www.masnet.org - 9/9/2004 9:06:00 AM GMT
More than 100 French Muslim girls have refused to take off their headscarves in state schools despite a government ban, Education Minister Francois Fillon said Wednesday.
Fillon said in a radio interview that as many as 120 girls have declined to abide by the controversial headscarves law in state-run schools that came into force last week with the start of the school year in France.
But he showed his confidence that school administrators would "convince nearly all of these young girls" to abandon their headscarves in the coming days, AFP reported.
Some 12 million students were forced to follow the new law as they returned to school this week, but confrontations over the headscarf ban were undermined by fears concerning the fate of the two French journalists held hostage in Iraq.
The captors who kidnapped Radio France correspondent Christian Chesnot and Le Figaro reporter Georges Malbrunot on August 20 demanded that the French government revoke the headscarves ban in exchange for the two reporters.
France refused to meet their demands and placed the law into effect as planned.
Though the law involves a ban on Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses and Sikh turbans, many in France's five-million-strong Muslim community believe that the Hijab worn by teenage girls is the main target.
Fillon also acknowledged the Muslim community's support in the wake of the hostage-taking in Iraq, saying that integration in France "is working better than people say."
However, one 12-year-old girl in eastern France, who was banned from two public schools because of her headscarf, had decided to attend classes in Belgium this year, according to her lawyer.
"As she is unable to enroll at an establishment that allows for the free expression of one's religious beliefs, she was forced to leave the country in order to attend a more flexible Belgian school," lawyer Nora Boukara told AFP.
French officials claim that the law is aimed at bringing France's Muslim population, estimated at 5 million, into line with its principle of secularism.
Meanwhile, Iran has reacted to the headscarf ban in France by offering university places to veiled women who were banned from wearing the Hijab, state television reported Wednesday.
The offer also addressed women in Germany and Turkey, where headscarves are also banned in some public places.
According to the report, Iran's top decision-making body on cultural and university affairs - the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council - said that it would provide additional places to well-veiled females.
It also said that they would be exempted from sitting entrance examinations.
Also Iranians have protested in front of the French embassy in Tehran over the ban on Muslim girls wearing Hijab in French state schools.