RELIGION: The Turbans Will Not Go Away

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

BOBIGNY, France, Sep 10 2004 (IPS) - Jasvir Singh touches his turban like it was his most precious property. “I will never take it off,” he says sitting in the yard of the Sikh temple in Bobigny, 10 km from Paris.

Jasvir, 17, should have been at the local Louise-Michel secondary school, but the authorities would not let him in wearing a turban. “If I have to choose between wearing the turban and quitting school, I go back home immediately,” he said. “With my turban on.”

A law passed last March prohibits wearing of large religious symbols such as the Muslim headscarf, big crucifixes, and the Jewish kippas to school. It has come to include the Sikh turban.

“On May 10 the Prime Minister wrote to us that the government would guarantee access to school for our children,” says Sikh leader Karmvir Singh. “Obviously, these were empty promises.”

Most Sikhs students arrived at school Sep. 2 wearing only ‘inconspicuous’ turbans, but teachers threw them out. The Sikh community is now up in defiance.

“The experts who prepared the law never asked us about our religion,” says Singh. “So we are not bothered about this law.” About 7,000 Sikhs have lived in France since the early 1980s, mostly in Bobigny.

According to the Reht Maryada, the official Sikh code of conduct, Sikh men must wear a turban to protect their hair.

The law was made really to ban the Muslim headscarf from school, says Daniel Robin who handles religious affairs at the French National Union of Education Workers.

“To conceal this objective, lawmakers banned crucifixes and kippas too,” he told IPS. “But they were not aware of the turban. So the law has created a conflict for which there is no solution. If we accept the turban at schools, how can we ban the headscarf?”

Sikhs had pointed out when the law was passed in March 2004 that it would come to include the turban. Luc Ferry who was education minister at the time suggested that Sikhs could wear an “invisible turban”. He was dismissed from government before he could explain what he meant by that.

Muslim leaders had encouraged girls to attend school during the opening weeks of the new academic year wearing prominent headscarves in order to provoke a confrontation with authorities. But the abduction of two French journalists in Iraq by a guerrilla group which asked the French government to lift the ban on headscarves for freeing the reporters placed the Muslim community in a dilemma.

French Muslims would either have to comply with the French law, or they would be seen to be supporting the abduction of the two reporters. Most Muslims leaders took the first option, and asked girls to comply with the law.

“The law has come into force in a climate of fraternity and tolerance,” education minister Francois Fillon declared. He may have spoken too soon. The conflict is still lurking, not only among Sikhs but also among Muslims.

“While the students have been following our calls for moderation, the French government does not,” says Mohamed Bechari, president of the National Federation of French Muslims. Fouad Alaoui, leader of the French Union of Islamic Organisations has threatened to challenge the ban before the European Court of Human Rights.

The education ministry has announced that students who refuse to comply with the ban will be registered for special classes by mail.