France's Ban on Head Scarves Put to Test
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France's bold effort to reign in Muslim fundamentalism was put to the test Thursday, with a new law that bans students from wearing Islamic head scarves taking force with the start of the school year.
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France has quietly begun expelling Muslim girls who wear head scarves to public schools in defiance of a new law banning conspicuous religious symbols.
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PARIS - France vowed Monday to press ahead with a controversial law banning Islamic head scarves in schools, despite demands by militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq that Paris revoke the legislation.    Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told Canal Plus television France would not compromise its values to win the release of the journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot...
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Los Angeles Times - PARIS &#8212; Muslim women in head scarves, journalists in jeans and senators draped in tricolored sashes rallied here Monday in support of two French hostages held in Iraq by kidnappers demanding that France repeal a new ban on the Islamic head scarf in public schools.
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The agreement to lift a ban on the wearing of head scarves by women attending universities is likely to enrage the countryâs staunchly secular old guard.
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PARIS - French school authorities xpelled two Muslim girls and threatened to do the same to two more on Wednesday for refusing to remove their headscarves in class.
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PARIS -- It was easier for 16-year-old Nadia Arabi to remove her Islamic head scarf yesterday than to defy a new law banning religious signs in the classroom, or to risk contempt for breaking a national chain of solidarity for two Frenchmen held hostage by militants in Iraq.
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The militant demand that a French ban on Islamic head scarves be overturned has raised an unprecedented backlash among religious and political leaders in the Middle East, who have often been silent about hostage slayings and other terrorism.
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PARIS - Some 100 to 120 girls have defied a new law banning Islamic head scarves in classrooms and are in talks with school officials trying to convince them to remove the head coverings, Education Minister Francois Fillon said Wednesday.    It was the first complete figure made public since the start of the school year last Thursday...
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The French government has said the judiciary was working to shed light on the attempted sale by a Frenchman of hair believed to belong to the mummy of Ramses II.
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French critics and defenders of a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools united in support of the law on Monday, pledging to stand firm against militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq who want the law scrapped.
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French ministers tried on Tuesday to calm  tensions following the government's decision to ban cultivation  of the sole genetically modified (GMO) crop grown in the  country, stressing that the move was temporary.
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Â· Trip to collect husband's award thrown into doubt Â· Ban seen as test of human rights commitment
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The kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq has injected new tension into France&#39;s debate over banning Islamic headscarves in schools just as Paris was hoping for a smooth start to the school year this week.
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A Muslim schoolgirl bowed to France's ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools on Friday by returning to class and removing her veil to reveal a head shaved bald in protest.
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For some French Muslims, two worlds collided as the ban on wearing Islamic head scarves in public schools took effect.
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PARIS A fragile truce between the government and Islamic organizations in France over the country&#39;s ban of Muslim head scarves in public schools appeared to hold Wednesday even though five female students have been expelled from schools for refusing to