In 1925, Kamal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, banned the hijab from public buildings, including schools. That was his idea of secularism. In 1936, Reza Shah of Iran ordered police to rip the hijab off the heads of women. That was his way of Europeanizing Iranians. In 1998, Turkey did not let an elected member of parliament take her seat and even stripped her of her citizenship because of her hijab. That was its way of separating state and religion. In 2002, several German states banned the hijab for teachers. That was their idea of protecting German identity. In 2003, France banned the hijab for schoolgirls. That was its way of securing French secularism. In 2004, Uzbekistan, ruled by the tyrant Islam Karimov, started harassing and arresting hijabi women. That was his way of controlling “fundamentalism.”

Rulers of a different sort, the Taliban in Afghanistan or the mullahs in Iran, decreed the opposite: women had to be veiled, or they would be whipped or jailed. That was their idea of Islam.

French and German restrictions on the hijab are based on the same logic as those of Ataturk and the first shah. The two democracies see secularism the way the despots did: as anti-religious — in this case, anti-Islamic — rather than as a neutral guarantor of religious freedoms for all citizens.

France camouflaged its hijab ban in the rhetoric of rejecting all “ostentatious” religious symbols, including the crucifix and the yarmulke. But no one was fooled. Secularist author Guy Coq said the ideals of the 1789 French Revolution had to be safeguarded: “If we bow to demands to allow the practice of religion in state institutions, we will put the French identity in peril.”20 No sooner had he hit that high note of principle than he slipped into the abyss of prejudice by clarifying his real target: “To disarm fundamentalism, notably Islamic fundamentalism, can we give up laïcité?” But the principle of laïcité, the separation of state and religion, was compromised long ago by state subsidies to Christian and Jewish separate schools.

Luc Ferry, French education minister in 2003, positioned the hijab ban as a tool for battling anti-Semitism. But French anti-Semitism is too historic, deep-rooted and widespread to be placed at the feet of teenaged Muslim girls.

In Germany, some regional governments were at least honest in targeting Muslims. One said that all schoolchildren must simply “learn the roots of Christian religion and European culture.” Others covered it in half-baked assertions: the hijab is a symbol of Islamic oppression; or the exact opposite, an icon of an assertive political Islam.