Stasis Report - English Translation

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COMMISSION OF REFLEXION
ON the APPLICATION OF The PRINCIPLE OF LAÏCITE IN The REPUBLIC
REPORT/RATIO WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
Given on December 11, 2003

Mr. President of the Republic,
It is a great honor, for the Commission of reflexion on the application of the principle of secularity in the Republic which you officially installed on last 3 July in this same Palate, to give you his report/ratio. In this document, we make you share of the conclusions that we drew from many hearings to which we proceeded, as well as our own reflexions and also, of course, proposals which appear to us of nature, if they are taken into account, to make so that the principle of secularity, base of the national unit, is recognized and respected by all those which live on our territory.
In your short speech of July 3, you had invited us to pose the bases of a true public discussion on secularity. This debate, we actually animated it throughout these last months.
Us auditioned the persons in charge for all the political parties, many members of the government, the representatives of all the religions and all the philosophical options, the persons in charge for the trade unions, the many associations concerned with the defense of the humans right and, in a more general way, with the life of the city.
Us collected testimonys of those which we called the men and the women of ground, i.e. of those, local councillor, responsible for school, directing establishments of hospital and prisons, police chiefs of police force, heads of undertaking, who are particularly qualified to appreciate the nature and the degree of gravity of the attacks whose secularity is the object or of the behaviors which threaten it.
Us also wanted to nourish our reflexion by informing us of the situation, relating to the nature of the relations between the religions and the State, in a certain number of European countries, because if secularity is regarded as a French speciality, it does not remain about it less than the experiment of close countries can be useful for us.
Also, delegations of the Commission went to Germany, to England, to Belgium, to Italy and in the Netherlands, which enabled us to carry out very interesting exchanges and to as note as our European friends expressed much interest for the debate which takes place in France and, I say it without vanity, await impatiently the Commission proposals and the decisions which will be made by the authorities.
Us also decided to associate the young people our reflexions. Thus, December 5, with the Senate, we auditioned of the pupils of the Charles college of Gaulle of Ankara, of the French college of Prague, the college Marsa of Tunis, the Chateaubriand college of Rome, the French college of Vienna and college protesting French of Beirut. Pupils of the college Joliot Curie of Dammarie-lès-Lily and college Léonard de Vinci of Melun also took part in this meeting, which gave place to extremely interesting exchanges between the high-school pupils and the Members of the Commission and allowed us to assess the quality of the educational action external of France.
From these hearings, from these testimonys, these exchanges, we drew the following conclusions.
First of all, unanimous approval, beyond all political cleavages, of the initiative which you took by opening this public discussion on the application of the principle of secularity.
This approval is explained by the fact why, not only political leaders, but the very large majority of our fellow-citizens, are aware of the importance of the questions tackled within the framework of this debate.
In addition to the fact that all those which we invited accepted our invitation and carefully prepared their interventions, I want some for proof that since the installation of the Commission, we received a number each increasing day of letters, to reach today more than two thousand, emanating citizens or associations eager to make known their points of view, to bring their testimonys and to make proposals relating to the decisions to be taken by the authorities. We were also impressed by the number of books which were published these last months devoted to secularity.
Yes, the French are aware perfectly that what is concerned in this debate is important for them and for our country, the quality of our food together, today and tomorrow.
I make a point of also saying that the press, even if we sometimes regretted excessive polarization, and sometimes exclusive, on the Islamic scarf, contributed much to the animation of the debate by the many articles which were devoted to him.
And I hold, in this respect, in the name of the Commission, particularly to thank the chain Public Senate, thanks to which a hundred public auditions were diffused on line and thus associated more closely the citizens the great debate which animates the French company today. Nothing of all that would have been possible without the hospitality from which liberally made us profit the Senate. I thank his president very cordially.

Throughout our work, we could also note the attachment of the large majority of our fellow-citizens to the principle of secularity. Instinctively, they recognize in this principle a value on which is founded the national unit, at the same time as a guarantor of the personal freedom. It is to say how much it appears important to them that this value is respected and, each time that it is threatened, defended.

However, it is one of the observations which we made throughout our work, and for some among us with astonishment, the behaviors, the intrigues attentatoires with secularity are increasingly numerous, in particular in public space. It is not certainly a question of dramatizing, but it is the duty of all those which exert responsibilities in our country to be clear-sighted. The reasons of the degradation of the situation do not need to be pointed out. difficulties of the integration of those which arrived on the own territory during these last decades, the living conditions in many suburbs of our cities, unemployment, the feeling tested per many of those which live on our territory to be the object of discriminations, to be even rejected out of the national community, explain why they lend a benevolent ear to those which encourage them to fight what we call the values of the Republic. Because it is necessary to be lucid: yes, of the extremists groups are with work in our country to test the resistance of the Republic and to push certain young people to reject France and its values.

The international economic situation, and particularly, the conflict of the Middle East, also contributes to worsen the tension and to cause confrontations in some of our cities.
In this context, it is natural that many of our fellow-citizens call their wishes the restoration of the republican authority and particularly with the school.
It is by holding account of these threats and in the light of the values of our Republic that it is necessary to make respect, that we formulated the proposals which appear in this report/ratio and which we will present to you.
I want to also announce that if the political, religious, philosophical convictions of the Members of the Commission reflect the diversity of our nation, and if their professional courses and the responsibilities which they exert and exerted are also very diverse, very quickly was created, between us, which I will allow myself to call a team spirit; team spirit still reinforced by an attachment common to a secularity which is at the same time intransigent in the application of the principles of the Republic and respectful of all the religious and philosophical beliefs.
I hold, at the moment when the mission ends which we achieved together, to ensure them of my gratitude and my regard. I want to also thank the general rapporteur and all his team for devotion, the availability and the competence with which they assumed their task and facilitated ours.
This friendly complicity, I have inward conviction of it, helped us to achieve the difficult one and enthralling mission that you entrusted to us.
Allow me to entrust to you that was for me a great pride to chair a made up Commission men and women of which the experiment and competence concerning the problems of which we had to discuss, on several occasions, impressed me.

I finally want, Mr. President of the Republic, in the name of all the Members of the Commission, to once more thank you for confidence that you expressed us and to assure you that we remain with the service of the Republic and the values which you have the high responsibility to defend. Also let us be us always at your disposal, if you consider it useful.
Bernard Stasi

The French Republic was built around secularity. All the democratic States respect the freedom of conscience and the principle of non-discrimination; they know various forms of distinction between policy and monk or spiritual. But France set up secularity with the row of value founder. This one been the subject today in our country of a broad consensus: each one is claimed some. Behind the same word, however exist differences in approach which veil the significance and the range of it. In a context of tensions and questionings, it is thus important to work out the alive principles from them.
Secularity, hones angular republican pact, rests on three indissociable values: freedom of conscience, equality in right of the spiritual and religious options, neutrality of the political power. The freedom of conscience makes it possible to each citizen to choose his spiritual or religious life. The equality in right prohibits any discrimination or constraint and the State does not privilege any option. Finally the political power recognizes its limits while abstaining from any interference in the spiritual or religious field. Secularity translates a design of the common good thus. So that each citizen can recognize himself in the Republic, it withdraws the political power from the dominant influence of any spiritual or religious option, in order to be able to live together.
This ideal was worked by the history. It is not a timeless value disconnected from the company and its changes. Built in a permanent dialogue, secularity made it possible to gradually establish, beyond any dogmatism, balances corresponding to the needs for our company.
First part
Secularity, universal principle, republican value
To restore the course of the history of secularity and to include/understand the richness of its significances, it is to work for the adhesion of all with its principles.

