2024-04-27 12:18:47
Sociologist Alain Policar, who joined the Council of Elders of Secularism and the Values of the Republic (CSL) in 2022, encouraged by the then Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, was dismissed from his position by the Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet. At issue: comments on the veil and the 2004 law on religious symbols, which prohibit them at school.
The sociologist had stated, in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI) at the beginning of April, that the March 2004 law on religious symbols in public schools “appears, rightly or wrongly, to be discriminatory against Muslims” (nearly 80 % of Muslims consider the application of secularism “discriminatory”). He added this: “In my eyes, the veil is not most often a sign of proselytism – sociological surveys show that it is often even a vector of emancipation for young girls in relation to their environment – and the wearing of the veil should therefore be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. However, the law does not allow this detailed analysis” and this: “Today, it is certain that the application of the law is difficult, and therefore generates tensions. She even seems to be intolerant. »
“Reduce the 2004 law”
Comments which triggered the ire of the president of the Council of Wise Men, Dominique Schnapper, who wrote to the minister to report “notorious divergences” and to indicate “not being able to recognize himself in the words of Alain Policar”, according to Alain Sekzig, member of this council, contacted by AFP.
For the minister, these words which tend to “diminish the 2004 law”, even outside the Council, are “not compatible” with being a member of the CSL, the minister’s entourage told AFP.
The veil, a vector of emancipation?
Contacted by AFP, Alain Policar said he “contested the reasoning” which led to his ouster: “We are designated in the council as experts. So I didn’t feel like I had to give up my freedom of expression.” “Members who represent the majority position express themselves extremely often to give their opinion in various media without anyone ever calling them to order. So there are double standards and two measures,” he adds in Mediapart.
In fact, Alain Policar’s remarks, although they are difficult to understand summarized in this way, find their origins in research on this subject. When Alain Policar affirms that it is “a vector of emancipation for young girls in relation to their environment”, his sentence echoes, for example, the research of Agnès De Feo on women in niqab, which shows that they are far from being under the control of their husbands, on the contrary. Young girls may also want to “escape the pressure of their environments,” he recalls in Mediapart.
Strong reactions
When Alain Policar affirms that “the veil is not most often a sign of proselytism”, he is only repeating in another way what Françoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhavar showed in 1995, in Le Foulard et la Republic (La Découverte, 1995). We can veil ourselves out of love for someone, to hide a physical defect, or like Fatouya, interviewed in Slate, to “work on the essential, as opposed to all the material, and the appearance”. In short, not always only or mainly to affirm one’s religion.
The ousting of Alain Policar led to strong reactions in the world of research. “Sanctioning a researcher when the research does not go in the direction of politics is serious,” says for example Cécile Alduy, professor at Stanford and at Cevipof de Sciences-Po. “Power silences knowledge in the name of the duty of reserve”, Estimate Eric Fassinsociologist at Paris-8 University.
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