From BBC News World: Story

French court to rule on Sikh boys

A French administrative court will rule on an appeal brought by three Sikh boys who have been excluded from classes for wearing the under-turban.
France introduced its new law banning the wearing of all religious symbols from state schools from September.

Muslim pupils have been affected, with at least five girls now expelled for wearing the Islamic headscarf.

But France's small Sikh community says the under-turban is a valid compromise and the boys should not be excluded.


Tiny minority

The three Sikh boys have been excluded from classes for the past seven weeks.

Some schools have accepted Sikh pupils wearing only a keski or small under-turban, but that option was rejected by their teachers.

They say that there cannot be different rules for different religions, and that the law applies equally to all.

When the law banning religious symbols in schools was drafted, nobody consulted France's small Sikh community of around 7,000 people.

So their views were only belatedly taken into account.

Difficult law

The law itself was aimed primarily at removing the Islamic headscarf or hijab from schools, because of a French fear of a growing strain of Islamic fundamentalism among a minority of young Muslims here.


Muslims say it is their right to wear a headscarf
Most pupils are - however reluctantly - complying with the new law.

But as many as 70 pupils across the country are not - and they are slowly having to face the consequences.

In the eastern town of Mulhouse, Dounia and Khouloude became the first Muslim pupils to be expelled after refusing to remove their headscarves, leaving their parents angrily accusing France of racism.

But their school insists it did all it could to mediate - but that in the end, the new law was not being respected, so its teachers were forced to act.

All this shows just how difficult it will be to enforce a law that many said was badly drafted - and could inflame the religious tensions that it sought to resolve.

Sometimes the ostrich should lift it's head from the sand and look around. I can tell you one thing I would never fight for the french no matter who they were up against even the saracen. I hope that nothing bad happens but if it did I hope America stays out of it on their behalf. WWI repayed the debt we owed them. WW2 and Vietnam were on the cuff. That's it for us helping them ever again I hope ( even if the aliens finally attack).

The Sikh's aren't Muslims and haven't done anything to anybody.

Okay, so they killed Ghandi. Allah be praised, you just kill one little father of the nonviolent movement who brought the world's largest empire to its knees and people never let you forget it. Racist crackers.

No problems with the sihks here either- but the french i tend to dislike and I wa sreading a story today about the muslim girls wearing headscarves and thought how long until the sracen bites the hand that feeds him. So i was mixing the two stories in my head. No I don't think the sihks are a threat to anyone( or at least not me)

Tell that to Sonia Ghandi. She's scared shitless of them and is known to fly into hysterics every time she sees a blue turban bouncing up and down.

lol, that's why i added the addendum "at least not me"

I thought those were diapers they wore on their heads.

Darth Vader was a Sikh, right?