1.1 a republican principle built by the history
Secularity is constitutive of our collective history.
It refers in ancient Greece, the Rebirth and the Reform, the Edict of Nantes, the Lights, each one of these stages developing with its manner autonomy of the person and the freedom of the thought.
monarchy prérévolutionnaire of divine right rested as for it on religious bases: ceremony of the sacring in Rheims, image of the king lieutenant of God on ground. This social system was characterized by the institutional bond between the State and the catholic Church and by the place of this one in the life of all.
The Revolution marks the birth certificate of secularity in its contemporary meaning. The autonomy of the conscience, including on the spiritual and religious level, is marked. This concept is so new that she is formulated with prudence in article 10 of the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen of 1789: "No one does not have to be worried for its opinions, even religious, provided that their demonstration does not disturb the law and order established by the law ". September 20, 1792, the legislative Parliament laicizes the marital status and the marriage. The citizenship is not related any more to the religion. The history of secularity is not without crises nor confrontations. The adoption of the civil constitution of the clergy, political intervention in the religious field, opens bloody fractures.
With the Legal settlement of 1802 one period begins from political stabilization. The social and moral role of the religion justifies, in the spirit of the Legal settlement, that the State leads a voluntarist policy as regards worships. The majority place of the catholic religion is devoted but the pluralism of the religious options is also taken into account. Four worships are recognized: catholic, Lutheran, reformed, Jew. But the entry into force of the civil code definitively laicizes the rights of the person and the company.
This mode is maintained throughout XIXème century. Gradually, Church and Republic clash again in the conflict from "both France". The Republicans intend to withdraw the company from the supervision of the catholic Church and its influence on the consciences. For this reason the great school laws of IIIème République are adopted. Two models of secularity are opposed. One, combative, anticlerical, are defended by Emile Combes; the other preaches the mutual separation of the State and the religions in the respect of all the spiritual options. This last model, more liberal and tolerant, in particular carried by Aristide Briand, Jules Ferry and Jean Jaurès, carries it. Secularity enracine then in our institutions with the great republican law of December 9 1905 which separates the Churches from the State. The style in is remarkably concise: article the 1st "Republic ensures the freedom of conscience. It guarantees the free exercise of the worships, under the only restrictions enacted hereafter in the interest of the law and order "and article 2" the Republic does not recognize, does not pay nor does not subsidize any worship [... ] ". dissociation of the citizenship and the religious membership is marked; the religion loses its function of authority of official socialization; finally France ceases being defined as catholic nation while renonçant in the project of a republican civil religion. This separation is painfully felt per much French and causes many conflicts. After the shared test of the First World War, religious peace is restored with the agreement of 1924 between the French Holy See and government.
In the colonies, where French secularity meets Islam, the policy of the Republic is marked by ambiguity. In Algeria, integral part of the Republic until 1962, the law of 1905 envisages the full application of the principles of secularity. But, by the skew of derogatory decrees of application taken by the gouvernorat of Algeria, a mode of exception is implemented with a code of the indigénat which maintains the statute personal Moslem or Jew. The stating of laic republican principles and their derogatory application on a given territory are revealing of a contradiction specific to the French colonial State. This process prohibits any blooming of Moslem theology in a laic environment.
In spite of its omissions, its takeovers by force and its violences symbolic systems, secularity at the XXème century succeeds in transforming a standard of combat into largely shared republican value. The whole of the components of the company adopts the laic pact. Insertion in 1946 then in 1958 of secularity among the constitutional principles devotes this appeasing.
The law of December 31, 1959 fixes the rules of operation and financing of the establishments deprived under contract, mainly catholics, whose clean character is recognized and protected constitutionally.
Into two centuries, the context changed. Built at the beginning in a company where dominated the catholic Church, secularity adapted to the metamorphoses of our country. Marked by violent crises, it oscillated between two excesses: temptation passeist of the influence of the religions on the company and the confusion of secularity with a militant atheism. The history of secularity is not the account of an inexorable walk towards progress. This one left each one of these engagements renewed. The current tensions fall under this prospect. While remaining a value shared by all, in the heart of the republican pact, it was never a dogmatic construction. Declined in an empirical way, attentive with the new sensitivities and the legacies of the history, it is able at the crucial times to find balances and of incarner the hopes of our company.

1.2 directions and the hope of secularity
secularity could not be reduced to the neutrality of the State. Respect, guarantee, requirement, food together are the cardinal principles; they constitute a whole of rights and duties for the State, the worships and the people.
1.2.1 Respect of the diversity of the spiritual options and the confessions
Secularity supposes the independence of the political power and the various spiritual or religious options. Those do not have an influence on the State and this last does not have any on them.
Within the laic framework, any political intervention is illegitimate as regards spiritual orientations. The State does not impose nor constrained; there is neither obliged creed, nor prohibited creed. Secularity implies the neutrality of the State: it should not privilege any spiritual or religious option. Basing itself on the principle of equality, the laic State does not grant a public privilege to any worship and its relations with those are characterized by legal separation. The freedom of worship allows all the religions the exteriorisation, the association and the joint tracking of spiritual targets. Thus included/understood, it prohibits any approach anti-chocolate éclair. Not more than it does not defend a religious dogma, the laic State does not promote an atheistic or agnostic conviction.
In the same way, the spiritual one and the monk must prohibit any influence on the State and give up their political dimension. Secularity is incompatible with any design of the religion which would wish régenter, in the name of the principles supposed of this one, the social system or the political order.
Within the laic framework, the spiritual or religious choices concern the personal freedom: that does not mean in so far as these questions are confined with the intimacy of the conscience, "privatized", and that any social dimension or capacity of public expression is denied to them. Secularity distinguishes the spiritual or religious free expression in public space, legitimate and essential with the democratic debate, of the influence on this one, which is illegitimate. The representatives of the various spiritual options are founded to speak for this reason in the public discussion, like any component of the company.
The worships and the State profit one and the other from this separation. The first are centred on their spiritual mission and find their freedom of word there. The second, free of any denominational fastener, belongs to all the citizens.
1.2.2 Guarantee of the freedom of conscience
Beyond the only neutrality of the State, the law of 1905 gives to secularity positive contents: "the Republic ensures the freedom of conscience. It guarantees the free exercise of the worships, under the only reserves of the restrictions enacted hereafter in the interest of the law and order ". By guaranteeing the free expression of each one, while getting for all the education which will forge the autonomy and the freedom of the judgement, the State registers secularity in the filiation of the humans right. It cannot be satisfied with a withdrawal of the religious and spiritual businesses.
The State could not cover with a "veil of ignorance" the spiritual or religious fact. In the relationships with the worships and the whole of the spiritual families, it takes care that all can be expressed. It thus makes it possible the weakest groups, fewer or most recent to profit from this freedom, subject to the needs for the law and order. Secularity guarantees to all the spiritual options or chocolate éclairs the legal framework favourable with this expression. Without denying the heritage of the history, in particular Greek rationalism and legacy Judeo-Christian, it enables them to find their place.
The State layman, guarantor of the freedom of conscience, in addition to the freedom of worship or expression, protége the individual; he freely makes it possible all to choose, or not, a spiritual and religious option, to change some or to give up it. It make sure that no group, no community cannot impose on whoever a membership or a denominational identity, in particular because of its origins. It protects each one and each one against any pressure, physics or morals, exerted under cover of such or such spiritual or religious regulation. The defense of the freedom of individual conscience against any proselytism comes today to supplement the concepts of separation and neutrality power stations in the law from 1905.
This requirement applies initially to the school. The pupils must be able in a climate of serenity to inform themselves and build themselves so reaching the autonomy of judgement. The State must prevent that their spirit is badgered by violence and the furies with the company: without being a sterile room, the school could not become the echo room of passions of the world, under penalty of failing in its educational mission.

