Iranian commentator partly based in Paris

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