France is to institute something called a National Secularity Day, which will happen on 9th December every year, when French schools will remind pupils how to sing the national anthem, what the tricolor stands for and generally celebrate the values of the Republic. Odd, isn’t it, that this should sound so much like the reflexive, everyday practice in the United States, where flag veneration and the separation of church and state are hardwired into the consciousness of US children, without impinging at all on the extent of religious observance?
Every French school will have to go through this Secularism observance day but it’s painfully apparent which community it’s directed at: France’s nearly 5 million Muslim community, amounting to, on paper, some 7.5 per cent of the population. Yet the Republic’s stubborn insistence that it is blind to the origins and religion of its citizens has meant that it’s illegal to collect data based on ethnic and religious background.
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