Aubervilliers, France
Two Muslim teenagers were expelled from their high school in a Paris suburb last week for refusing to take off their head scarves. School officials said the scarves, which covered everything but the girls’ faces, coupled with the long tunics the girls wore over their clothes, constituted an “ostentatious” symbol of religion. The two girls, Lila and Alma Levy, said they were “disappointed and angry,” and their father, Laurent Levy, a nonpracticing Jew, accused the school of “academic apartheid.” Both the French government and the main opposition party supported the school’s decision. So did some Muslim students, who said school was the only place they could be free of the scarves their parents forced them to wear.
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