source: BBC NEWS | Europe | Jewish dad backs headscarf daughters
A row over women’s rights to wear headscarves has broken out again in France - but this time supporters of the right of Muslim girls to cover their head in school have a new and unusual champion.
Mr Levy says his daughters have “got God” like many other teenagers
Laurent Levy is the father of two teenagers - Lila, 18, and Alma, 16 - who last week were barred from the Henri Wallon lycee in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.
He is a left-wing lawyer, highly articulate. And he is Jewish.
Mr Levy’s daughters received a letter from the school on 24 September telling them that the manner in which they covered their heads was “ostentatious” and incompatible with physical education lessons - so they were “forbidden to enter the establishment.”
They are now at home pending a full decision by the local education authority’s disciplinary board - and themselves seething with fury at they way they have been treated.
“It’s more than anger. It is a deep sense of injustice,” said Lila.
“They told us we have to show the roots of our hair, the lobes of our ears and our necks. But if we do that we might as well not wear a headscarf at all - we might as well carry it in our hands.”
The school letter accuses the girls of “ostentatious” conduct
Lila and Alma began to get interested in Islam two years ago - their mother is a non-practising Algerian. About a year ago they began covering their heads, but it was only at the start of this term that the authorities took steps against them.
That is probably because the issue is now at the top of the national agenda - with the centre-right government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin considering a law banning headscarves in schools outright.
The Levys believe they were “outed” by a group of hard-left teachers at their lycee.
"This is such a French story. If you came from England or Germany you would think you were on Mars.
“There is such incredible rigidity, such inflexibility here. That the land of Voltaire could show such intolerance!” lamented Mr Levy.
‘Tough profession’
"The secularists invoke the 1905 law separating church and state. But that was supposed to stop the French republic protecting one religion - Catholicism. It was a way of opening up religious freedom for individuals - not a statement of official atheism.
“The teachers at their school said to me: ‘But you don’t understand how painful it is for us to stand there in front of children dressed like that’, to which I replied: ‘So it’s a tough profession - you chose it!’” he said.
Mr Levy said his daughters had come under no pressure from radical Muslims, and remained as open-minded and as tolerant as they were brought up to be.
“They have simply ‘got God’ - like so many teenagers always have, and their religion of reference happens to be Islam,” he said.
“It annoys me a little - the choice they have made. I think it is a mistake. I think it is a misunderstanding of the world. And I worry that the life of a woman in Islam may not lead to self-fulfilment. I say that as a father,” he said.
To which Alma smiled: "If it didn’t allow us to fulfil ourselves, we would not have chosen it.