If it is limited to a narrow design of neutrality compared to the religious or spiritual culture, the school contributes to the ignorance of the pupils in this field and leaves them disarmed, without intellectual tool, vis-a-vis with the pressures and the instrumentalisations of the activists politico-monk who thrive on the compost of this ignorance. To cure these deficiencies is a social urgency. In that, the school must make it possible to the pupils to exert their judgement on the religions and spirituality in general in the multiplicity of their demonstrations, including their political offices, cultural, intellectual and legal. Teaching can help with discovered revealed texts of the various traditions and to reflect on their significances, without involving itself in crowned interpretation. secularity creates a responsibility with the load for the State. To support the enrichment of the critical knowledge of the religions at the school can make it possible to equip the future citizens with a intellectual and critical formation. They can thus exert the freedom of thought and choice in the field of the beliefs.
The State layman cannot remain indifferent, since disorders with the law and order, the exercise of pressures, threats, practices racist or discriminatory, under the pretext of religious or spiritual arguments, the bases of the school sap.

In the French design, secularity is not a simple "frontier guard" who would limit himself to make respect separation between the State and the worships, the policy and the spiritual or religious sphere. The State allows the consolidation of the common values which melt the social bond in our country. Among these values, the equality enters the man and the woman, to be a recent conquest, did not take of it one important place in our right. It is an element of the republican pact of today. The State could not remain passive vis-a-vis with very reached with this principle. By doing this, secularity does not replace other spiritual or religious requirements. It reiterates only that the State defends the common values of the company from which it results. Carried by a strong vision of the citizenship which exceeds the memberships Community, denominational, or ethniques, secularity creates in the State of the obligations with regard to the citizens.
1.2.3 Shared requirement

The respect which the State with the various spiritual or religious options guarantees, the absence of intrusion of the political power, the creation of a framework favourable with the freedom of worship, the protection of the not-majority religions make it possible to require in return an effort.
History recall the effort requested in the past to the worships to adapt to the laic framework. Very reticent initially, the catholic Church feared to have very to lose. Its resignation, its acceptance and finally its adhesion with the laic framework were essential for the appeasing of our company. It was necessary for that that catholic Eglise and State use of mutual regards. The Protestant Churches played a driving part in the adoption of the law of 1905; they could however fear the constraints related to the framing of cultuelles associations. In the same way, the Jewish religious law was the subject of various adaptations starting from the Legal settlement to adapt its religious precepts to the civil law, for example with the recognition of the anteriority and the superiority of the marriage as well as divorce according to the law of the State; this "free-Judaism" made it possible to reconcile moral Jewish and civil law.
Initially, secularity asks for an effort of adaptation for any religion. When it has a universal aiming, embraces beyond like the ici-bas, it is difficult for him to agree to separate one from the other. In fact, secularity requires an effort of interpretation to reconcile the religious dogma and the laws which govern the company, would be this only to make possible the life together.
Islam, religion most recently established in France and which counts the many faithful ones, is sometimes presented like irreconcilable with secularity. However Moslem theology produced, during its most brilliant time, an innovative reflexion on the relationship between policy and religion. The most rational currents in its centre refused confusion between political power and spiritual. The Moslem culture can find in its history the resources enabling him to put up with a laic framework, just as secularity can allow the full intellectual blooming of the Islamic thought the shelter of the constraints of the capacity.
Beyond the statute of the worships, the laic requirement also requires of each one an effort on oneself. The citizen conquers by secularity the protection of his freedom of conscience; n the other hand it must respect public space that all can divide. To assert the neutrality of the State seems not very reconcilable with the posting of an aggressive proselytism, particularly in school space. To agree to adapt the public expression of its denominational characteristics and to put terminals at the assertion of its identity allows the meeting of all in public space. It is what the Inhabitants of Quebec describe as "reasonable compromises". The spirit of secularity requires this balance of the rights and the duties.
1.2.4 To live together, build a common destiny
By report/ratio with the context of 1905, the French company changed: the influence of the catholic Church is not perceived any more like a threat. Secularity is found in the heart of the republican pact in new terms.
Our country knew in one century a radical change. It became plural on the spiritual level. Formerly called "elder Girl of the Church", strong of a diversified Protestant tradition, France gathers the first Jewish community of Western Europe. During last decades, new religions developed. Islam, resulting mainly from populations originating in the Maghreb, Africa and the Middle East, is represented by the most important community of the European Union; orthodoxy is also present as well as Buddhism. France also counts a significant number of atheists, agnostics and free thinkers. In parallel, the regular religious practice moved back leaving place with an increasing autonomy of the spiritual or religious convictions. Thus France of today is it among the most diversified European countries one of. This major rupture in its history gives him also the chance to grow rich by the free dialogue between these various components.

In addition, mentalities evolved/moved. Our political philosophy was founded on the defense of the unit of the social body. This preoccupation with a uniformity overrode any expression of the difference perceived like threatening. Today diversity is sometimes presented under one day positive: respect of cultural rights is asserted by certain which regard them as an essential aspect of their identity. To preserve culture, belief, memory - reality or imaginary - seems a form of protection while taking part in a world driving of exchanges. To deny the force of the Community feeling would be useless. But the exacerbation of the cultural identity could not set up in fanaticism of the difference, carrying oppression and exclusion. Each one must be able, in a laic company, to take distance compared to the tradition. There is no disavowal of oneself but an individual movement of freedom making it possible to be defined compared to its cultural or spiritual references without being subjugated there.
From this point of view, the danger is double. The drift of the Community feeling towards a fixed communautarism threatens of fragmentation our contemporary companies. With the reverse to deny any diversity or plurality by reaffirming way incantatoire a republican pact désincarnée would be illusory. The secularity of today is put at the challenge to forge the unit while respecting the diversity of the company.
The laic framework can be the place of conciliation of this double requirement. It must give itself the means of making coexist on the same territory of the individuals who do not share the same convictions, instead of juxtaposing them in a mosaic of communities closed on themselves and mutually exclusive. It is a means of making coexist individuals who do not share the same convictions inevitably.
In this direction, secularity can be the leaven of the integration of all in the company: it balance recognition of the right to a clean identity and effort necessary to weave the individual convictions with the social bond. The training of the citizenship in our company with cultures and various origins supposes that one learns how to live together. By articulating national unit, neutrality of the Republic and recognition of diversity, secularity creates beyond the traditional communities of each one the community of affections, this whole of images, values, dreams and wills which melt the Republic.

When secularity is in crisis, the French company pains to offer a common destiny. Conversely to seek the new formulations and the concrete translations of contemporary secularity can make it possible to forge it.

Second part
Secularity with the Frenchwoman, a legal principle applied with empiricism
For essence secularity obeys a precise legal status resulting from the law of December 9, 1905 concerning the separation of the Church and the State: Republic is laic and respects all the beliefs. This principle founder rise from many legal obligations as well for the users as for the public services to start with national Education. But this legal status is far from constituting a monolithic block. It at the same time scattered, because is dispersed in many legal, and various sources, because secularity does not have same contours in Paris, Strasbourg, Cayenne or Mayotte.

