Religious Symbols In Public Schools Research Articles

Religious Symbols in Public Schools: Key Issues and Debates

When discussing Religious Education, the topic of religious symbols in educational spaces is largely overlooked in academic literature and often side-lined in political considerations as well. This paper examines the issue of religious symbols in public schools by highlighting two foci: how the Muslim veil is managed in public schools in select European countries and zooming in on specific suggestions for managing religious symbols in public schools in Slovenia. By combining a broader, comparative perspective with practical, small-scale policy suggestions, the paper highlights the need to include a discussion of religious symbols in public schools in our academic and political considerations of religion and education.

Religious Symbols in Public Schools as Teachable Controversies in Religious Education

This focus issue of CEPS Journal raises two topics usually treated separately, Religious Education and the use of religious symbols in public schools. Both involve the challenge of applying liberal democratic principles of secularism and pluralism in a school setting and refract policies on religion under conditions of globalisation, modernisation and migration. I take this situation as a teachable moment and argue that it illustrates the potential of a particular kind of Religious Education, based on the scientific Study of Religion, for making sense of current debates in Europe, including the debate on religious education itself. However, this requires maintaining a spirit of free, unbiased comparative enquiry that may clash with political attempts to instrumentalise the subject as a means of integrating minority students into a value system.

The National Margin of Appreciation Doctrine: In Search of a Balance Between Democracy and Rights in the International Sphere

The paper critically examines how the margin of appreciation doctrine has been applied in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR regarding religious symbols in public schools. It aims to distinguish two versions of this doctrine, a voluntarist version of the margin of appreciation (VVM) and a rationalized version of the doctrine (RVM), comparing their features and impact on the ECtHR’s reasoning. It then focuses on the dynamics of a RVM, its argumentative steps and requirements to underline the most important flaws in the Court’s case law on religious symbols. The paper argues that the use of the RVM as a general hermeneutic tool in the application of the Convention is the most suitable way, on the one hand, for the ECtHR to legitimize its judicial function in the face of the current European religious pluralism and, on the other hand, for it to obtain the axiological equilibrium between rights and democracy that is inherent to the ECHR itself.

Sacred Laïcité and the Politics of Religious Resurgence in France: Whither Religious Pluralism?

This article contributes to the current scholarly discussion by inviting us to look at secularism not as a static model of religious governance, but as a formation that shifts with time and that is deeply related to our contemporary understanding of religion. As such, it investigates the recent transformations of French secularism. In 2004 France passed a law banning visible religious symbols in public schools. Since then French secularism has increasingly become a sacred – non-negotiable – element of collective life. Drawing on Kim Knott's concept of the ‘secular sacred’, the article investigates, through an analysis of policy reports, law proposals and laws, how this discursive usage of secularism has been used to set apart particular spaces from others: secular spaces that carry the ‘supreme’ values of secularism. In this process, the role of public servants and citizens has been changing, as they have been invested with the responsibility of policing the boundaries of these spaces. New tools, such as charters of secularism, laws and regulations, and state bodies are being imagined to consolidate these boundaries. The article also explores how ‘religious resurgence’ (and more specifically ‘Islamic resurgence’) has been essential to this ‘sacred-making’ activity: to give substance to values that are non-negotiable and need to be separated from those that are not. Overall, the piece posits, in line with other recent works, that sacred-making is not reserved to the ‘religious’, but can become a central component of how secularism gets articulated and deployed. In so doing, it underscores the importance of documenting how meanings given to secularism shift to grasp the politics that underpin discourses on religious resurgence.

Religious Displays at Public Schools — Courts, Crucifixes and Masters of Identities

This contribution compares the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Lautsi v. Italy with the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court in the Classroom Crucifix case. An examination of the way that the courts dealt with the common issues of state neutrality in education, parents' rights to direct the religious education of their children, students' right to religious freedom, as well as of the consistency of the rulings with relevant case law, reveals that the ECtHR's Grand Chamber rendered a judgment open to criticism on a number of grounds. It erroneously conflated state action interfering with the applicant's rights with the exercise of some ‘collective’ rights and liberties. The mis-characterization of the crucifix as a ‘passive symbol’ led the ECtHR to trivialize or disregard the effects of the crucifix on dissenting students and the state neutrality mandate in public education. Finally the judgment is not consistent with the relevant case law of the Court and the application of the doctrine of the margin of appreciation has served to weaken its role as Europe's ‘fundamental rights protector’, seeming to be a means through which the Court has gracefully given in to ‘popular sentiment’. The contribution concludes by offering a ‘pluralist approach’ as a legislative framework for regulating the display of religious symbols in public schools.

