France’s interior minister on Sunday came out against a new bill seeking to bar girls from wearing the Muslim headscarf in public, warning the measure could unfairly single out and stigmatize Muslim minors.
The issue of tightening legal limits on the wearing of the hijab in public is being raised with increasing insistence in France, where the far-right is growing in strength but which has one of Europe's biggest Muslim communities.
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the parliamentary faction of the traditional right-wing Republicans (LR) party, submitted a bill to the lower house National Assembly last week to ban the wearing of the veil by minors in public.
This proposal "is very stigmatising towards our Muslim compatriots who may feel hurt", Nunez, a former Paris police chief named as interior minister in October to succeed his hardline LR predecessor Bruno Retailleau, told BFMTV. "I am not in favour of it in this way."
A report by the LR in the upper house Senate has gone even further, suggesting banning Ramadan fasting for those under 16.
Nunez said that authorities needed to be "extremely careful" and focus on targeting Islamists with an extreme interpretation of the religion who seek to impose "religious law over the laws of the republic".
But the issue is a subject of tension within President Emmanuel Macron's centre-right government, which is mindful that the far right has its best ever chance of winning the Elysee in the 2027 polls.
Equality Minister Aurore Berge told CNews she backed a hijab ban for minors "to protect children".
"I have no doubt that there is now a majority in the National Assembly and the Senate to vote for it," she said.
Macron's centre-right Renaissance party, led by former prime minister Gabriel Attal, in May also proposed banning "minors under 15 from wearing the veil in public spaces".
Under current legislation in France, a secular state according to its constitution, civil servants, teachers and pupils cannot wear any obvious religious symbols such as a Christian cross, Jewish kippa, Sikh turban or Muslim hijab in government buildings, including public schools.