2.1 a scattered legal corpus

The legal corpus as regards secularity is more reduced than than one could believe. Since the Constitution of 1946, the principle of secularity acquired a constitutional value. The article of the Constitution of 1958, showing the article 1st Constitution of 1946, affirms thus that "France is a republic indivisible, laic, democratic and social". Secularity was thus raised on the highest level of the hierarchy of the standards. But at the constitutional level, the principle of secularity was not the subject of a jurisprudence of the constitutional Council as abundant as for the freedom of conscience and opinion.
Great laws marked the legal assertion of the principle of secularity. Were already mentioned the school laws of March 28, 1882 on obligatory primary education teaching and of October 30, 1886 on the organization of primary education teaching. But the great law is that of December 9, 1905 supplemented by that of January 2, 1907 on the public exercise of the worships. Out of these texts founders, the legal corpus is made provisions disseminated in various texts of laws. Far from constituting a well ordered unit, the legal status of secularity is rather a disparate whole of texts, enacted in particular starting from the principles founders of the law of 1905, as the questions related to the law of separation emerged. In this burst puzzle, the role of the judge, and in the foreground of the Council of State, was to put order. In a field which "felt the powder", as professor Rivero, one said it very often asked him to play the part of a social regulator of secularity and to release the legal rule starting from the constitutional provisions, treaties and International Conventions as well as applicable standards - laws, general principles of the right, jurisprudence.

In the field of the international law, it is the question of the religious freedom which is in particular treated by texts the such universal Declaration of the humans right of December 10, 1948 - which besides does not have any constraining authenticity legal - Convention for the fight against discrimination in the curricular area adopted under the aegis of UNESCO, the two international Pacts of O.N.U of December 19, 1966 on the civil laws and political, on the one hand, and on the economic, social and cultural rights, on the other hand. The European Union - the current debate on the mention of the religious heritages in Convention testifies some well - does not comprise the mention of a principle of separation between the political power and the religious or spiritual authority. Nevertheless, the political construction of the European Union, which does not rest on any religious base, corresponds in practice to the requirements of secularity, even if at the European level one prefers the term of secularization to him.
As for the European Convention of the humans right and fundamental freedoms, its article 9 protects religious freedom, without however making an absolute right of it. The State can bring limits to him to triple condition which this interference is provided by the law, which it corresponds to a legitimate goal and which it is necessary in a democratic company. On the base of this article 9, the Court was brought to treat questions which relate to secularity. The approach of the Court rests on a recognition of the traditions of each country, without seeking to impose a uniform model of relations between the Church and the State. In the stop Cha' are Shalom ve Tsedek against France of June 27, 2000, the Court thus had recourse to a formula of prudence: "have regard with the margin of appreciation which it is necessary to leave in each State, in particular as regards the establishment of the delicate relationship between the Churches and the State ". The stop Refah Partisi (left prosperity) and others against Turkey of February 13, 2003 are in this respect very representative. Turkish government had prohibited Refah, party Islamic. The constitutional Court of Turkey had estimated that the political project of Refah was dangerous for the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Turkish Constitution, of which secularity, and which it had of the real chances to apply its program if it reached the capacity. The European Court of the humans right noted that secularity held such a place in the Constitution of the Turkish State which it admitted that Refah could have been dissolved, without European Convention being violated. The national jurisdictions had thus been able to take into account the risk that this party presented for the democracy.
From this reasoning, the Court handed down some judgments on the questions of secularity, in which it affirms requirements comparable with those of French jurisprudence on questions relative as well to the public agents as with the users. Acting of the public agents, into the stop of Dahlab admissibility against Switzerland of 15 February 2001 relative to teaching of the canton of Geneva which had undergone disciplinary actions because it refused to take off the veil, the Court of Strasbourg rejected the request because prohibition to carry the scarf within the framework of an activity of primary education teaching constituted a measure necessary in a democratic company. In the Kalaç stop against Turkey of July 1, 1997, the Court also validated the marked disciplinary action against a soldier delivering himself to religious proselytism. In the connection of the users, the Court also recognized the possibility of limiting the full exercise of religious freedom. In the Karadum stop counters Turkey of May 3, 1993, the Court, after having raised the existence of a private teaching parallel with the state education, admitted the prohibition of the wearing of religious signs in the publicly-owned establishments of Turkish higher education, because of the need for protecting the women against pressures. In a Valsamis decision against Greece of July 6, 1995, it estimated that a pupil could not call upon his religious convictions to refuse to subject herself to the payment of the school. This jurisprudence shows that religious freedom thus finds limits in confrontation with the requirements of secularity.
This jurisprudence thus shows that secularity is not incompatible, in oneself, with religious freedom as protected by European Convention from safeguard from the humans right and of fundamental freedoms.

2.2 a double requirement
On the base of these texts, the principle of secularity comprises a double requirement: the neutrality of the State on the one hand, the protection of the freedom of conscience on the other hand.
2.2.1 the neutrality of the State
neutrality of the State is the first condition of secularity. France thus does not know a statute of recognized worship or not recognized. Essentially the neutrality of the State has two implications.
On the one hand, neutrality and equality go hand in hand. Devoted to article 2 of the Constitution, secularity thus forces the Republic to ensure "the equality in front of the law of all the citizens without distinction of origin, race or religion". The users must be treated in the same way which who can be their religious beliefs.
In addition, it is necessary that the administration, subjected to the political power, assures not only all of neutrality but into present also appearances so that the user cannot doubt his neutrality. It is what the Council of State called the duty of strict neutrality which is essential on any agent collaborating in a public utility (Council of State May 3, 1950 Young lady Jamet and the contentious opinion of May 3, 2000 Miss Marteaux). As much, in-outside service, the public agent is free to express its opinions and beliefs provided these demonstrations do not have effect on the service (Council of State April 28, 1958 Weiss Young lady), as much, within the framework of the service, the most strict duty of neutrality applies. All demonstration of religious convictions within the framework of the service is prohibited and the wearing of religious sign is also, even when the agents are not in liaison with the public. Even for the access to public employment, the administration can take into account the behavior of one candidate to the access to the public utility, if it is such as it reveals the inaptitude with the exercise of the functions to which they postulate in the full respect of the republican principles.
On the financial level, article 2 of the law of 1905 summarizes the implications of secularity: "the Republic does not recognize, does not pay, nor does not subsidize any worship". This article was used as base with a very strict appreciation of jurisprudence administrative on any form of subsidies, disguised or indirect, with a cultuelle organization (Council of State October 9 1992 commune of Saint-Louis), even if the administrative judge knew to spare exceptions. Thus the Council of State recognized like legitimate the inscription with the communal budget of a sum intended to pay a cultuelle ceremony for the return of died of the face (Council of State January 6 1922 commune of Perquie).
More generally, our right envisaged installations making it possible to reconcile the neutrality of the State with the practice of the religious fact. If the law of 1905 separates the Church from the State, it institutes nevertheless chaplaincies whose expenditure can be entered with the budget of the administrations, services and establishments whose requirements of operation would be likely not to ensure the respect of religious freedom. Thus is it for the armies, the colleges and colleges, the prisons, the hospitals. In addition, in order to preserve the respect of the religious conscience within the framework of a laic teaching, Jules ferry had envisaged the one day introduction vacant in more of Sunday to allow religious teaching, right taken again to the article L. 141-3 of the code of education. In the same way, if the cemeteries are laicized, the practice could take into account certain traditions of the Jewish and Moslem worships. Lastly, since the law of 1987, the gifts made with cultuelles associations profit from a more favorable tax system, which assimilates them to recognized associations of public utility.