The hijab north of Gibraltar: Moroccan women as objects of civic and social transformation

As the number of North African Muslim immigrants in Europe grows, questions of cultural assimilation have moved to the forefront of discussion. Treated as the quintessential Other, Maghribines' long-term presence in France prompted a 2004 ban on religious symbols in public schools; it went without saying that the hijab was the primary target of this restriction. Politicians and public figures in Britain have called Muslim women's veiling practices antithetical to democratic citizenship, while Dutch conservatives have promised a ban on veiling in all public places (Anon 2006a, 2006b; Morris 2006). Spain, however, has developed a more ambivalent cultural and ideological relationship with the Muslim world and with North Africa in particular. Approximately 10% of all immigrants to Spain are from the Maghrib, and about 90% of those are from Morocco (Instituto Nacional de Estadística). The proximity of Spain has made it an appealing entry point to the rest of Europe, as well as an accessible destination for work. This paper argues that Moroccans' vulnerability in Spain must be understood in terms of the unique ties between the two nations, as well as the specific brand of modern liberalism that has developed in Spain since 1975, the start of that nation's democracy. Key to Spanish liberalism is the defense of women's freedom, which finds voice in teleological narratives of liberation and self-actualisation. Concern over Moroccan women's subjugation to Islam and to male relatives has crystallised in discussions around the hijab, in particular. In this article, I analyse media coverage of hijab controversies in Spain, drawing also on my own fieldwork with Moroccan women and Spanish social service providers in Madrid. I argue for careful consideration of North African othering as a foil for Spanish discourses of progress and modernity – themselves historically situated and contestable variations upon wider European ideologies of liberalism.

Double or Nothing: Academic Theology and Post-Communist Religious Policy

Church-state relations in post-communist Romania, as in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, have received considerable attention over the past two decades from both scholars and activists, domestic as well as foreign. Issues of public interest included the dispute between the Orthodox and the Greek-rite Catholic churches over assets, the churches’ role in the criminalization of homosexuality, their position toward NATO integration and EU accession, the building of the “National” Orthodox Cathedral,1 the contents of religious education textbooks, and the involvement of clergy in local and national politics. Recently, the question of religious education has received prime time exposure when the widespread practice of displaying religious symbols in public schools was challenged in court. One topic that has remained off the radar of both human rights activists and students of religious affairs has been academic theology. In a sense, this is hardly surprising. The arcane pursuits of theologians cloistered in the country's universities seem remote from the mundane world of church-state entanglement, not to mention the foul trenches of partisan politics. In reality, as I will try to show below, the implications of the current structure of academic theology extend far beyond the field of higher education, deep into Romanian religious life in general.

Contemporary Laïcité: Setting the Terms of a New Social Contract? The Slow Exclusion of Women Wearing Headscarves

Over recent decades, France has had to deal with the growing presence of immigrants from its ex‐colonies – a phenomenon that has been affecting many former colonial powers and accentuated by globalisation. Starting in the late 1980s, this presence translated itself, among other things, through an increased visibility of Islam. For instance, numbers of second‐ and third‐generation Muslim women, primarily of North African origin, have been expressing their religiosity by wearing a headscarf in the public sphere. Many members of the French state and society have perceived this as a threat to the secular settlement, as they understand the headscarf to be a sign indicating that the believer's first allegiance does not lie with the secular nation state, but with God and with a religious community (the ummah) that transcends national borders. This article argues that the headscarf controversy in France has been a way for the French secular state and elites to reinforce a certain exclusive understanding of laïcité (secularism), as being more than a legal principle, which symbolises an ethic of collective life. This ethic succeeds in becoming stronger and more tangible because it is able to convey a sense of who can be included, and who has to be excluded from collective life. In this case women wearing headscarves have been identified as incapable of protecting and fostering Republican values while, in addition, also representing an external threat. They have therefore been slowly excluded from partaking in the activities of the polis, and deprived from enjoying their full citizenship rights' and duties. To conduct this investigation, the article takes the March 2004 law banning visible religious symbols in public schools as a starting point, and analyses how from then onwards petitions, law proposals and governmental reports have recommended, in the name of laïcité, excluding headscarf wearers from a variety of public spaces.

