French scarf ban comes into force

[4me2]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>French scarf ban comes into force


</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Pupils wearing headscarves will not be automatically excluded

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->A law banning Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from French state schools came into effect on Thursday, the first day of term.

So far, most pupils have been observing the law by removing the headscarf or other symbols before entering school.

The lives of two French reporters, held by Iraqi militants who want the ban scrapped, still hang in the balance.

The French government has refused to give in to the militants, who have threatened to kill the two. But Paris is continuing a diplomatic effort to secure their release.

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French education authorities with a large Arab population were on high alert on Thursday. Teams of mediators were on hand to intervene in any dispute.

Schools have been told not to automatically exclude pupils who arrive wearing headscarves, but to try and avert a showdown through dialogue.

The law, which affects 12 million children, calls for a period of dialogue, although Education Minister Francois Fillon has stressed that there is no room for negotiations.

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

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

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<!-- S ILIN -->France 'in contact' with captors
<!-- E ILIN -->
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->"I was always treated badly and I felt uncomfortable, so I decided to take it off," Nadia Arabi, 16, told the Associated Press before heading through the gates of Henri Wallon school.

The ban is not only affecting Muslims. Sikhs argue that their turbans are not religious symbols.

Young Sikh Ranjit, 15, went to the Jean-Rostand school in the Parisian suburb of Villepinte on Thursday morning to get his new timetable, wearing a thin strip of material on his hair rather than his customary turban, AFP news agency reports.

Unity The ban is designed to maintain France's tradition of strictly separating state and religion.


It forbids state school students from wearing "conspicuous" religious apparel. Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans and large Christian crosses are also banned.

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says the hostage-takers' demands have had one unintended consequence - to unite France against them, making it much harder for radical Muslims to protest against the ban. Nobody in France wants to be seen siding with the kidnappers, our correspondent says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3619988.stm

[4me2]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>French hostages 'handed to group'


</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> The journalists said earlier they feared for their lives

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->Kidnappers in Iraq have handed two French journalists to another group said to be prepared to free them, one of the men's editors told the BBC.

The second group, said to be from the Iraqi opposition, is "in favour of releasing them", Charles Lambroschini, Le Figaro deputy editor, told BBC News.

France's foreign minister said earlier that both men were alive and well. The kidnappers had linked the men's fate to France's move to ban Islamic headscarves from schools.

Christian Chesnot, 37, of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot, 41, of French daily Le Figaro were abducted while working in Iraq in August.


French Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres later confirmed that the two captives were no longer in the hands of their original captors, believed to be the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI).

The BBC's Paul Wood reports from Baghdad that the French campaign to save the two men has won unprecedented support throughout the Arab and Muslim world, largely because France is not part of the military coalition in Iraq.

Concern was high as the IAI had already claimed the killing of abducted Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni.

'Big quarrel'

Mr Lambroschini said the men's original captors were mostly foreign Islamic fundamentalists who had given the captives to an Iraqi opposition group.

<!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> France's secular laws have drawn religious protests

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->"They have been switched over, not released," he told the BBC's News 24 channel.

He said there had been a "big quarrel between the foreigners and the Iraqis".

Mr Lambroschini added that he hoped the two men could be freed on Friday or Saturday.

Thursday's development came after a French diplomatic drive led by Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and a group of leading French Muslims, who held talks in Baghdad with Iraqi counterparts.

Mr Barnier said earlier in the day that both hostages were "alive and well".

The IAI earlier claimed to be holding the two Frenchmen, who were shown in captivity in a video following their abduction in August. France imposed its ban on religious symbols in school on Thursday with little opposition reported inside the country. <!-- E BO -->
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/3622984.stm

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[CzarJunkie]

Thank christ for the french, at least their government takes a sensible view when it comes to religion. It's view is f**k em all.......................vive la francais :cartman

[4me2]

NEW FEARS FOR HOSTAGES

The fate of two French journalist kidnapped in Iraq will be announced shortly, the group holding them has said.

And the organisation denied reports it had handed the two men over to a group considered more likely to release them.

