What has 20 years of banning headscarves done for France? | Rokhaya Diallo

This failed policy was sold as a defence of French secularism. Instead it has opened the floodgates of intolerance and become a tool for exclusion

In the early 2000s, I decided to commit to feminism, so I joined a feminist campaigning group, convinced I had found an organisation that would defend the rights of every woman equally. At the time, a national debate was raging: in the name of laicite - or secularism - France was questioning Muslim schoolgirls' right to wear head coverings in secular state schools. In March 2004, after months of debate, the French parliament voted through a ban on headscarves in schools, outlawing symbols or clothing that conspicuously demonstrate a pupil's religious affiliation".

That is when I realised that the decision was quite popular in feminist circles, including the predominantly white group I was part of. Many white feminists thought it was their mission to help emancipate Muslim women and girls from a particular type of patriarchy tied to Islam. I quit the group. If Muslim women were enduring a specific form of patriarchal oppression, and really had no agency or free will when it came to wearing the hijab - a view I don't share - how would it help them to exclude them from schools and access to emancipatory knowledge?