From The Economist's "Muslim attire: The state and the veil":
France is different. The roots of French political secularism, known as laïcité, go back to the revolution of 1789 and to an anti-clerical campaign in the early 20th century. By 1904 some 10,000 religious schools had been shut; thousands of priests fled France. 'We have torn human conscience from the clutches of faith,' declared René Viviani, a Socialist minister.
Anti-Muslim sentiments in France is a symptom of a much more deep-total totalitarian secularism. The fact is that faith, genuine faith nourished by good deeds, cannot simply not a private matter. France's laïcité laws force a rather totalitarian view of society upon its citizens in which they have to all but renounce their faiths in order to be French.
France's laws against practicing Islam in public therefore isn't just a matter of Islam in particular, but a matter of how French law treats of religion in general. Laïcité forces public atheism upon French citizens who do no harm to others and is therefore, as a matter of general principle, contrary to human liberty. It's one thing for citizens or France, or any other nation for that matter, to vote for a woman who wears a veil in public, on account of such practices being against what they believe their national characteristics to be, it's quite another thing to ban such a practice.
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