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Monday, 28 May 2018

A student leader is the latest victim of France’s obsession with the hijab | Rokhaya Diallo

Media attacks on Maryam Pougetoux show how Muslim women are prevented from engaging in French public life

“She wears a particular veil that covers all her hair, the neck: a hijab”. Last Tuesday on French TV two men – a pundit, Thomas Legrand, and celebrity host, Yann Barthès – described in detail a woman’s outfit before labelling it “the opposite of feminism”. Few people in France appeared surprised. For the past two weeks the hijab has once more been at the centre of a national debate that has verged on hysteria.

It all started on 12 May when the political scientist Laurent Bouvet, known for his activism and sometimes referred to as a “gladiator of secularism”, published on his Facebook page an image taken from a televised interview with the elected president of the Sorbonne branch of the national student union (Unef), Maryam Pougetoux. The interview was about student protests against government reforms, but Bouvet’s attention was caught not by Pougetoux’s comments but by the hijab that surrounds her face.

Related: The hijab ruling is a ban on Muslim women | Iman Amrani

Related: Burqa bans, headscarves and veils: a timeline of legislation in the west

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from Islam | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2xk910T

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