Some French officials have declared war on religious symbols:
Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders in France have condemned a proposed ban on conspicuous religious signs such as headscarves or crucifixes in schools…Former minister Bernard Stasi, who headed the commission consulted a wide cross-section of public opinion, including teachers, religious leaders, sociologists and politicians before handing in the report to the president on Thursday.
Although the report was into the wider question of French secularism, debate on the issue has focused on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools.
The commission’s recommendations would outlaw the Jewish kippa, large Christian crosses and the Islamic headscarf, which would be considered overt religious symbols.
Apparently the French think that the way to promote “respect of differences” is to pretend that differences do not exist. Anything that has to do with religion is seen as an attack on the state-sponsored religion of secularism.
This is not but a stone’s throw from what some secularists in America are promoting, and Christians should take heed. The ironic thing here is that such restrictions inevitably do not work, as evidenced by the booming house-church movement in China—where communism has tried unsuccessfully to supress the church.
France’s problem is that they want everyone to just be “French” and not identify themselves as anything but that. The government doesn’t keep any sort of statistics on the racial or religious makeup of the nation’s population–which, in a way, is admirable, but it sounds like they’re taking it too far.
Of course, considering how rampant attacks on Jews have become there in the past couple of years, this could protect some people…