Secularity and Religious Symbols

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Secularity and Religious Symbols
Laïcité
Xavier Landes University of Montreal University
of Paris IV Sorbonne xavier.landes_at_umontreal.ca
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Plan

• First Headscarve Cases (1989 1993-1994)
• Laïcité Republicanism
• The  Last  Case (2003-2004)
• Two Views on State Neutrality

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1989 Case

• Background (September)
• Three young girls in Creil
• Refused to school by the Director
• Official replies (September - December)
• Minister of Education (Lionel Jospin) advice of
  the State Council
• State Council Decision of November 1989
•  The wearing of headscarves is not inconsistent
  with any value of the Laïque and Republican
  school. 
• The directors should negotiate in each case
• Lionel Jospin Circular of December 1989

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Jospins Circular

• General dispositions
• Headscarves are not in opposite with the Laïcité
• Proselytism, provocation and propaganda are not
  allowed in schools
• School directors have to
• Evaluate the situation
• Negotiate with young women
• Take the appropriate decision

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Problems

• Some schools have added to their internal rule
  that ALL religious symbols are prohibited
• Decision of the State Council in November 1992 on
  cancelling an exclusion
• Directors and professors are left without any
  clear rules to settle the cases
• Hard criticism from politicians and intellectuals
• Opposition between French and Anglo-Saxon models

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1993-1994
 In France, the National project and the
Republican project are gathered in a certain idea
of citizenship. This French idea of the Nation
and the Republic shows, by nature, respect to all
beliefs, especially religious, and political
beliefs and cultural traditions. But it excludes
that the Nation may split into separated
communities, indifferent to each other, ruled by
their own rules and laws, involved in a simple
coexistence. The Nation is not only a group of
citizens who bear individual rigths. It is a
community of fate.  (Bayrous Circular -
September 1994)
Problems remain the same
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Plan

• First Headscarve Cases (1989 1993-1994)
• Laïcité Republicanism
• The  Last  Case (2003-2004)
• Two Views on State Neutrality

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Republicanism and Republic
Republicanism
A set of political and philosophical
justifications in favor of a Republican regime
Res Publica
Public object, public matter
Republicanism would figure the promotion of the
commitment to the common good, to the high
interest of this  community of fate  and its
priority upon other interests (especially
individual ones) i.e. nothing is superior to the
Republic interest
Several Republican traditions
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The French Revolution

• Main attempts
• To erase Ancient Regime inequalities and
  differences
• Differences as inequalities
• To unify the French Republic
• Jacobinism vs Girondism
• Two examples
• Deputy Clermont-Tonnerre (1789)
•  We must give everything to Jews as individuals
  and nothing as a people. 
• Saint-Just (????)
•  The sovereignity of people wants the people to
  be united so the sovereignity is opposed to
  factions each faction is a crime against
  sovereignity. 

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Jules Ferry

• IIIrd Republic (1871-1940)
•  Laïcité de combat  (Fighting Secularism)
• 1880 Law Religious schools lose their right to
  give university diplomas all  non-authorized 
  churches are disbanded
• 1882 Law
• All religious teachings are banned from public
  school programs and replaced by a  civic and
  moral course 

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The French Republicanism
People enjoy a real freedom only if they are
freed from
Each group is a political threat
religion
Why?
tradition
Philosophical reasons
Individuals are able to impose on themselves
their own rules of life
Be free is to be autonomous
Kant
Positivism
Religions as former states of human evolution
If someone does not want to be free, one will
force him to be free
Rousseau
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1905 Law

• Title Law on the Separation Between Churches
  and the State
• Article 1
•  The Republic guarantees the freedom of
  consciousness. 
• Only restriction the respect of the public
  order
• Article 2
•  The Republic does not recognize and give
  funding to any cult. 
• State neutrality

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Plan

• First Headscarve Cases (1989 1993-1994)
• Laïcité Republicanism
• The  Last  Case (2003-2004)
• Two Views on State Neutrality

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Stasi Commission

• Set up by the President Jacques Chirac
• Composed of scholars, politicians, school
  directors
• Auditing people
• Deal with the secularism in general, not only
  with the Laïcité at schools

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2004 Law

• A big part of the Stasi Report was ignored
• The focus stays on religious symbols at schools
• Some members of the Commission were disappointed
• René Rémond -  Secularist integrism 
• Article 1
•  In public schools, colleges and high schools,
  the wearing of signs and dresses by which
  students ostensibly show a religious membership
  is forbidded. The interior rule should remind
  that all sanctions must come after a dialogue
  with students. 

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Outcomes of the law

• Numerous students left public schools
• Official numbers 143 (2004), 3  hard cases 
  in 2005
• Between 200 and 800 (Cedetim)
• What are they doing?
• Take long-distance courses
• Go to private schools (mainly Catholic)
• Renounce to education
• Main troubles
• Some fundamentalists want to set up private
  schools
• Law applies to Sikh people for instance
• Leaving these girls in their family is the
  solution?

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Plan

• First Headscarve Cases (1989 1993-1994)
• Laïcité Republicanism
• The  Last  Case (2003-2004)
• Two Views on State Neutrality

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Neutrality I vs Neutrality II
State neutrality
Solution to the Wars of Religion
Two forms
Neutrality I
Neutrality II
The State should remain neutral in front of
religious beliefs
The State should stay neutral, as well as people
in some or all public areas
No public preference or no support to a religion
in particular
All religious symbols are allowed mainly in the
private sphere
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A best model?

• It is a social choice
• It depends on the kind of society that people
  want
• Each model has its own advantages
• Neutrality I the more tolerant model, compatible
  with a multicultural society
• Neutrality II the more uniting model
• and its disadvantages
• Neutrality I might favorize a distinctive
  competition among religious communities
• Neutrality II might create inequalities for
  certain groups