FRANCE: France's Sikhs urged President Jacques Chirac yesterday to exempt them from a planned law banning religious symbols from public schools.
Chain Singh, spokesman for the community, wrote to Mr Chirac, stating that Sikhs in Britain, Canada and the US had been granted exemptions to work in the police and the military with their trademark turbans "without any problems".
"We invite the French government to grant the same freedom to Sikhs in this country so the Sikh religion can be properly respected and protected," he said.
Singh said that including Sikh turbans in the planned law, which bans all religious symbols in a move mostly aimed at stopping Muslim schoolgirls from wearing Islamic headscarves, would be a setback in the community's relations with the French.
"During the (first) World War, our Sikh ancestors died for France - with their turbans on," he recalled. Thousands of Sikhs fought in France then as part of the British army.
Singh said Sikhs from France, Belgium, Germany and Italy planned to join a Muslim-led march in Paris on January 17th to protest against the law, due for debate in parliament next month. The ban would apply from next September.
Legislators from across the political spectrum support the veil ban to bolster France's strict separation of church and state against what they see as growing pressure from Islamic radicals to seek special treatment in public schools.
The proposed ban has split the leaders of France's five million Muslims.
Singh argued that Sikh men only wear their turbans to cover their long hair, which, their faith says, they should not cut, so the headgear itself was not religious. "Unlike a Muslim veil or Jewish skullcap, a turban has no religious symbolism itself," he said.
Singh said about 15,000 Sikhs lived in France. About a third of them are in the Paris region, where, he said, hundreds of schoolboys could be affected by the ban. - (Reuters)