Fri 27 September 2019:
A fresh political row has erupted over the Muslim headscarf in France after the education minister said he wanted to avoid having mothers in hijab as volunteers on school outings.
Jean-Michel Blanquer described the choice of a headscarved woman accompanying a child on a school trip as an “error”.
Accompanying the image, which was released by the Congress of the Federation of parents of pupils (FCPE), are the words: “Yes, I’m going on a school trip, and so what? Secularism is about welcoming all parents to school, without exception.”
Blanquer told BFMTV that even though French law did not ban mothers in headscarves from going on school trips as volunteers, he wanted to avoid this “as much as possible”. He said he encouraged “dialogue” in which headteachers would ask mothers to remove their scarves. He said the parents association had made a “regrettable” mistake by using the picture.
There is no law preventing a Muslim mother in a headscarf from accompanying a school trip. The state council ruled in 2013 that mothers outside school were not affected by the strict neutrality rules for state workers such as teachers or hospital staff who cannot wear any religious symbols in the workplace, including headscarves and turbans.
France – the country with Europe’s largest Muslim population – was the first European country to ban the full-veil in public spaces in 2011.
The European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban in 2014, rejecting arguments that outlawing full-face veils breached religious freedom.
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