The requirements for an absolute neutrality are thus moderated by the "reasonable compromises" making it possible each one to exert its religious freedom.
2.2.2 freedom of conscience
second legal pillar of secularity is obviously the freedom of conscience with in particular its variation in freedom of worship. On the legal level, secularity was not the instrument of a restriction of the spiritual choices on the detriment of the religions, but well the assertion of freedom of the religious and philosophical conscience of all. It is a question of reconciling the principles of the separation of the Church and the State with the protection of the freedom of thought, "even religious", of the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen. Essentially the legal corpus and especially administrative jurisprudence sought to guarantee the effective exercise of the worship since it does not disturb the law and order (cf in particular conclusions of the government commissioner Crow under the stop Council of State of August 10, 1907 Baldy).
It is initially the free exercise of the worship which is protected and guaranteed indeed. Since the law of 1905, the movable and real goods were restored in the State. It thus assumes the financial assumption of responsibility of it, which is not negligible acting of buildings cultuels often rather expensive to maintain. On the other hand, the buildings built since the law of separation constitute private goods built and maintained by the faithful ones, with the difficulties that that can represent in terms of financing. local communities have however the possibility of granting guarantees of loan and beams long for the financing of the construction of buildings cultuels.
So to guarantee the exercise of the worship, the law of 1905 provided that these goods would remain at the disposal of cultuelles associations which were to be made up. Calvinists, Lutherans and Jews agreed to set up these associations. Being a question of the catholic Church, it was necessary to await the compromise of 1924 so that associations diocésaines can be comparable with cultuelles associations. These associations, cultuelles or diocésaines, are formed to provide for the expenses, the maintenance and the public exercise of a worship. They can have in theory only this only object. Their obligations on the plans legal and countable are constraining. But, n the other hand, they profit from a capacity legal comparable with that of recognized associations of public utility, which in particular enables them to receive legacies or donations. One also meets associations only made up under the empire of the law of 1901 and assuming nevertheless the organization of a worship, in accordance with the provisions of the law of January 2, 1907. They can thus assume other goals, in particular cultural, social or philanthropic. On the other hand, they enjoy only one limited legal capacity and cannot receive legacy or donations. These associations of law 1901 are rare for the worship catholic or Protestant, but more current in the other confessions, in particular Jew, orthodoxe or Moslem.
For the remainder, the exercise of the worship is free. Since the law of March 28, 1907, the faithful ones meet thus without preliminary declaration. In the same way, the ringings of the bells, formerly conflict, are also authorized. Acting of the processions, the Council of State was brought to solve the question of the funeral processions; it censured the regulation of a municipality which had prohibited funerary convoys with the pretext that they undermined the neutrality of the street (Council of State February 19, 1909 Olivier Abbot). On this stop rests all the protective administrative jurisprudence of the demonstrations external of the worship in the respect of the practices and the local traditions.
But, like any public freedom, the manifestation of the freedom of conscience can be limited in the event of threats to the law and order. It is the traditional application of the mode of public freedoms. If freedom is the rule and the measurement of police force the exception, the authorities always have the possibility of taking measures limiting, under the control of proportionality exerted by the judge, the manifestation of the freedom of conscience in order to prevent threats of disorders to the law and order (Council of State May 19, 1933 Benjamin).
parallel with the rules as regards law the labour is in this respect interesting, because the same swinging between potentially contradictory requirements is found there: the protection of the freedom of conscience and will to fix the limits necessary to the good execution of the contract of employment.
The fair labor standards act is very protective personal rights and personal freedoms of the employees. The only restrictions on authorized freedoms are those which are justified by the nature of the task and are proportioned with the required goal. Thus the article L. 120-2 of the fair labor standards act it provides that "no one cannot bring to the rights of the people and the personal freedoms and collective of restrictions which would not be justified by the nature of the task to achieve nor proportioned with the required goal". The article L.122-35 of the fair labor standards act specifies that rules of procedure "cannot bring to the rights of the people and the personal freedoms and collective of the restrictions which would not be justified by the nature of the task to achieve nor proportioned with the required goal. It cannot comprise provisions injuring the employees in their employment or their work, because of their sex, their manners, of their sexual orientation, their age, of their family circumstances, their origins, their opinions or confessions, of their physical appearance, their patronym, or their handicap, with equal professional capacity ".
In addition, the fair labor standards act prohibits discriminations, in particular because of the religious convictions. The article L. 122-45 of the fair labor standards act indicates that "no person can be isolated of a procedure of recruitment or access to a training course or one period of training in company, no employee cannot be sanctioned, laid off or to be the subject of a discriminatory, direct or indirect measurement, in particular as regards remuneration, of formation, reclassification, assignment, qualification, classification, professional promotion, change or renewal of contract because of its origin, its sex, its manners, of its sexual orientation, its age, of its family circumstances, of her characteristics genetic or of its not-membership, true or supposed, with an ethnos group, a nation or a race, of its political opinions, its trade-union activities or mutualists, its religious convictions, its physical appearance, its patronym or, except inaptitude noted by the doctor of work within the framework of title IV of book II of this code, because of its its handicap or health ".
For as much, the legal judge was brought to moderate these principles in order to reconcile them with the respect of the contract of employment and his execution. Jurisprudence thus illustrated this possible conflict between professional and personal life, either when an employer judges the behavior or the attitude of paid like constitutive of a fault justifying a dismissal, or when an employee estimates that it has the right to make prevail on the substantive law some of his convictions. In theory, the behavior of paid in its personal life, out of the working time and of the place of work, cannot be retained against him by its employer. During the working time, the employee, on the other hand, is subjected to the full authority of the employer. Even if it preserves obviously rights and freedoms which concern its personal life, and to which the employer cannot carry reached without reason and in a disproportionate way (Supreme court of appeal, social room, February 18, 1998), its claims must be reconciled with the contractual obligations and the organization of work. An employee cannot thus require of his employer the respect of the demonstration of his religious convictions, in the absence of mention of the religious fact in the contract of employment, which it is a question for him of asking the refunding of allowances corresponding to lunches provided free by the employer, and which he abstained from taking for religious reasons (Supreme court of appeal, social room, February 16, 1994), to refuse to carry out its work of employee to a ray butchery owing to the fact that it is led to handle pigmeat (Supreme court of appeal, social room, March 24, 1998), or to undergo a lawful medical visit (Supreme court of appeal, social room, May 29, 1986).
Acting of the port of the veil, the only stops emanate from the stops of jurisdictions of first authority or call. It was thus judged that the refusal of a wage-earner, saleswoman in a shopping centre opened with a large audience, to give up the port of an ostentatious veil, in the absence of a simple bonnet, is a real and serious cause of dismissal (Court of Appeal of Paris, 18th room, March 16, 2001, Mrs. Charni against SA Hamon). Conversely, in the absence of any valid justification to the prohibition of the port of the veil, and whereas the wage-earner had been recruited while carrying this same veil, the dismissal of paid was cancelled as being discriminatory, within the meaning of the article L. 122-45 of the fair labor standards act (council of the prud' men December 17, 2002 Tahri against Téléperformance France).
Orientation is thus primarily that of an approach to individually. For essence, the legal judge, if it recognizes the rights which the respect of the freedom of conscience offers, takes care that these requirements are reconcilable with the good execution of the contract of employment.
2.2.3 points of tension
