On the 18th of Dec "2003 French President Jacques Chirac, warning that growing ethnic and religious divisions threatened to erode France's tradition of equality, called for a new law that would ban Muslim girls' headscarves and all other overt religious symbols from public schools.
According to him "Secularism is not negotiable. The schools will remain secular. The Muslim veil, whatever name it is given, the kippa (the Jewish skullcap also known as a yarmulke), or the cross, if of manifestly excessive dimensions, don't have a place in the walls of public schools. Small, discreet signs, like tiny crosses or stars of David should be allowed." He further added that the private businesses should be allowed to ban their Muslim employees from wearing headscarves "for reasons of security or client contact. Moreover the patients at public hospitals should not be allowed to refuse treatment from doctors of the opposite sex. Some French Muslim men reportedly have refused to allow male doctors to treat their wives.
Flashback:.
In the year 1989, the scarves sparked the debate for the first time. In that year the Ayatollah Khomeni issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Algeria's Islamist political movement coalesced, and the intifada heated up. In France the attention was focused on three middle school girls who were keeping their heads covered in class. Accused of attacking France's principle of public secularism by wearing signs of their religion the girls were expelled. Their expulsion did not, however, keep France's intellectuals from taking pens in hand to denounce the scarves and to urge schoolteachers not to give ground, lest they bring about a "Munich of the Republican School". .
Muslims in France:.
France is a country of immigrants. French intellectuals point to the nation's ability to integrate new comers as proof of the power of its institutions and ideology. In the twentieth century Spaniards and Italians, Poles and Russians came to France and they or at least their children became accepted as French.