French Head Scarf Ban Put To Test

France's new law banning Islamic head scarves in schools — a bold effort to rein in Muslim fundamentalism — apparently passed its first test Thursday, the start of the school year.

There were no major incidents and only a few known cases of girls refusing to comply.

A hostage crisis in Iraq raised the stakes, with Islamic radicals holding two French journalists demanding the ban be scrapped.

Mohammed Bechari, a vice president of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, urged calm.

"The hostage-takers are just waiting for a provocation," Bechari told Le Figaro newspaper before departing for Iraq with a delegation of French Muslim leaders to help in the hostage crisis. "We must be responsible."

There appeared to be widespread compliance with the law.

Two high school girls in the Strasbourg region refused to take off their scarves and returned home, education officials said.

In other cases in Strasbourg, officials tried to persuade "several veiled young girls" to comply. The law calls for dialogue in such cases.

In Paris, an incident was "resolved in a few hours," according to education officials. In other cases around France, girls took off head coverings before entering school.

The law has been among the most divisive issue in recent times in France.

It forbids conspicuous religious signs or apparel in public schools, including Jewish skull caps and large Christian crosses. However, it is aimed at Islamic head scarves and meant to counter a rise in Muslim fundamentalism reportedly taking root in schools.

Authorities also want to bolster France's much cherished principle of secularism, seen as a way to guarantee peaceful coexistence among various religions and communities.

France's Muslim population is an estimated 5 million, the largest in Western Europe.

As classes opened, one Muslim girl in the working-class Paris suburb of Aubervilliers said she left her head scarf at home.

"I was always treated badly and I felt uncomfortable, so I decided to take it off," said Nadia Arabi, 16, before heading through the gates of Henri Wallon school.

Teenagers clad mainly in blue jeans talked and laughed as they waited for the locked gates to open.

Last October, two veiled sisters were expelled from the school, in a quiet residential neighborhood, bringing it into the public eye.

Students at Henri Wallon said they were given a handout spelling out the law and were instructed to read it and be able to explain it.

Even girls who don't wear head scarves questioned the law.

Myriam Benalouache, 15, waiting to enter the Jacques Brel High School in La Courneuve, a heavily immigrant suburb north of Paris, said she thinks it's a mistake to ask girls to remove their scarves.

"For Muslim girls it's like removing one's clothes," she said.

Several Muslim organizations have set up hot lines to advise or council girls in a quandary over the law.

Sofia Rahem said her association, GFaim2Savoir, lingo for "I'm Hungry for Knowledge," has received "an enormous number" of calls.

"They are young girls in distress who don't know what to do with their future," said Rahem, a 23-year-old university student who wears a head scarf. "They fear the return to school knowing they won't be accepted with a scarf."

The law, passed in March, raised arguments over religious freedom and free expression as well as secularism.

The law specifies that no one will be immediately expelled. It calls for a period of dialogue, though Education Minister Francois Fillon has stressed there is no room for negotiations.

"There is no question today of excluding. It is a question of convincing," he said.

Experts predict a rash of court cases brought by Muslims who test the law by wearing "discreet" head coverings like bandannas. The law allows for discrete religious signs.

A new factor — the hostage crisis in Iraq — hung ominously over the return to school.

France has refused to cede to demands of the Islamic Army of Iraq, holding two French journalists, to retract the law, a position that appears widely supported by French Muslims.

"If we remain in this uncertainty or the end is tragic, it is clear that it will make the position of young girls who go to school covering their heads very difficult," said Jean Bauberot, the sole dissenter on a presidential commission that recommended France pass the law.

The powerful UOIF has advised girls to go to school dressed as they wish.

The hope is that schools will accept bandannas, which could be worn for "reasons of coquetry, of beauty," said UOIF President Lhaj Thami Breze.

"If the law is rigidly applied, we'll go to court," he said. "We want to avoid that. We want to find a compromise."

Individual schools have the final say. The law leaves it to each school to decide whether bandannas, for instance, are acceptable. Some schools have simply opted to ban all head gear.

Authorities contend Muslims are turning increasingly militant and failing to integrate. They see banning head scarves in schools as a solution.

A confidential report completed in June by the General Inspection of National Education presents the Islamic head scarf as "the tree that hides the forest."

Inspectors found students trying to convert those "whose faith is judged impure" and others who idolize Palestinian adolescents fighting Israel or leaders of jihad, or holy war, according to the Agency for Education and Training, which obtained the report.

The UOIF believes authorities are being simplistic.

"We must not see an Islamist behind each practitioner," said Breze. "Either we accompany this return to religion with pedagogy or we disdain it and that creates radicalization."