Majority of French support ban on religious signs: Poll

PARIS

Eighty-six percent of French back a ban of ‘all signs of religious or political affiliation’ in private workplaces. AFP photo

A majority of French people support a ban on all religious symbols in private workplaces, according to a recent poll.

The survey, which was conducted by French marketing and opinion specialists BVA and published in the daily Le Parisien on March 25, found that 86 percent of French people back introducing legislation that would ban “all signs of religious or political affiliation” in private schools and nurseries, France 24 reported. A majority of 83 percent also support imposing a law making it illegal to display such symbols in all privately owned businesses, according to the same poll.

The poll comes days after a top court ruled that a French Muslim woman who was sacked for wearing the Islamic headscarf at work was unfairly dismissed on the basis of her religion. In a landmark decision, the Court of Cassation overturned an earlier ruling by an appeal court in Versailles that had upheld the right of her employer, a private crèche in the Paris suburbs, to dismiss the woman after she refused to remove her headscarf.

Any overtly religious symbols, such as headscarves, Jewish skullcaps or Sikh turbans, are banned from French state schools, which operate according to strict principles of secularity.