Veiling, secularism and Islamism: gender constructions in France and Iran

In this article we will explore the politicisation of the ubiquitous Muslim veil within a French and Iranian context respectively. We will examine how the prevailing political discourses in both these contexts construct particular representations and realities for Muslim women. Despite different ideological structures and contexts, both France and Iran impose laws and regulations that reduce many Muslim women's capacity for agency and self-expression in the public sphere. We identify certain parallels in how seemingly disparate cultural and national political discourses in these two contexts instrumentalise images of Muslim women for specific ideological agendas. We note how in these very different contexts, dominant discourses on veiling continue to objectify Muslim women and do not engage with Muslim women dialogically as subjects capable of agency and self-definition.France: Pursuing Laicite or Legalizing Xenophobia?Towards the end of the 20th century the veil has emerged as a highly politicised symbol, and often acts as a visible boundary marker between what characterises the West and Islam.2 In many Western societies the overriding association of the veil with oppressed Muslim women has had a negative impact on understandings of Islam as a whole. Especially post- September 11th 2001, the view of Muslim women as both supporting an inherently violent religion, and as subordinated members of the self-same religion has increasingly gained currency in the West In many Western contexts, the veiled Muslim woman has come to symbolise Islam's otherness and its irreconcilable differences from post-enlightenment Western cultures.In France where Islam is a minority religion, the hijab (head-scarf) was prohibited in all public schools by law on 10th February 2004.3 Along with other obvious religious symbols such as the Jewish kippa and flashy Christian crosses, the hijab was seen as a public symbol of strong religious commitment (Plesner, 2004: 153). Before the prohibition by law, each school could decide whether or not they wanted to ban the hijab. This led to heated exchanges regarding schools that prohibited the use of hijab. Consequently, the French government implemented a law prohibiting the wearing of obvious religious symbols at all public schools (Giddens, 2004: 127). The prohibition unleashed intense and, at times, furious debates in Europe. There were massive protests against this prohibition of the hijab from Muslims living in France and other parts of the world.4The apparent reason for the prohibition of the Muslim headscarf in public schools can be found in the French principle of secularisation known as laicite'.5 This principle signifies a separation of church and state as a prerequisite for peace and national integration. As such, maintaining religious neutrality in civil society is seen as central to French secular identity. In this context, the donning of obvious religious symbols are perceived as antagonistic to laicite, fostering forms of diverse public religiosity that purportedly hinder national integration. Simultaneously, the French constitution clearly states that laicite also incorporates the individual's right to religious freedom and the equality of all citizens regardless of origin, race or religion. The right to equal treatment despite religious conviction principally presents a challenge to the prohibition of religious symbols in public schools (Plesner, 2004: 150-160). The application of laicite reveals that there are deep ambiguities in relation to the multilayered meaning of this concept. For some laicite is understood as a commitment of passive neutrality and non-intervention within the private religious realm, while upholding the principle of non-discrimination in public sphere. For others laicite can be understood to mean an overriding obligation to protect secularism, a fundamental assurance of the nation's sovereign independence from religious authorities. …

Républicanisme critique vs républicanisme conservateur : repenser les « accommodements raisonnables »

A re-examination of two heavily covered 2008 legal battles – the “virginity” and “burqa” affairs – illustrates the capacity of the secular spirit to resist the religious spirit in France. These two affairs served as occasions for confirming and consolidating the republican consensus that had in 2004 been forged over the law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools. This consensus places strict limits on the recognition of cultural and religious (especially Muslim) religious particularisms in the Republic. Some of its ambiguities, however, are worth unpacking – in particular, the confusion between arguments drawn from republican law and those drawn from French culture. In contrast to this conservative republicanism, critical republicanism takes care not to posit that the institutions and norms specific to a particular community – up to and including that of the French Republic – are necessarily in keeping with republican principles. While it is absent from the Stasi Commission Report (France 2003), a similar line of reasoning can be found in the Bouchard-Taylor Report, which offers a republican justification for certain practices based on “reasonable compromises” (Québec 2008).