The difficulty of the legal translation of the principle of secularity is explained by the tension between these two poles by no means incompatible but potentially contradictory, the neutrality of the laic State and religious freedom. The articulation is delicate when the recipients of the public utility or the agents public are confronted with situations suitable for affect their religious convictions. It is more particularly the case in closed universes, where the joint life can play an important part. The tension is then strong between the requirements of a public utility supposed to remain neutral and the will of each one to affirm its spiritual convictions with complete freedom.
One interesting example is that of the army. Article 7 of the statute of the soldiers poses like principle the freedom of thought of the soldiers. But this freedom can be expressed only apart from the service. Since this condition is observed, the protection of the freedom of conscience is ensured, including in the military area. The system of the military chaplaincies thus makes it possible to facilitate religious freedom. But on the other hand, within the framework of the service, it is the absolute duty of neutrality which applies.
In the prisons, the articulation of these requirements is framed by the code of penal procedure. The spiritual assistance of the prisoners is envisaged. Minister for justice names the chaplains of the various worships after consultation of the proper religious authority. Those have the role of regularly bringing helps to the prisoners and of celebrating offices. The prisoners, as of their arrival in an establishment, are advised of this possibility. That being, the needs for the very strict maintenance of law and order justify that is subjected to a narrow control the assertion of personal freedom, through the rules of procedure and the sanction of all disciplinary faults.
In matter of hospital public utility, the nature of the potential attacks is different. A great part of the users does not have to live durably at the hospital and, in any event, the collective life remains reduced. There can be difficulties related to the assertion of the religious convictions within the framework of a public utility supposed to remain neutral. But the principal problems relate to actually the organization of the service: the taking into account of claims related to religious regulations cannot go until affecting the missions of the public utility.
In the school enclosure, the problems arise with a real acuity. In a partially closed medium, the pupils, taken charges some over a long duration, must learn and live together, in a situation where they are still fragile, prone to the influences and the external pressures. operation of the school must enable them to acquire the intellectual tools intended to ensure their critical independence in the long term. To reserve a place with the expression of the spiritual and religious convictions thus does not go from oneself.
The existence of a denominational teaching under contract of association with the State allows as fully affirms religious freedom with the taking into account of the clean character of a religion. The freedom of teaching is considered, as a fundamental principle recognized by the laws of the Republic, like a principle with constitutional value. Within this framework, it is obvious that no legal provision is opposed to the creation of Moslem schools. The relationship between the State and the private establishments of teaching, from which the clean character is also protected, is fixed by the law Debré of December 31, 1959. N the other hand of financial assistances - wages of the teachers and operating expenses - the private establishments must adopt the programs of the state education and accomodate "all the children without distinction of origin, of opinions or belief" "in the total respect of the freedom of conscience". The catch in charge trickle of the buildings deprived by public funds is possible, within the limit of 10 % permitted by the law Falloux.
In the school enclosure, except for the private educational establishments, the conciliation between freedom of conscience and requirements of the neutrality of the public utility is delicate. The business of the veil, with its media dimension, in was the symbol. When the question makes surface for the first time in 1989, the political power, vis-a-vis with an outburst of passions, prefers to seize the Council of State. The government had only asked the Council of State to say the state of the right to a given time. Of more, the context was appreciably different from that which one knows today. The Community claims and fears of calling into question of the public utility remained limited. It is in this respect revealing noting that the sasine of the Council of State did not mention the question of discriminations between the men and the women. The evolution of the terms of the debate in fifteen years makes it possible to measure the rise to power of the problem.
The assembly general of the Council of State its opinion returned on November 27, 1989. It was necessary to articulate, on the one hand, the international and national rules protecting the freedom of conscience and, on the other hand, the constitutional principle of secularity of the State. In this unit in particular the law emerged from orientation on the education of July 10 1989 which devotes to its article 10 in a very broad way the freedom of expression of the pupils. The Council of State thus could only note the assertion of a right, recognized by the legislator, with the expression of the pupils in the publicly-owned establishment. The opinion state that the principle of secularity imposes that "teaching is exempted in the respect, on the one hand, of this neutrality by the programs and the teachers, on the other hand, of the freedom of conscience of the pupils". The Council of State recognizes on this base the principle of the freedom of the pupils of carrying religious signs in the school enclosure. But it nevertheless intended to frame this right legally recognized to the expression by the inherent requirements with operation of the public utility. It thus sought to preserve the service of very called into question by reconciling right to the expression recognized by the law and respect of the requirements of the public utility. The Council of State thus posed four blocks of obligations:
1) the acts of pressure, provocation, proselytism, or propaganda are prohibited;
2) the behaviors are rejected being able to attack dignity, to the pluralism or the freedom of the pupil or of any member of the educational community like those compromising their health and their safety;
3) are excluded any disturbance from the course of the activities of teaching, the educational of the teachers and very turbid role brought to the order in the establishment or the normal operation of the service;
4) the missions reserved for the public utility of education cannot be affected by the behaviors of the pupils and in particular the contents of the programs and the obligation of assiduity.
All in all, the religious signs in oneself are thus not prohibited but they can be it if they are of an ostentatious or claiming nature. The Council of State could thus invite only to one appreciation with individually under the control of the judge.
later jurisprudence is in the prolongation of the opinion. It was marked by the difficulty which had the administration of national Education to render comprehensible these legal provisions to the level of the vice-chancellorships. That resulted in many cancellations which badly reflected the requirements at the bottom of the judge. Thus the judge had to sanction many payments which prohibited a priori the port of any religious sign (see for example Council of State November 2, 1992 Kherouaa). These cancellations were all the more badly perceived that on the bottom the sanctions could have been justified by failures with the obligations of assiduity, continuity or law and order.
That being, these cancellations should not hide the severity of the judge in other occasions. Thus a failure with the rule of assiduity is not tolerated that if there remains compatible with the achievement of the inherent tasks being studied and with the respect of the law and order within the establishment (Council of State April 14, 1995 Koen and central Consistoire of the Jews of France). The refusal to attend certain courses, like the course of physical and sporting education, is not accepted (Council of State November 27, 1996 Atouff and with the same Wissaadane date). It is possible to ask a pupil to take off his veil during a course of sporting education, to ensure the good course of the course (Council of State March 10 1995 Aoukili husband). Finally any religious demonstration within an establishment is severely sanctioned and constitutes a serious disorder with the operation of the establishment (Islamic Council of State 27 novembre1 1996 Ligue North). This jurisprudence is thus far from being laxist, contrary to the image which some strongly mediatized stops could give cancelling rules of procedure or measurements of exclusion. Whatever the comments whose it was the object, it is necessary at least to admit in the opinion of the Council of State the merit to have made it possible to face during fifteen years with an explosive situation that the legislator had not wanted to treat.
This jurisprudence however encountered three difficulties. Initially, the adoption of a step to individually supposed the possibility for the chiefs of establishment of taking responsabilities; but they were often insulated in a harsh environment. In second place, the judge did not believe to be able to enter the interpretation of the direction of the religious signs; it is an inherent limit to the intervention of the judge; it seemed impossible to him to enter the interpretation given by a religion to such or such sign. Consequently, it could not apprehend discriminations between the contrary man and woman with a fundamental principle of the Republic which the port of the veil by certain girls could cover. Lastly, in third place, jurisprudence prohibited the ostentatious signs in oneself vectors of proselytism; but, in practice, the chiefs of establishment had no possibility to trace the border between the illicit ostentatious sign and the licit not-ostentatious sign.

