Is there a place for the Islamic veil in the European schools? : a case study of the prohibition of the veil in French public education

Abstract

This year the issue of the headscarf in French schools and the debate on the enactment of a legal ban on the headscarf polarized the media nationally and internationally for a considerable time. However, the idea of writing about the veil in France came to my mind after reading the story of Aisha Alvi, the veiled girl who almost risked being excluded from school in England but stood up for her rights and managed to keep her veil and continue her studies at the same time. Today Aisha Alvi is a barrister. When compared with the fate of veiled girls in France and other countries one feels sorry for these young girls who were denied the right to education and a chance for a better future. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the legality of the prohibition of the Islamic headscarf in public schools in the light of the French experience which has recently acquired great prominence, especially following the enactment of a law prohibiting the veil in public educational institutions. In this thesis, I examined the veil primarily from the perspective of international human rights law. I studied the veil as a manifestation of the fundamental right to freedom of religion, and found out that the veil does not fall under any of the limitation clauses. I examined as well the common arguments against the veil: proselytism, the rights of the child, equality and secularism. However, a closer look at these arguments revealed that these excuses are largely unfounded and insofar as they do apply, would appear to refer only to certain extreme cases and not to the headscarf per se as tackled in this thesis. As a result one finds no justification for denying the veiled girls in France the right to religious manifestation or to education. Placing the veil within the European and the UN systems of human rights protection, I came to the conclusion that in contrast with the UN system, the veil is not adequately safeguarded under the European system, and this has allowed states to restrict it when they wish to. Furthermore, taking into consideration the fact that the victims of these restrictions on the rights to manifestation of religion are women and young girls, a gender perspective must be added to the right to freedom of religion. Such a perspective would focus on the meaning attributed to the veil by those who wear it and not on the meaning imputed by outside politicians, in line with a more comprehensive understanding of gender discrimination.