"The Islamic Army's legal committee will soon announce its decision. We have not delegated any group or person to negotiate or talk on our behalf," the statement posted on an Islamic website said.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were abducted by the self-styled Islamic Army in Iraq last month.

They were reported to have been handed over to an Iraqi Sunni guerrilla group.

The editor of France's Le Figaro, Jean de Belot, said the opposition group "has been in favour of the release of the hostages".

However, he said he would remain cautious until the men were released.

The latest development came after a French diplomatic drive led by Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and a group of leading French Muslims.

The two journalists disappeared on August 20 on their way from Baghdad to Najaf.

Chesnot is a reporter for Radio France Internationale and Malbrunot writes for the dailies Le Figaro and Ouest France.

Their captors demanded France lift a controversial ban on the Islamic headscarf in state schools.

French President Jacques Chirac has continued to reject the demand.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...211235,00.html

[digidump]

Thank christ for the french, at least their government takes a sensible view when it comes to religion. It's view is f**k em all.......................vive la francais :cartman

And they wound up Dubya a treat over Iraq perhaps a little more attention to personal hygene and I may even get to like 'em !

[wonkyfox]

Does anyone have any info on any other religious group so overtly objecting to this law, or are they easy come easy go?
Maybe they could put curlers in their hair and still wear the head scarf like hilda ogden and my old nan used to, no one batted an eyelid hen she went to the shops with her headscarf on

[Tammer]

About time I say. If a school uniform code says "no headwear", then in my opinion you don't f*cking wear shit on your head, regardless of religion/personal thoughts/if the voices told you to.

Wish we had that kind of sense over here.

[4me2]

BIN LADEN TRUCE DEMAND

The group holding two French hostages in Iraq has issued three conditions for their release.


The Islamic Army of Iraq said France had 48 hours to pay a £2.8m ransom, pledge not to get involved in Iraq, and to accept a truce offer from Osama bin Laden.



A statement signed by the group's "higher command" was posted on an Islamist website.

Speaking in a taped message in April, bin Laden offered peace to European countries that refrained from attacking Muslims and pulled their troops out of the Islamic world within three months.

European leaders dismissed the offer, saying the idea of negotiating with bin Laden was absurd.

Christian Chesnot, of Radio France Internationale, Georges Malbrunot, of the daily Le Figaro, and their Syrian driver were taken hostage on August 20.

The group initiallty demanded that France rescind a ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools. France refused the demand and implemented the ban last week at the beginning of the new academic year.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...216370,00.html

[4me2]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Girls 'observe' French scarf ban


</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IBYL --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=416 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=bottom>By Hugh Schofield
Paris
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<!-- E IBYL --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Few Muslim girls choose to wear the headscarf

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->France's education minister has said about 100 Muslim girls are still refusing to adhere to the new ban on Islamic headscarves in schools.

Speaking on French radio, Francois Fillon said that the number was far lower than many had predicted.

Implementation of the law had gone smoothly, the minister said.

In his first assessment of the impact of the law, Mr Fillon said that more than 600 girls had initially refused to remove their headscarves.

But in the majority of these cases the school authorities had eventually prevailed.

That left 101 girls still holding out.

Absence of chaos

Every effort was being made to persuade them to comply, Mr Fillon said, but if they continued to refuse, then school heads would have no choice but to expel them.

<!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Kidnappers are holding two French men in Iraq in protest at the ban

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->With some six million girls attending French schools, the number of headscarf problems is minuscule and the government is clearly pleased that the chaos which some predicted has never materialised. In this, the hostage crisis - the demand by an Iraqi extremist group holding two journalists that France rescind the law - and the subsequent universal outcry among French Muslims may have helped. But the fact remains that, even before the law came in, the number of Muslim girls wearing the headscarf to school was in the hundreds, no more, with the vast majority either indifferent to it or opposed. <!-- E BO -->


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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3671362.stm

[Snotty]

Hmmm they can't obey laws yet if French girls went to school in an islmamic country they'd have to obey the islamic laws...good on the Franch government I say for once (who I thought were absolute twats for welcoming Mugabe and his racist friends a couple of years back)