Jan 20, 2015 3 min read

In the two weeks since the killings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris by two brothers who fell under the spell of Islamic extremism, France embarked on a hard and painful reckoning of how terrorism of such brutality could have been perpetrated by young men who were born and come of age in a country that prizes, as per its motto, liberty, equality and fraternity.

French President Francois Hollande struck the right note when he stated the country was going to launch a war against radical Islam, not Islam as a whole. He correctly pointed out last week in a talk at Institute of the Arab World in Paris “Muslims are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance,” and emphasized “Islam is compatible with democracy and we must reject sweeping generalizations and confusion.”

Nonetheless, France, and other European countries, must find a way to ameliorate the conditions that allow radical variants of Islam to take root. Rates of poverty sometimes exceed 50 percent in some neighborhoods in French cities where large numbers of immigrants settled, and unemployment is at or near 40 percent in many of those places. While making up only about 10 percent of its population, The New York Times reported last week that 60 percent of the inmates in French prisons have Muslim backgrounds, and it is in those prisons where many young French Muslims first catch a whiff of extremist ideologies.

There’s something else France should consider if it would like to make Muslims feel less excluded from French society – loosening its laws regarding free religious expression.

Following the fractious religious strife that bedeviled France and other corners of the continent up until the dawn of the 20th century, France is committed to the notion of its public life being run on entirely secular grounds. No French president would take an oath on a Bible, even if he would feel inclined to do so, and in 2004, France outlawed what it deemed to be pronounced expressions of religious faith from public institutions, including the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women, and, more pointedly, burqas, which completely conceal the bodies and faces of devout Muslim women. France also argued the latter must be banned for security reasons, and the European Court of Human Rights agreed last summer. However, the human rights group Amnesty International strenuously argued against France’s regulations, maintaining “the state does not exist to tell people how they should dress. Rather, it should allow them to make their own choices.”

We agree. Here in the United States, after no lack of discord, we seem to have settled on a formula where we seek to avoid anything that could be perceived as overt state support of a particular religious viewpoint – teachers are not allowed to pass out religious tracts in public school classrooms, for example – while allowing individuals to freely proclaim their religious feelings. A student can wear a cross on a necklace if they want and, yes, headscarves are allowed, as are yarmulkes for Jewish boys. If they impinge on no one else’s rights, and cause no other harm, then why not live and let live?

While in some ways France’s desire to strictly separate the public world of lawmaking from the private realm of faith is admirable, they created an environment that is stifling to some and falls short on liberty, equality and fraternity. Allowing Muslims to follow the dictates of their religion publicly would go some way toward making them feel less discriminated against, and thus less vulnerable to the siren song of jihad.