Reply #58: French schools make French citizens

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That is the purpose of the French educational system.
The law was passed to force Muslim girls and Jewish boys to integrate.
The problem I think is that people of an Islamic or Judaic faith are much more active within their religion. The Catholic French are not much Catholic anymore. If one were to compare attendance at churches compared with synagogues and mosques one would find that the levels of participation in one's faith is much much lower for Catholics.
The French have taken some aspects of their religion into their society over the centuries, when the Revolution came and the State was separated from the Church many Christian values had already founded the basis and the ideology behind it.
Many of the humanist philosophers were religious men, they saw in Christianity the égualité and fraternité (equality and brotherhood) of the French national motto. They added liberté as a sign of the breakdown of the class society and the ridding of the monarchy and aristocracy.
My point is that the French are not tolerant when it comes to other religions like the English are for example. This kind of headscarf issue is a cheap trick to score political points.
The rightist government was simply hoping to regain voters from the far right, the additional spin they put on it, that headscarves were a sign of oppression for young Muslim women helped them get support from the left.
It is rather cynical as headscarves are not even a symbol of Islam, but more a cultural addition in some parts of the world. Not all Muslim women wear headscarves, many millions in Indonesia and Turkey don't.