Secular Fundamentalism

News of the first French Muslim students to be expelled from school for wearing their hijabs has left me chilled to the core. In a bid to stay one step ahead of the tide of religious fundamentalism that many conservatives claim to be sweeping many parts of the world, the French, by enforcing their new law restricting the display of symbols of religious faith in public schools, have officially embraced a fundamentalism of their own, and this time it’s of the secular variety.

I had my objections to the law before I came to Bangladesh, a devoutly Muslim nation, but they were certainly not as acute as they are now. In Canada I live the type of multicultural life that we like to project around the world; if I did not have friends from each of the denominations falling under the knife of the new French law – Muslims, Sikhs and Jews – I certainly lived peacefully amongst them and appreciated the harmless displays of their own faith. Yet having the option to live my own admittedly secular life prevented me from understanding the true significance of each of the symbols themselves.

Now that I represent the visible minority in a profoundly Islamic society, however, I am beginning to gain the understanding I sought as a member of the majority in a profoundly secular one. So when I hear that these two girls, aged 12 and 13 and the first to be punished under the new law, “will have to continue their education by other means, perhaps at a private school or by correspondence,” I cringe. I cringe at the thought that their families most likely lack the means to provide this private education for their daughters; I fear that this type of restriction on freedom of religion may one day surface in my own country; and I laugh at the fact that a society that promotes development, empowerment and democracy through education (as a defacto member of the now contentiously titled liberal-democratic West) is restricting those who may need it the most from access to its innumerable benefits.

Tread carefully, France; the world is watching.