After the Head-Scarf Ban

Raphael Cazenave is an unlikely supporter of the pending ban on Islamic veils and other religious symbols in public schools, which was passed by the lower house of the French Parliament on Feb. 10. A youth counselor and lifelong resident of Paris banlieues — the poor, often violent and ethnically diverse housing developments on the outskirts of France's big cities — Cazenave, 30, might be expected to defend the right of Muslim girls to wear head scarves at school. But he backs the ban, and even wants the government to go further. "This law is a Band-Aid stuck on a serious social fracture," Cazenave says. "When do the republican values of equal opportunity and access for all become realities? When do we see a law saying that society must open up to the same people it is ordering to integrate?"

Those are hotly contested questions as the ban heads for final (and certain) passage by March 3. When the law to forbid Muslim head scarves, Jewish yarmulkes, "excessively oversized" Christian crucifixes and perhaps Sikh turbans was initially approved this month, Education Minister Luc Ferry promised it would stop "classrooms from being divided up into militant religious communities." Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin

	There isn't a single Muslim in Parliament to vote on this law and not a single Arab among all the country's mayors ... France is broken. — ZAIR KEDADOUCHE, politician and civil rights activist

claimed that "the Republic and secularism are strengthened" by the legislation. But opponents argue it will have the opposite effect, further isolating Muslims and fueling the perception that their faith and culture are under siege. People on both sides of the debate agree that the most serious divisions within French society spring not from head scarves but from economic and social inequality. "There isn't a single Muslim in Parliament to vote on this law and not a single Arab among all the country's mayors," laments conservative politician and civil rights activist Zaïr Kedadouche. "France is broken."

Consider these signs of fracture: unemployment in the banlieue often runs at more than double the national level of 9.7%, and the jobless rate among banlieue youths with a college or vocational diploma is four times higher than it is among those from more affluent areas. Resignation and hopelessness have sent criminal activity and incivility soaring, and the banlieues' physical isolation makes them islands of anger, apathy and pain. "I've seen guys turn to fundamentalist Islam as the only positive, redeeming option available," reports Cazenave. "Some women start wearing a veil just to get their parents off their backs or escape sexual harassment" from men who assume unveiled women are inviting abuse.

Kedadouche, a member of France's High Council of Integration, cites his own recent encounter with social breakdown. Just this month he resigned from the list of Paris-area candidates for regional elections in March posted by France's ruling Union for a Popular Movement Party. Initially slated for a prominent slot on the roster, Kedadouche was stunned to learn that he had been assigned an unelectable spot at the bottom of the list, which he refused as blatant tokenism. Long an opponent of state-mandated measures to ensure equality, Kedadouche now admits that "integration, racial equality and occupational access in France won't happen without positive discrimination and the legal evil of quotas. I'm all for a secularity law, but that's just the top branch of a huge and troubled tree."

There are signs that France is beginning to strike at the roots. Two weeks ago the Raffarin government established a new administration for renovating decrepit housing projects, a measure long sought by Junior Minister for Urban Affairs Jean-Louis Borloo. The National Agency for Urban Renovation intends to refurbish or build new housing for nearly 6 million banlieue residents by the end of 2008. Some of the program will involve the relocation of partial neighborhoods to more affluent city centers, and the project could initially create around 100,000 new jobs for residents.

Borloo is basing this drive on his success in the 1990s as mayor of the northern city of Valenciennes, where he reinvigorated the banlieues through construction projects and job creation. To succeed on a national scale, he'll have to reverse decades of neglect and indifference, which has led many banlieue residents to embrace the very cultural and religious identities that the Feb. 10 secularity vote seeks to discourage. And while opponents of the ban vow to continue their nationwide protests through the final vote, the head-scarf law may be only the beginning of France's controversial efforts to realize its republican ideals.