France’s inside minister on Sunday stated he opposed a proposal put earlier than parliament to ban younger ladies sporting the Muslim headband, saying such a transfer risked being “stigmatising” for the minors.
The challenge of tightening authorized limits on the sporting of the hijab in public is being raised with growing insistence in France, the place the far-right is rising in energy however which has considered one of Europe’s largest Muslim communities.
Laurent Wauquiez, the pinnacle of the parliamentary faction of the standard right-wing Republicans (LR) celebration, submitted a invoice to the decrease home National Assembly final week to ban the sporting of the veil by minors in public.
This proposal “may be very stigmatising in direction of our Muslim compatriots who might really feel damage”, Laurent Nunez, a former Paris police chief named as inside minister in October to succeed his hardline LR predecessor Bruno Retailleau, informed BFMTV. “I’m not in favour of it on this means.”
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A report by the LR within the higher home Senate has gone even additional, suggesting banning Ramadan fasting for these underneath 16.
Nunez stated that authorities wanted to be “extraordinarily cautious” and deal with concentrating on Islamists with an excessive interpretation of the faith who search to impose “non secular legislation over the legal guidelines of the republic”.
But the difficulty is a topic of pressure inside President Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right authorities, which is conscious that the far proper has its finest ever likelihood of successful the Elysee within the 2027 polls.
Equality Minister Aurore Berge informed CNews she backed a hijab ban for minors “to guard kids”.
“I’ve little question that there’s now a majority within the National Assembly and the Senate to vote for it,” she stated.
Macron’s centre-right Renaissance celebration, led by former prime minister Gabriel Attal, in May additionally proposed banning “minors underneath 15 from sporting the veil in public areas”.
Under present laws in France, a secular state in keeping with its structure, civil servants, academics and pupils can not put on any apparent non secular symbols comparable to a Christian cross, Jewish kippa, Sikh turban or Muslim hijab in authorities buildings, together with public colleges.
