France’s Chief Rabbi Comes to Defense of Beleaguered Veiled Muslim Students

In a meeting with French President Francois Mitterrand, France’s chief rabbi came to the defense of Muslim schoolgirls, who the rabbi said are the victims of an anti-religious trend within the country.

During his meeting with Mitterrand on Wednesday, Rabbi Joseph Sitruk referred to the recent expulsion of Muslim girls from a state-run school in Nantua, a city in south-central France.

The girls were expelled for refusing on religious grounds to remove their veils in school. Some of the girls had also refused to attend biology classes for religious reasons.

According to French law, pupils at state-run schools are forbidden to wear religious garb or insignia.

No incidents were ever reported involving boys wearing skullcaps.

But Sitruk came to the defense of the defense of the Muslim schoolgirls.

He told the president that the actions taken against them had been criticized by “part of the Jewish community, especially the young, who wish to reconcile their Jewish life and practice with the secular state-run school.”

The Jewish leader underscored his point by noting that the first day of the coming school year will fall on Rosh Hashanah.

“A religion has the right to express itself as long as it does not do any proselytizing and does not ask its followers to wear specific signs in an outrageously visible way,” Sitruk told reporters following the meeting with Mitterrand.

“I think it would be lamentable if a country with such broad ideas as France would close its doors to people who simply want to be different,” said Sitruk.

The rabbi added that the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in France had been grossly exaggerated by the media.

Of France’s 57.2 million inhabitants, between 3 million to 5 million people are Muslim.

There are an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 Jews living in France.