Thousands of French Muslims -- many of them women wearing head scarves of various styles and colors -- marched through the rain-drenched streets of Paris on Sunday in the first large show of opposition to President Jacques Chirac's call for a law banning veils and other overt religious symbols from public classrooms.
Many of the women carried signs reading "Don't Touch My Veil!" and "I Vote," a reminder to France's political leadership that the country's estimated 5 million to 7 million Muslims could constitute a formidable voting bloc, with regional elections coming in March.
The crowd, which moved from the Place de la Republique to the Bastille, a traditional protest route, chanted and walked behind large banners with other slogans, such as "The Veil Is Our Choice" and "Yes to Secularism, No to Islamophobia." The multiracial crowd was sprinkled with hundreds of French tricolor flags, and the marchers occasionally sang the French anthem, the Marseillaise. "French and Muslim -- and Proud!" one banner read.
"They talk about human rights. They talk about democracy," said a bearded man pushing his 21/2-year-old daughter in a toy red car festooned with a French flag. "So where is the liberty here?"
The march was led by three women who spoke to the crowd from the back of a truck -- one woman was fully veiled; another's hair was covered by a long black cloth that hung over the shoulders of her fashionably tight black leather jacket to her jeans; and the third was bare-headed. The women said the rally was about a woman's right to choose.
Some of the rally leaders said the march was organized by two high school girls from Seine-Saint-Denis, an area near Paris with a large Muslim and immigrant population. Fliers were also circulated at the main mosque in Paris on Friday, calling for Muslims to turn up at the Place de la Republique for the first of several planned mass rallies against the proposed law.
The Place de la Republique, in central Paris, was a particularly symbolic starting point for the rally, which largely targeted Chirac. In May 2002, Chirac celebrated there after obtaining his second presidential term and greeted a huge crowd of well-wishers, many of them Muslims of North African descent, who waved French flags in celebration of Chirac's defeat of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-right anti-immigrant politician.
When Chirac announced his call for the new law on Wednesday, official reaction was muted. After Chirac's speech, Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Paris Mosque and the head of the government-backed French Council of the Muslim Faith, called on Muslims to remain calm.
But the rally Sunday -- with leaders and leaflets calling for more demonstrations -- indicated that the opposition to the proposed law could be growing. Another rally is planned for next week, and new fliers set Jan. 17 for a mass mobilization.
With Chirac's ruling party enjoying a comfortable majority in Parliament, and even the opposition Socialists backing the ban on religious symbols in schools, the proposed law is expected to be passed as early as February. Chirac has also called for new rules to allow private businesses to ban Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols -- including Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.
Chirac said a ban was needed because France's cherished tradition of secularism -- won a century ago when the separation of church and state was enshrined in the constitution -- was now under threat from rising Islamic militancy. "Fanaticism is gaining ground," Chirac warned in his nationally televised address.
Jewish and Christian leaders have largely supported the law, and many said they believed the law was really directed at Muslim veils, which have become increasingly common in France.