"Youth living in the suburbs “see laïcité as a way to push them away,” said Louis-Georges Tin, president of the French Black Coalition and République & Diversité, a research body. “In recent years, it has become a way to discriminate between Muslims and Christians,” he said. Muslim students may not wear head scarves, he said, but some schools hold Mass every day, and nearly every French state holiday is a Roman Catholic holy day. Halal food is not permitted in school canteens, though nonpork meals are often available, but schools can offer fish dishes on Friday. “Either you allow everything, or you ban everything,” Mr. Tin said.
Mr. Nahon acknowledged the discrepancies. While he supports a strict application of laïcité, the school adheres to the Catholic liturgical calendar and holds Christmas parties every year, and students eat crepes for Mardi Gras and chocolates for Easter.
Laïcité was formalized in the 1905 law, which since has meant that churches and synagogues built previously are state property and maintained by public funds. But Islam came later, mosques get no state funding, and the state has struggled to apply laïcité to public schools, beaches and sports halls. (Alsace-Lorraine, German in 1905, operates under the Napoleonic Concordat that allows religious education but does not include Islam among the religions that are studied.)...M’hammed Henniche, the head of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-St.-Denis, calls this application of laïcité aggressive and unfair. Muslims can live with a “neutral laïcité,” he said, but the rules keep changing. When the government tried to restrict halal abattoirs, or slaughterhouses that adhere to Islamic law, and require sermons only in French, he said, the measures were abandoned not because of Muslim opposition, but because of opposition from Jews in the first case and Russian and Greek Orthodox believers in the second. Jews also blocked a government move to force people to choose a single nationality, he said.""
Mr. Nahon acknowledged the discrepancies. While he supports a strict application of laïcité, the school adheres to the Catholic liturgical calendar and holds Christmas parties every year, and students eat crepes for Mardi Gras and chocolates for Easter.
Laïcité was formalized in the 1905 law, which since has meant that churches and synagogues built previously are state property and maintained by public funds. But Islam came later, mosques get no state funding, and the state has struggled to apply laïcité to public schools, beaches and sports halls. (Alsace-Lorraine, German in 1905, operates under the Napoleonic Concordat that allows religious education but does not include Islam among the religions that are studied.)...M’hammed Henniche, the head of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-St.-Denis, calls this application of laïcité aggressive and unfair. Muslims can live with a “neutral laïcité,” he said, but the rules keep changing. When the government tried to restrict halal abattoirs, or slaughterhouses that adhere to Islamic law, and require sermons only in French, he said, the measures were abandoned not because of Muslim opposition, but because of opposition from Jews in the first case and Russian and Greek Orthodox believers in the second. Jews also blocked a government move to force people to choose a single nationality, he said.""