2.3 a European tendency

Is secularity a hexagonal characteristic? France is the only European country to have explicitly devoted secularity in its Constitution. The same term appears incidentally in the German fundamental Law whose article 7 mentions the "laic" schools; but the text itself does not have laic bases. Indeed, it is proclaimed in reference to God: "German people (...) responsible in front of God and the men". Acting of the relations between the State and the Churches, three models can be distinguished among the European Convention countries.
The first, furthest away from the French approach, corresponds to the countries recognizing a religion of State. In England, the Queen, "Supreme Governor", appoint the Archbishop of the Church Anglican. Greece mentions in its Preamble the "Holy Trinity, consubstantielle and indivisible" and devotes the Greek-orthodoxe Church like religion of State. In Finland, Protestantism Lutheran and orthodoxe Eglise are auxiliaries of the registry office. With Denmark, the Protestant Church Lutheran receives public subsidies for its activities of registry office, health and teaching.
The second model combines the separation of the Church and the State with an official statute granted to certain religions. In Germany, the recognized religions have the right to exempt a religious teaching in the schools; they perceive a share of income tax, Kirchensteuer. The Austrian system follows the same inspiration. In Luxembourg, on the legal basis of the Legal settlement napoléonien, the four religions, catholic, Protestant woman, orthodoxe and Jewish are recognized.
The third models today dominating in the European Union corresponds to a mode of simple separation between the Churches and the State. Before France, the Netherlands, since 1795, put an end to the monopoly of the reformed Church. The mode of separation, instituted in 1798, was declined in the fields of education - with an equal financing for the state education and denominational - health and social affairs. It rests on four principles comparable with those of France: the State is not involved in the contents of the religious dogma; it is not occupied of the organization of the religions; it also treats humanistic religions and philosophies; there are neither established religions nor prohibited religions. Portugal modified in 1971 the Legal settlement of 1940, which remains applicable to the only catholic Church, and adopted in 2001 a law on the religious freedom which extends to all the confessions the advantages hitherto a41dernier c-b1,e,10 c-b26 ce c-b16 c-b43,bn,84 reserved for this one: tax exemptions, role of birth registration and marriages, chaplaincies... Spain knew a comparable evolution; the Constitution of 1978 initially, then the law on the religious freedom of 1980 regulate the separation of the political power and the Churches. In 2000, Sweden puts an end to the statute of Church of State from which the Church Lutheran profited.
A tendency to the bringing together of the European modes is outlined in the direction of a separation between the Churches and the State. On the other hand, the difference is accentuated between Europe marked by an increasing secularization - what does not mean necessarily decline of the religions - and the United States, where the religion impregnates the in-depth company.
Beyond the legal aspects, the European countries know actually the same types of changes related to the sedentarisation on their confessing ground of immigrant populations of the religions hitherto not represented. France, because of the importance and the seniority of the migratory currents, was confronted there the first. The United Kingdom and Germany followed. Italy, who supports the bilateral negotiations between the State and the Churches and runs up against the absence of interlocutor representative of Islam, follows with interest the creation of the French Council of the Moslem worship.
Each State approaches this new challenge with the tradition which is his. religious claims are varied according to the cultures of each immigrant population. The majority of the European countries had chosen a Community logic. But, vis-a-vis with the rise of the tensions, the tendency is reversed today and returned towards a more voluntarist policy of integration.
In Germany, where the wars of religion were force, religious freedom - Glaubensfreiheit - is central and any excluded influence of the political power. These questions fall within the competence of Länder and not of the federal capacity. For the ten last years, the difficulties have multiplied, in particular at the school. In Bavaria, since a judgment of 1995 handed down by the constitutional court, Bundesverfassungsgericht, the crucifixes can be withdrawn from the classrooms at the request of a pupil. More recently, of the teachers asserted the right to teach while wearing the veil. The Ludin stop returned on September 24, 2003 by Bundesverfassungsgericht implicitly recognized the possibility of prohibiting, by the law, the port by teachers of religious signs. Länder of Bavaria and Bade-Wurtemberg are on the point of adopting a law in this direction prohibiting only the port of the Islamic veil by the teaching ones. Lastly, of the representatives of the Moslem community claimed the possibility of exempting, like the other confessions, of the courses of religion at the school. The movement of Milli Görüs has ensured of the lesson of this type for several years in spite of the opposition of the official organization of the Turkish Islam represented by the DITIB. This evolution runs up against two obstacles: training of the Masters and the absence of interlocutor representative of Islam.
Gradually the debate moves today towards the world of work. Recent stops of Bundesarbeitsgericht carried on the right of a road driver sikh to be capped during its working hours of a turban or on the dismissal of a wage-earner, working in the ray perfumery of a department store, which refused to take off the veil. The solutions went in the direction of a conciliation between protection of the expression of the religious convictions and respect of the contract of employment. In the public services, Community claims are expressed like the installation of nonmixed crenels for the access to the swimming pools.
The displacement of the commission in Berlin made it possible to measure that Germany was confronted with the difficulty in reconciling two requirements: the wish to grant the same rights to Islam as to the other religions and fear to open spaces of influence to a militant wing which does not conceive only Islam like a religion but like a total political project.
The Netherlands, in particular as from the years 1960, went very far on the way of the communautarism. All the social organization Dutchwoman is structured around "pillars", to which the individuals are attached, in particular according to their religious or spiritual membership. With each one of these pillars corresponds a clean organization with its hospitals, schools, clubs sporting, newspapers, trade unions... The immigrant populations were run in this mould by encouraging the Community organizations. Today, the situation of integration in the Netherlands is considered to be alarming by the government itself at the end of several evaluation reports. Certain researchers, like Herman Philipse, spoke about a tribalisation of the Netherlands - tribalisering van Nederland. The populations gather by Community districts. The pupils originating in immigration find themselves in the same qualified establishments of "black schools". This communautarization of town planning worries in a country where the concentration of the population makes control of space an essential political stake. The language Dutchwoman is not controlled. Mixing between communities is very limited, which reveals the extremely high percentage of marriages endogames. This situation nourishes tensions racial, denominational, a renewal of anti-semitism and an exacerbation of temptations extremists revealed by the phenomenon Pim Fortuyn.
At the time of displacement in the Netherlands, the commission heard members of the government who underlined their will to give up the policy followed until there. They were anxious by noting that the second even third generations are tried by Islamism, contrary with their parents. Breaking with the multiculturalism, the Dutch government wishes from now on to follow a voluntary policy of integration - Integratiesbeleid - said "shared citizenship", stipulating that the new immigrants adhere to the "values fondatrices of the company Dutchwoman".
France is not alone to know this difficult conjunction between two simultaneous phenomena: the breakdown of social integration and the change of the religious or spiritual landscape. Beyond the word secularity, the problem is common to the whole of Europe: to make their place with new religions, to manage a various company, to fight against discriminations, to promote integration and to fight the tendencies politico-chocolate éclairs extremists carrying communautarists projects. In France, similar challenges are with the measurement of an immigrant population old, important and constitutive since decades of the richness of our company. Our country is not stripped of assets: it was not committed to a communautarism pushed to the extreme; the people resulting from immigration generally have a command of the French language; finally the force of our French cultural identity can support the crucible of integration.

