By Tim Chai
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Every day at the beginning of second or sixth period, a chorus of “…one nation, under God…” rings through the classrooms of this school in a unison so strong that an echo, faint as it may be, floats above the silence in the almost empty hallways. I’ll be the first to admit, though I know I’m not the exception, I don’t always undertake this privilege—yes, I called it a privilege—with the complete enthusiasm it deserves.

In France, political tensions are aflame over the place of religious freedoms in a self-proclaimed secular state, particularly with traditional religious garb like the burqa, an all-enveloping cloak that many some Islamic women wear. This past June, Andre Gerin, the Communist mayor of a Lyon suburb with a relatively large Muslim population, initiated a motion, signed by 57 other legislators and supported by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s own center-right UMP party, calling for a special parliamentary commission to ban the burqa from the French Republic. This comes just five years after France initiated its ban on the hijab, a headscarf worn by Muslim females, from public schools.

Addressing both houses of the French Parliament during the summer, Sarkozy launched into a startling diatribe against the burqa, calling it a “sign of debasement” for those “prisoners behind a screen…deprived of all identity” that has no place in a secular France. But, by creating too rigid of a barrier between religion and public life, France’s so-called secularism is in danger of being perverted into a form of extremism in itself. In particular, a ban would strike an uneasy discord with other core tenets of democracies, freedom of expression and individual liberty especially in regards to personal religious choices.

For many French Muslims, the entire discussion is an embarrassment and an incitement to racial and religious hatred. According to a domestic intelligence report, only 367 women in France wear a full veil, and this small number, many of them French converts to Islam, have said that they freely chose to cover themselves after marriage. In an interview with Le Monde, a French daily newspaper, Faiza Silmi, who was denied French citizenship in part for wearing a fully-veiled covering, said that she chose to wear the traditional garment after marriage. “Don’t believe for a moment that I am submissive to my husband! I’m the one who takes care of the documents and the money,” she said in the interview. It’s becoming clear that the issue is not one of human rights, but a friction of anti-Islamic sentiments and religious discrimination. In the original motion, Gerin wrote, “The burqa is the tip of the iceberg. Islamism really threatens us.”

If it were to ban the burqa under the guise of reinforcing nationwide secularism, France would have to extend the same policy to other religious garments. But, it’s hard to imagine the French government denying citizenship to a nun who refused to take off her habit. Actually, I take that back; perhaps, looking back at France’s record of secular extremism in the last few years, that day will come sooner than I thin