France's headscarf war: 'It's an attack on freedom'
'The veil covering your eyes is much more dangerous than the veil covering my hair.' A woman wearing a tricolour headscarf makes her point in Paris. Photograph: Alamy
When Youssra's three-and-a-half-year-old son started nursery school, he really wanted his mum to come on a school trip. So she signed up to help out on a cinema visit. She buttoned the children's coats outside their classroom and accompanied them to the front hall. But there, she was stopped by the headteacher, who told her, in front of the baffled children: "You don't have the right to accompany the class because you're wearing a headscarf." She was told to remove her hijab, or basic Muslim head covering, because it was an affront to the secular French Republic. "I fought back," she says. "I brought up all the arguments about equality and freedom for all. But I was forced home, humiliated. The last thing I saw was my distressed son in tears. He didn't understand why I'd been made to leave."
The French charity worker is now part of the protest group Mamans Toutes Égales, or Mothers All Equal. Based in Montreuil outside Paris, it has blocked school coaches, boycotted outings and staged street demonstrations in protest at the growing number of mothers in headscarves being barred from school trips. "This is an attack on freedom and democracy in state schools. They seem to want to wipe Muslim women off the landscape," says Youssra, 36. Full Story>>>
