Newly reappointed French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is going on the offensive on a sensitive issue: the presence of the full veil in public spaces and schools. He believes that the current law in France is not sufficient to contain this expression of militant Islamism. But he is facing strong opposition, including from within the government.
The Left, out of electoral clientelism, has made tolerance of the Islamic veil one of its political hallmarks, and cries Islamophobia at every attempt to regulate it. Now, in an interview with Le Parisien, the French minister of the interior rekindled the controversy by calling for a tougher ban.
Under a 2004 law, the Islamic veil—included in the term ‘conspicuous religious symbols’—is banned in schools. The minister would like this ban to be extended to escorts on school outings. Some cases have caused controversy in recent years, when mothers showed up veiled to accompany state school pupils on school trips—the law being vague on this particular situation. Retailleau believes that more precise legislation is needed: “school outings are school outside the walls,” he explains, and considers the veil a “banner of Islamism.”
In the same interview, he said that he was “personally” in favour of banning the veil at university—a way of saying that implies that his position is not unanimously supported.
The minister’s potentially controversial comments, which, 10 years after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, show that “the battle against Islamic totalitarianism is far from won,” have aroused anger on the Left. La France Insoumise MP Antoine Léaument railed against Retailleau’s plan, saying that the measure simply amounted to “banning Muslim women from higher education.”
Retailleau’s firm stance proved to be short-lived. The government spokeswoman disowned the minister of the interior, explaining that this was nothing but his “personal” position, and nothing more. To end the debate, she declared:
The subject will not be addressed by the government in the current state of the parliamentary majority.
This controversy over the veil, so ignited and so immediately extinguished, proves, if proof were needed, the fragility of the interior minister’s position. Coming from the Right, he has to make do with blunt statements—eternally ineffective.
