Bowen, John R. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space.

• Author: Uneke, Okori A.
• Position: Book review

Bowen, John R. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 290 pages. Cloth, $27.95.

Using a historical-sociological approach, Why the French Don't Like Headscarves focuses on the events leading up to the enactment of the September 2004 French law banning Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools. The book probes deeply into French political culture, its colonial legacy, and its awkward stance on accepting communal differences in the public domain. As an outsider looking in, Bowen explains the philosophical and political underpinnings of the heated passion of the headscarves debate.

In France, republican ideals have long shaped public discourse and decisions regarding the individual, the state, and society. French political philosophy emphasizes general interests and shared values over and above individual interests and pluralism. That philosophy is one aspect of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of the social contract dating to 1762: The state must fashion out "institutions and policies designed to integrate newborns and newcomers into French society by teaching them certain ways of acting and thinking" (quoted by Bowen on p. 11). In effect, the institutions of national integration must be centrally designed and controlled to ensure uniformity. Thus, schools, as public socializing agencies, are well situated to play this significant role of molding French citizens who are willing and prepared to participate in national public life. Schoolteachers were the designated agents in this important role.

Historically, it was teachers who fought against the Catholic Church's efforts to inform and control the minds of the young. The teachers' and school administrators' activism contributed to the government's success in asserting its supremacy over alternative sources of power. Through a series of laws and negotiations, the Catholic Church was removed from the public schools, with a concession, though, of state-subsidized private schools for Catholics and Jews, who would prefer to socialize with people of their own faith. The struggle between Catholics and Protestants and that between Catholics and secularists over who would control such institutions as schools were settled when the state succeeded in exercising control over religious institutions on matters relating to public policy. Thus, the French National Assembly, in 1905, ratified what came to be known as...