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Veiled Threats?. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Nov 2008, Pages: 384
For a variety of historical, cultural and political
reasons, the Islamic veil has become an
increasingly controversial matter in Europe. This is
particularly the case in France, where Parliament
passed, in 2004, a piece of legislation that
prohibits students from wearing the Muslim veil
(with any other ‘conspicuous’ religious
sign) in the classroom. This book compares the
French and American attitudes towards religious
symbolism in general and the Islamic veil in
particular. Against conventional wisdom, it argues
that before the passage of the new statute, the
French and American legal systems adopted a
substantially similar approach that respected
religious insignia. This is hardly
surprising, the book suggests, for the American
conception of secularism is in many respects
stricter than the French idea of 'laïcité'. The book
also tries to demolish some popular myths
surrounding the 'affaire des foulards': that the
French legal system is fiercely secular; that the
American one is strongly ‘religious’; and that
France was, in 2004, confronted with a
veritable ‘veil emergency’ that rendered the passage
of the new statute all but inevitable.
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