as an important issue. In the course of 2003–4, they were taught to be scared of it. There was a massive, sustained and extremely misleading coverage of questions concerning Muslims and minorities. Pierre Tevanian estimated that matters concerning the veil and/or laïcité were front-page headline news on at least 26 occasions in 2003 and that in the same year France’s three leading daily papers – Le Monde, Libération and Le Figaro – contained 1,284 articles on these topics: more than one article per day per paper.40 ‘One gets the impression that this matter is the most serious and most urgent challenge facing our country’ noted one sceptical journalist in Le Monde.41 A record 150 deputies asked to speak in the relevant parliamentary debates early in February: in practice, only 120 actually spoke (about an eighth of their number in parliament) and of these, only 18 were women.42 ‘Everyone spoke of us, about us, but without us, and we had no way of replying’ noted one veil-wearing Muslim activist.43 The final result of this onslaught was summed up by the Catholic daily La Croix: the Stasi Commission had proved ‘that there really exists a rampant islamisation among immigrant families’.44
Deputies were motivated by similar concerns to those which had shaped the Stasi report, and doubters were worried about appearing apathetic in the face of a pressing crisis. Voting for action, even inadequate and inappropriate action, seemed better than doing nothing. On 10 February 2004, 494 deputies voted for the law, 36 against, and 31 abstained. 90 per cent of the right-wing UMP deputies voted for, as did 94 per cent of the Socialist deputies. There was less certainty among the deputies of the centrist UDF (13 for, 12 abstentions and 4 against) and more opposition from the Communist deputies (7 for, 14 against). The Verts (Greens) were the only national party represented in the Chamber of Deputies who were openly critical of the law: two of their three deputies voted against, and the third abstained.45
Outside the National Assembly, the situation was somewhat more complex. Tevanian’s research suggests that prior to this media campaign, there was little significant concern about veiled schoolgirls. In a study conducted in December 2003 among 125 students at Drancy (north of Paris), only one spontaneously raised the veil as an issue.46 Certainly, when asked, French people showed themselves to be suspicious of the veil. A set of opinion polls from April 2003 suggested about 74 per cent of the French population were against the veil being worn in schools, but only 22 per cent wanted to exclude veil-wearing schoolgirls.47 During the course of the media campaign, public opinion turned in favour of a law banning religious signs in state schools: from 49 per cent according to one opinion poll in April 2003 to 76 per cent in September 2004.48 However, throughout this period, there was always one significant qualification: Muslims (however they were defined) were consist ently recorded as being more sceptical about a law than the non-Muslim population.49 Thus CSA opinion polls from December 2003 and January 2004 found 69 per cent of French public opinion in favour of the law, while only 42 per cent of French Muslims supported such a law.50 There can be no doubt that the debate concerning this law played a part in encouraging a clearer sense of difference among French Muslims from the bulk of the French population.
Some critical voices emerged in the media. There was a trenchant and hard-hitting editorial in Le Monde entitled ‘The politics of fear’, which accused Chirac of exploiting the public affection for laïcité and reducing the great principles it represented to an irrational fear of the veil.51 The Council of Christian Churches – a representative body which includes Catholics and Protestants – signalled its doubts about the drift from ‘a calm laïcité’ to ‘fighting laïcité’.52 Trade unions often seemed uncertain: thus the moderate-left CFDT welcomed the Stasi Report, but was worried by how it might be implemented.53 The left-wing CGT re-affirmed its commitment to laïcité, but suggested that social and economic reform would be the best way to build a cohesive nation.54 The FSU teachers’ union also affirmed its loyalty to the principles of laïcité, but worried about how these were to be affirmed by a proposal to exclude pupils, and also raised the troubling question of how the law was to be interpreted.55 At a local level, teachers themselves were often unsure. In the lycée Jean-Jaurès in Montreuil in November 2003, there were 12 veil-wearing pupils in a student body of 1,200. A strong minority of the teachers wanted their exclusion; the school management refused to act. Arguments among the teachers were bitter and divisive: seven general assemblies in two months did not create a united policy. Instead, there was an acrimonious debate on the nature of laïcité. ‘I don’t need a Muslim to tell me what laïcité is!’ one angry teacher told Libération.56 French human rights and anti-racist organizations were similarly divided. MRAP was consistently concerned with the manner in which the stigmatization of some Muslims as anti-French subversives easily led to a stigmatization of all Muslims.57 The venerable Ligue des Droits de l’homme (LDH – League of the Rights of Man) preferred dialogue and social justice to a law that stigmatized part of the population.58
The final result of this so-called ‘debate’ was to create a type of special status for French Muslims, putting their activities and proposals under particular scrutiny. John R. Bowen cites a good example: across France, many swimming pools had accepted requests from Jewish groups that there should be a few hours per week in which pools were reserved for women. However, when it was learnt in June 2003 that a group of Arab women made a similar request in Lille, this was immediately cited by hostile commentators as another example of Islamic communautarisme in practice.59
There remained something unusual, even uncomfortable, about the debate. The volume of press articles and parliamentary speeches, the repeated variations on the same simple theme, all suggested more a nation trying to convince itself that it was right than a genuine consensus. More specifically, the debate cut across established political boundaries, often dividing long-term friends from each other.
Laïcité and the Republic
Observant readers may have noted that the term ‘laïcité’ was used seventeen times in the last section – and yet no definition was given. There is a simple reason for this: no commonly agreed definition is available.
The law which established the separation of church and state in France was passed in 1905: its text did not make use of the noun laïcité nor the adjective laïque. The first occasion that the term was cited in a constitutional document was in 1946, with the founding of the Fourth Republic; the term was then repeated in the constitution of the current Fifth Republic (1958).60 For many Republicans, laïcité is a touchstone, not just a guarantee of French patriotism but also a type of indisputable proof of French identity.61 The term also works to suggest a cultural contrast with other identities: according to the respected conservative historian Max Gallo, ‘Islam opposes its concepts to ours, the first of which are laïcité and tolerance’.62 Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, a Stasi Commission member, writes in a similar manner that immigrants must be prepared to accept the values of laïcité in order to be integrated into France, noting that those who come from ‘traditional or theocratic’ societies will find it a difficult concept to understand.63
One or two commentators draw attention to some odd features of the concept. Nicolas Weill, a journalist from Le Monde, sent a French-language article on laïcité to a translator, and was amazed to learn that there was no English-language translation for the term.64 The perceptive and articulate commentator Olivier Roy notes how despite its constitutional importance, no one has provided an accepted legal definition of what constitutes laïcité.65 The so-called ‘liberal mufti’ of Marseilles, Soheib Bencheikh, finds it to be ‘an imprecise concept’ and notes that there is no official definition of what the term means.66 But, as we will see, these are exceptional, atypical voices.
There are some odd features in the manner in which the concept has been used in the ‘debate’ of 2003–4.
