PARIS: France’s interior minister on Sunday said he opposed a proposal put before parliament to ban young girls wearing the Muslim headscarf, saying such a move risked being “stigmatising” for the minors.
The issue of tightening legal limits on the wearing of the hijab in public is being raised with increasing insistence in France, where the far-right is growing in strength but which has one of Europe’s biggest Muslim communities.
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the parliamentary faction of the traditional right-wing Republicans (LR) party, submitted a bill to the lower house National Assembly last week to ban the wearing of the veil by minors in public.
This proposal “is very stigmatising toward our Muslim compatriots who may feel hurt,” Nunez, a former Paris police chief named as interior minister in October to succeed his hard-line LR predecessor Bruno Retailleau, told BFMTV. “I am not in favor of it in this way.”
A report by the LR in the upper house Senate has gone even further, suggesting banning Ramadan fasting for those under 16.
Nunez said that authorities needed to be “extremely careful” and focus on targeting fundamentalists with an extreme interpretation of the religion who seek to impose “religious law over the laws of the republic.”
But the issue is a subject of tension within President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right government, which is mindful that the far right has its best ever chance of winning the Elysee in the 2027 polls.
Equality Minister Aurore Berge told CNews she backed a hijab ban for minors “to protect children.”
“I have no doubt that there is now a majority in the National Assembly and the Senate to vote for it,” she said.
Macron’s center-right Renaissance party, led by former prime minister Gabriel Attal, in May also proposed banning “minors under 15 from wearing the veil in public spaces.”
Under current legislation in France, a secular state according to its constitution, civil servants, teachers and pupils cannot wear any obvious religious symbols such as a Christian cross, Jewish kippa, Sikh turban or Muslim hijab in government buildings, including public schools.
French interior minister opposes ‘stigmatising’ hijab ban for minors
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French interior minister opposes ‘stigmatising’ hijab ban for minors
- issue of tightening legal limits on the wearing of the hijab in public is being raised with increasing insistence in France
- Far-right is growing in strength in France but the country has one of Europe’s biggest Muslim communities
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