Neutrality of the State and Regulation of Religious Symbols in Schools in Quebec and France

The difference in attitudes towards the wearing of religious symbols in schools in France and Canada is symptomatic of the respective legal and political definitions of the official neutrality of the school institution and thus of way in which laicism is used to regulate religious pluralism and the “socio-cultural” integration of immigrant populations. In what ways is state neutrality put into practice, in Quebec and in France, as regards the judicial and political treatment of the wearing of religious symbols in public schools? The author proposes to examine the implementation of the liberal principle of neutrality by the French law dated 15 March 2004 on the wearing of religious symbols in public schools and by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada of 2 March 2006 to allow a young Sikh to wear his ritual kirpan at school.

Gendering the diversification of diversity

This article presents an analysis of the recent headscarf debate in Belgium, and explores in particular to what extent issues of gender equality and feminist arguments were central to the discussion. It is argued that compared to France, concerns about secularity and state-neutrality, national identity and equality, all find resonance in the Belgian context, but are articulated in a more ambiguous and less `principled' way. This partly explains the paradoxical situation in which, despite a widespread resistance to a general law banning the wearing of religious symbols in public schools, in practice, headscarf prohibitions are on the rise throughout various regions of the country. Although issues of gender equality and cultural diversity often cut and flow across debates and policies in European nation states, the Belgian hijab question provides a unique case, because of various lines of fracture and processes of increasing diversification that characterize Belgian society.

Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves

Western anthropologists are typically concerned with interpreting thenon-western world’s unfamiliar cultures for western audiences. TheFrench law banning the hijab from public schools presents itself as just asbaffling as any non-western custom. Thus, it is fully understandable thatit would take anAmerican anthropologist to interpret this event, especiallyfor those in Anglo-Saxon cultures, where in spite of Islamophobia anddiscrimination against the hijab, concepts of religious tolerance and multiculturalismhave generally translated into legal protections for womenand girls who wish to wear it in public spaces. So with a catchy titledesigned to appeal to thiswidespread bafflement, the author seeks to explainthe intellectual underpinnings and political processes that led to this banningof “ostentatious” religious symbols in public schools on March 15,2004.Bowen, whose earlier work looked at religion and social change inIndonesia, focuses on the public deliberations about the issue of the hijab aswell as on wider issues related to Muslim integration in France. He interviewspoliticians, bureaucrats, academics, journalists, public intellectuals,Muslim leaders, Muslim women, and (importantly, since it was a missingdimension, as he points out, in the lead up to the law) Muslim high schoolgirls. He studies public texts and focuses especially on the crucial roleplayed by an often hysterical media in forming and firming up public opinionin support of the law ...

Equal opportunities and republican revival: post-migrant politics in contemporary France (20022005)

This article explores two contradictory developments in government approaches to the socio-economic and cultural incorporation of France's post-migrant generations. It focuses on the emergence at the heart of government, of equal opportunity discourses and contrasts this with the recent reassertion of more traditionally republican values, as demonstrated by the 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols in public schools. In June 2004, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced the launch of a Stratgie nationale pour l'galit des chances. This initiative to encourage the recruitment of French nationals of foreign origin or individuals from the overseas DOM-TOM territories into high-profile jobs would appear to signal a significant change in approach to the issue of minority politics. However, this apparent readiness to enhance the Republic's egalitarian project could be undermined by the recent debates over the Islamic headscarf and the subsequent legislation in March 2004. For while the new discourses of equal opportunities imply a readiness to publicly recognize ethnic difference in the name of greater socio-economic equality, the recent banning of conspicuous religious symbols in schools points to a wider reluctance regarding the recognition of the cultural and religious complexity of contemporary France.

The hijab and systemic governance: transnational policy making and human rights

AbstractThe banning of the hijab along with other religious symbols in French public schools from 1st September 2004 can be cited as an example of a complex issue. It is also an example of policy making, that treats the wearing of the hijab (and other religious symbols) as representative of an essentialist religious category that is symbolic of both identity and worldview. All religious symbols in public schools are banned, but the discretion is with local schools as to how the law will be managed through discussion with the student. This article addresses the policy by ‘unfolding’ the values of the different stakeholders and ‘sweeping in’ the social, cultural, political, economic and environmental factors (adapted from Churchman, 1979a, b, 1984, who cites Edgar Singer). Both cultures Christian and Muslim need to consider the merits of using the least powerful as a site for the struggle over identity politics, shorthand for the systemic fall out post 9/11. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.