Acceso usuarios
To explain the easy passage of the French law against religious signs in public schools in early 2004, a law aimed at Islamic headscarves, I offer a causal account of the passage of laws during two periods: 1901-1908 and 1989-2004. I argue, against Marcel Gauchet, that the first set of laws less moved religion out of the public sphere than set out the means for the State to support and control religious institutions. I argue that later headscarf �affaires� were produced by the conjuncture of domestic and international anxieties about stability and ideology, and that the escalation and conscious promotion of these anxieties (and not the professed concern for the rights of oppressed girls) best explains the passage of the law
