The Hindu : Britons criticise French move on scarf

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 28, 2003

International

International

Britons criticise French move on scarf

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON DEC. 27. Has the instinctive British view that across the Tunnel they can never get anything right been reinforced by the French Government's move to bar Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to school? In Britain, where there are no restrictions on display of religious identity, the French proposal has been variously described as `muddled', "politically-inspired'', and intended to `appease' the far Right. Ironically, much of the criticism has come from non-Muslims who have accused the French Government of exhibiting religious intolerance in the name of `secularism'.

On Saturday, Trevor Phillips, chief of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), waded into the controversy calling the French action a "huge, stupid mistake''. "It's unbelievable,'' he said adding that the British approach to multiculturalism was more mature. "Integration does not mean you don't recognise differences. That is the mistake the French are about to make, a huge stupid mistake. We (in Britain) accept that you can be British but different. People from Yorkshire are different from people in London but we are all British and we share a common core. We are going to spend sometime looking at what that common core is,'' said Mr. Phillips who himself is of Guyanese origin.

His remarks, in an interview to The Telegraph, echoed those of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who hit out at the French move in his Christmas Day sermon. "The proposal to ban Muslim headscarves in French schools suggests that there is still a nervousness about letting (religious) commitment show its face in public,'' he said pointing out that often the `liberal' response to religion tended to have the same effect as the extremist view. "....it isn't easy to face the fact that sometimes the effects are similar for the believer,'' he said.

Earlier, in a newspaper interview, Dr. Williams termed the "dogmatic secularism of the French government ...very provocative and destructive''.

The issue has provoked controversy in media columns with supporters of multiculturalism accusing the French authorities of `misinterpreting' secularism. "(The French President) Chirac seems to define secular as anti-religious when it should mean non-religious. Religious intolerance has been one of the main causes of many wars and atrocities. For secularists to take on characteristics of religious intolerance bodes ill for all in coming centuries,'' wrote one commentator.

However, an Iranian woman in a letter to The Guardian, `applauded' the French move saying that insistence on wearing the `hijab' in the name of women's `modesty' was a "subjective and arbitrary'' interpretation of the Islamic code of modesty.

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