While many Carleton University students have settled into the Winter semester in Ottawa, I began a study abroad experience at Sciences Po, a university in Reims, France. When I arrived last month, I was the most excited to learn about France’s civil law system and its interesting, yet tumultuous history. However, what I have found most interesting about France’s laws is closer to my new home in Sciences Po. During my first day of orientation, I learned that while students are allowed to wear clothing and religious symbols on the Sciences Po campus, professors and other faculty staff are forbidden under France’s laïcité (laicity). Further, the burqa is also not allowed. Interestingly, many students and faculty around me did not question it, leading me to ask how France and Québec understand secularism as a human rights issue, differently.
Secular histories
France has enshrined secularism within its laws since 1905, but its laws reflect a long historical division of the Church and the State that has been ongoing since the Enlightenment (Bianco et al., 2014, p. 2). According to Observatoire de la Laïcité, secularism does not aim to exclude individuals based on religion, but “organizes freedom of conscience” and “freedom of worship” (Bianco et al., 2014, p. 3). This objective remains in universities. In 2004, French President, Jacques Chirac passed Law no, 2004-228 which prohibited the “wearing of signs or dress by which pupils overtly manifest a religious affiliation” in primary and secondary schools (Dogru v. France, 2008). This law has since applied to universities as well.
Québec’s history of secularism follows a more recent, yet similar path. Unlike France, only Québec has applied laïcité policies in Canada and they, historically, have not been enshrined in law. Instead, Québec enacted laïcité to maintain their unique, French cultural identity independent of the rest of Canada. However, in 2019, Québec’s National Assembly passed Bill 21 which solidified that Québec is an official “lay state” that separates religion from the state (Bill 21, 2019, p. 5). As such, they forbade those working in governmental, municipal and public institutions from wearing the hijab, niqab or burqa, as France had done many years prior (Bill 21, 2019).
A unifying or decisive policy
Since 9/11, many Western states perceived Islam and its symbols (Hijab, Niqab and Burqa for example) as a threat and understood secularism as a meaningful way to neutralize these perceived threats while proclaiming ‘equality’ for all. As Meghan Macdonald suggests, laws surrounding religion and secularism act as a “blank(et) signifier which “refusing specificity” (MacDonald, 2014, p. 39). Indeed, by proclaiming equality, secular laws in France and Quebec can effectively evade discussing the erasure of particular religious groups due to their underlying fears of them.
Despite these aims to avoid public criticism, the contemporary reactions in France and Québec both consider laïcité as a divisive human rights issue due to its discriminatory nature against those that practice Islam. In France, approximately 52% of high school students oppose laïcité policies (Darmanin, 2021). In Québec, approximately 54% of people do not agree with Bill 21 (Montreal Gazette, 2022). Even more interestingly, this divide bases itself on France and Québec’s unique contexts. France has a unique and conflicting relationship with Islam, especially due to the rise of Islamic terrorist attacks that the country has witnessed in recent years which has divided the country. These fears of extremism reached new levels in public education institutions in 2020 when a group of teenagers in a Paris suburb collaborated in killing their high school teacher, Samuel Paty, in response to him showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. (Al Jazeera, 2023). These debates in France are deeply centred around the violence, both physically and emotionally, that secularism creates. Canada, on the other hand, has not experienced the same extent of violence as France has. However, the increasing clash between Québec’s secularism and federal legislation found in the rest of the country that protects the right to practice religion has also created a distinct divide.
What does the future hold?
When I was introduced to laïcité in France, it appeared that the debate around secularism is not, by any means, new and will continue to press public education institutions in waves for years to come. More importantly, these debates will continue to disproportionately affect the individuals that secular laws seek to target, especially Muslim women. Québec faces a similar future, but there have been recent legal developments that may steer the province in a new direction. Today, on February 29th, the Québec Court of Appeal will decide whether Bill 21 infringes the rights of Muslim women (Banerjee, 2023). I do not know what the Court has decided. Nevertheless, I do know that the outcome of this case will be decisive, and I would not be surprised if this case appears in the Supreme Court of Canada and creates even greater legal reprucusssions in the future.
References
Al Jazeera. (2023, December 8). Six French teenagers convicted in connection to beheading of school teacher. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/8/six-french-teenagers-convicted-in-connection-to-beheading-of-school-teacher
Banerjee, S. (2023, February 29). Quebec Court of Appeal to rule on constitutionality of Bill 21. Montreal Gazette. https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/bill-21-quebec-court-of-appeal-to-rule-on-constitutionality-of-secularism-law
Bianco, J.-L., Cadène, N., & Laïcité, (collectif) Observatoire de la. (2014). Secularism Today—Guidance Note by the Secularism Monitoring Centre. https://www.documentation-administrative.gouv.fr/adm-01858749/document
Bill 21, 42nd Quebec Legislature 1st Session, (2019).
Darmanin, J. (2021, March 3). Poll: French pupils oppose law banning religious symbols in schools. Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-french-pupils-oppose-law-banning-religious-symbols-in-schools/
Dogru v. France, 27058/05 (ECtHR December 4, 2008). https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-90039
MacDonald, M. (2014). Sur/veil: The Veil as Blank(et) Signifier. In Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy (pp. 39–72). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315773988-8
Montreal Gazette. (2022, January 19). Poll suggests cracks in Quebec’s consensus around Bill 21. Montreal Gazette. https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/poll-suggests-cracks-in-quebecs-consensus-around-bill-21
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