A French government agency is urging the government to consider extending its 2004 ban on Muslim headscarves in schools by also forbidding students from wearing the garment in a number of places in the country's universities as well.
According to French media sources, the High Council of Integration (HCI), is set to deliver to the government a report in the fall in which they will offer 12 recommendations aimed at defusing "growing tensions in all sectors of university life" that are said to be undermining France's secular values.
The report also addresses ways to maintain the "religious neutrality" of French universities mandated by French law.
The key and almost certainly most controversial recommendation the HCI makes is to forbid the "wearing of religious symbols openly in lecture theatres and places of teaching and research" at French universities.
In 2004, France enacted a law prohibiting the wearing or the open display of religious symbols in French schools including crucifixes, Jewish skull caps and the Muslim head scarf (hijab) but the law does not apply to universities.
In 2011, a French law banned the wearing in public of a full face veil.
The HCI report addresses the vast number of problems and disputes which have ensued at universities due to religious differences, such as "demands to be excused from attendance for religious reasons, demands for separation of sexes in lectures and seminars, instances of proselytising, disagreements over the curriculum, and the wearing of religious clothes and symbols."
The report cited the French Education Code that states, "The public service of higher education is secular and independent of any political, economic, religious or ideological influence." Hence, the authors concluded that they "see no reason why higher education should enjoy the hypothetical status of extra-territoriality."
The HCI says the freedom of expression granted to users of higher education "should not affect educational activities and public order."
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