What were France's reasons for banning hijab at schools back in 2004?

Question

They must have had some kind of legitimate reason.

Note: I don't consider Islamophobia a legit reason.

Answer 1

This comes from a concept called "laïcité" it can be translated by secularism in english, although laicite is stronger. It's a complete separation between the state and the church, religion is only a private matter. It's one of our most important core values of the French Republic. It's inherited from the French revolution and French people are very attached to it.

This is not actually a ban on Hijab, as often refered in english speaking media, it is a ban on every religious symbol from public school. Every word has its importance here. First it concerns only public schools, (school owned by the state), you can still wear religous symbol in private school (which are often catholic school BTW). Then, it's a ban on every religious symbol, this is meant to free children from religious connection, often inherited from their parents, and allow them to discover other religions freed from their own religions obligation (sorry i don't know the exact word for that in English), thus there is a presentation of the main religions in school. Another goal is to finish growing tensions between religous or ethnic communities. So the objective is to let children become independant citizens and can choose his religion knowingly, not always its parents' religion. That's why the ban is not applied in University where the student is considered a mature adult able to make his own choice.

Although the ban is applied to every religious symbols (Cross, Kippa etc..), only the muslims felt offended and wanted to avoid the ban. In the end, they had to accept it, as said before, laicité is too important for the French. I think this ban is a good thing, I would even go further by imposing school uniform to finish with complex dress codes and improper dressing in school.

Answer 2

To prevent the type of 'self-segregation' of the Islamic students that is becoming such a problem in the UK and Germany. They wanted students to think of themselves as French first, and Muslim second, not the other way around.

In the UK, second and third generation Muslim immigrants are, more and more, seeing themselves not as part of British society, but as Muslims who just happen to live there and who shouldn't be subject to British law.

Since the British government is bowing to that, instead of standing up to it, there is a whole separate Muslim subculture developing - in which the tube bombers grew up. These were not poor ghetto youths - they were well to-do middle and upper-middle class kids from successful families who, despite that, saw themselves as outsiders.

Richard