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After attacks, France walks narrow line on Islam in schools
This undated photo provided by the Dalaeen family on Oct
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This undated photo provided by the Dalaeen family on Oct. 4 shows Mohammed Dalaeen, a son of Jordanian parliament member Mazen Dalaeen. The parliament member said he learned from Islamic State-linked media that his son carried out a suicide attack in Iraq, three months after dropping out of medical school and joining the extremist group. (Courtesy of the Dalaeen family via AP) (Courtesy of the Dalaeen family via AP)
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span class="inline inline-center">This undated photo provided by the Dalaeen family on Oct. 4 shows Mohammed Dalaeen, a son of Jordanian parliament member Mazen Dalaeen. The parliament member said he learned from Islamic State-linked media that his son carried out a suicide attack in Iraq, three months after dropping out of medical school and joining the extremist group. (Courtesy of the Dalaeen family via AP)
This was the week that schoolchildren in one Paris suburb got a stark choice at the cafeteria: pork or nothing at all.
Chilly-Mazarin joined a handful of towns run by right-leaning mayors which have ended a practice of offering a substitute for students forbidden by their religion from eating pork.
The decisions have come amid increased discussions in France about its secularist ideals following the terror attacks in January that were blamed on French Islamic extremists ' a discussion critics say has been hijacked by anti-Muslim forces on the far right.
On Wednesday, the Socialist government issued unusually direct criticism against the schools that have ended the pork substitutes as it was training dozens of appointees to mediate tense questions about the role of religion in schools and in public life.
In back-to-back speeches, the education and interior ministers walked the country's increasingly narrow line on religion in schools, with the unspoken threat of Islamic extremism hovering over the auditorium in Paris' tony 16th arrondissement.
Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said teachers at schools have to impart the secularist ideal, but "not a secularism that is a declaration of war against a religion, as we see when a mayor here or there decides that in the name of a so-called secular ideal, children will be forced to eat pork or skip school lunch."
France forbids "ostentatious" symbols of religion in schools and government buildings, a mandate generally interpreted to mean Muslim head scarves and one that includes parents who accompany school outings wearing them. Schools take seriously their mission to educate the next generation of secular French citizens, never more so than since the January terror attacks.
Vallaud-Belkacem alluded to that mission repeatedly in her speech to the mediators, whose job is to offer advice to local governments and schools about France's much-vaunted division between church and state.
"School is a place of knowledge, not of belief. This distinction is essential and we have to repeat it and teach it without cease," said Vallaud-Belkacem, who was born in Morocco and raised as a Muslim. Schools need to take responsibility for spotting and countering extremism, she said.
But some say that what France defines as a religious problem actually leads to discrimination of a minority population that has little economic power and even less hope of advancement.
"The terror attacks of January 2015 weigh heavily on the way the problem is defined," said Olivier Noel, a sociologist who studies discrimination in France. "When you are talking about misusing the secular ideal, on the one hand it's happening on the extreme right, with Islamophobia. Then you have the extreme secularism of the left. And without meaning to, they join the positions of the extreme right."
Vallaud-Belkacem and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve drew the line at public figures they accused of using attacks on religion to score political points.
Vincent Berton is the secular mediator for the Marseille area, a Mediterranean crossroads where religions have mixed for hundreds of years. But even there, he said, "you find the same questions pretty much everywhere" ' scarves, school meals, prayers.
The issues are not clear cut. Although a group of intellectuals floated the idea of vegetarian meals as a secular alternative, the concept of meatless lunches has yet to take hold. But in Chilly-Mazarin, for example, the school cafeteria menus for November and December show only four days when pork is the only main dish offered. And in the Burgundy town of Chalon-Sur-Saone, an administrative panel rejected an emergency request to keep the substitutes, ruling that only two of 50 meals until the end of the year contained pork.
The tribunal said the hard decision ' whether the town's decision was an attack on freedom of religion ' will be made within three months by a higher judge. (kes)
