Menu

Argument: Banning head scarves in school is an egregious state intrusion

Issue Report: Banning Muslim hijab

Support

Christina Duval. “Banning the hijab. Against the ban, for secular education.” Workers Power. Feb 2004 – “Youth oppression is not only situated within the family. Under capitalism, education is not the neutral free space that Rumy and the defenders of the French Fifth republic would have us believe. The classroom does not only enlighten, it also instils discipline and allegiance to the bourgeois state. Struggles over the right to choose what to wear are not confined to confrontation with the family – the classroom has also been an important arena for this struggle. To deny the right of Muslim girls to wear the headscarf if they so choose, in the name of secularism, is to side with the oppressive side of French bourgeois republicanism.”