Secularity is the product of an alchemy between a history, a political philosophy and a personal ethics. It rests on a balance of rights and requirements. The laic principle is conceived like the guarantee of autonomy and the freedom of each one to choose to be itself. It supposes a dynamic intellectual attitude contrary to the lazy posture of the simple neutrality. It is a problem which beyond the spiritual and religious question will relate to the company in all its components. Secularity touches thus with the national identity, the cohesion of the social body, the equality between the man and the woman, with education, etc. After one century of practices and transformations of the company, the laic principle is far from to have become obsolete but it has enlightened need and to be vivified in a radically different context.
In 1905, the law of separation was conceived primarily compared to the catholic Church. The time of the secularity of combat is exceeded, leaving the place with an alleviated, admitting the importance of the religious and spiritual options, attentive secularity also to delimit shared public space. In one century, under the effect of immigration, the French company became varied, in particular in the spiritual or religious field. It is necessary to spare a place with new religions while making a success of integration. challenges changed nature and the stakes undoubtedly became at the same time more difficult to raise: how to reconcile a unit and the respect of diversity? This stake is that of a company marked by the will to see recognizing the individual options. The secularity, which is also a way of structuring the food-together, takes a new topicality. For to answer these challenges, secularity should not be on the defensive; it cannot be declined on the mode of the besieged fortress. To affirm in this context the existence of common values, one needs a secularity open and dynamic, able to constitute a gravitational and federator model. It must allow harmoniously to draw the place of the citizen and a shared public space. Secularity is not that a rule of the institutional game, it is a value founder of the republican pact, the possibility of reconciling a food together and pluralism, diversity.

Third part
The challenge of secularity
Between July and December 2003, the commission led ' a hundred public auditions and forty hearings in camera. It made the choice as well hear political leaders, religious, trade-union, administrative, associative that local councillors, heads of undertaking, chiefs of establishments, professors, directors of hospital or prison, nurses. A public discussion was organized with 220 pupils of colleges franciliens and French abroad which had worked beforehand on secularity. The commission also moved in several European countries to confront the French experiment with that of our partners. It, finally, received several hundreds of written contributions. With through its six months of existence, it had the concern of hearing the broadest range of the opinions which were expressed in this debate.
The diagnosis which follows is the fruit of this research undertaken jointly by the twenty Members of the Commission, themselves representatives of sensitivities and broadest fields of the expertises. It testifies to the challenge with which secularity is confronted today.
Vis-a-vis to a news gives social and spiritual, this one knew to answer by the assertion of the principle of equality on which it is founded. But of many unsolved questions endanger it today, like other values fondatrices of the social pact.
3.1 Of the legal equality towards the practical equality: some progress

Vis-a-vis with the new spiritual and religious diversity, the practice of secularity started to adapt. The top priority of equality between all the options represents a process of long duration, still unfinished.
3.1.1 to better take into account all the spiritual or religious convictions
Secularity is an alive practice. The authorities knew to take into account, in certain fields, the concerns and the needs lately expressed out of spiritual or religious matter. Fifteen years ago, the main part of the claims related to the creation of new places of worship, mosques, synagogues or pagodas. Today, they extend to other fields: installation of the menus of the collective restoration, respect of the requirements related to the principal religious festivals, or teaching of the religious fact. Answers were brought there while applying the law of December 9, 1905 or, when it is not concerned, while seeking "reasonable compromises".
municipalities put thus less obstacles than formerly at the construction of new places of worship. The authorizations of town planning are more easily granted. Local authorities encouraged the construction of buildings cultuels while placing at the disposal of the communal grounds within the framework of long beams or by granting guarantees of loan. practical do not converge however in this field. It is in any case clear that article 2 of the law of December 9, 1905, if it prohibits the public financing of the buildings of worship, implies by no means that their creation is blocked.
In the same way, the authorities take care to take into account the requirements related to the organization of the great religious festivals. Communal buildings are placed at the disposal of Community organizations at the time of these celebrations, like those of Aïd-el-Kebir or Kippour, to mitigate the insufficient capacity of reception of the existing places of worship. The calendar of all the religious festivals is diffused each year with the whole of the administrations and of the authorizations of absence can be granted to this occasion. Lastly, the ritual slaughter starts to be better assured.
administrations take into account, more than in the past, the food interdicts related to the religious convictions. The persons in charge for the canteens in the schools, the hospitals and the prisons take care to propose, as far as possible, of the diversified menus.
Lastly, the teaching of the religious fact, as of the whole of humanities, does not miss school apprenticeships according to new orientations' of the programs of French and history, for the classes of 6th, 5th, 2nde and 1st. It should in addition be recalled that, since IIIème République, the great questions relating to the ancient, medieval and modern religions always appeared in the programs.
3.1.2 To continue the improvements
The implementation of the principle of secularity did not make it possible yet to make up deficits of equality between believing or those and the atheists.
3.1.2.1 In the expression of the thoughts
Some parents are constrained to register their children in denominational schools, taking into account the absence of public school in their commune. Compared with the Churches, the currents being attached to the free-thought and rationalist philosophy do not have an equal access to the emissions of television of the public utility, contrary to what is done in other European countries.
3.1.2.2 In the exercise of the personal convictions
Even when the absence is compatible with the normal operation of the service, it is sometimes difficult to take one day off for Kippour, Aïd-el-Kebir or at the time of other religious festivals. In the same way, it happens that controls still are organized at the school the days of great religious festivals, depriving those which were authorized to go away from the possibility of taking part in it.
There are sufficient Moslem chaplains neither in the prisons, nor in the hospitals; there is neither in the army, nor in the school establishments. It is true that in the absence of structures of representation of Islam the administration did not have an interlocutor to propose Moslem chaplains to him.
3.1.2.3 In the respect of the funeral rites
The funerary toilet of deaths, for example in the hospitals, cannot be always ensured in the compliance with the religious rules, even when those are compatible with the needs for the law and order and the constraints of service. Lastly, it is sometimes impossible to bury deaths in accordance with the various religious traditions and in the respect of the laws of the Republic.
3.2 Public services and world of work: alarming attacks

New and increasingly many difficulties emerged. They testify that the laic requirement, in the public services, in particular at the school, and in the world of work, is weakened by claims tending to make prevail Community convictions on the general rules. The principle of secularity is put today at evil in sectors more than it not to appear. The commission is conscious that the encountered difficulties are still minority today. But they are real, strong and heralding dysfunctions, more especially as the recent and fast diffusion of these phenomena is alarming. These difficulties affect initially the public services, where they leave the disabled agents. They do not save any more the world of work.
3.2.1 Of the public services denied in their principle and blocked in their operation
Public services are, in the name of the religious convictions of some their users, sometimes of their agents, denied in their principle and blocked in their operation. Indeed, the claims to which they must face blame the equality and the continuity which melt them. If the Republic is not capable to restore their normal operation, it is thus the future even of these public services which is concerned.
Few sectors of the public action are saved by this evolution. The dysfunctions, far from limiting itself to the school, touch also hospital, prisons, law courts, equipment public or administrative services.
3.2.1.1 A the school
At the school, the port of an open religious sign - large cross, kippa or veil are already enough to disturb the quietude of the school life. But the encountered difficulties go beyond this excessively mediatized question.
Indeed, the normal course of the schooling is also deteriorated by systematic requests for absences one day of the week, or for interruption of course and examinations for a reason of prayer or fast. Behaviors disputing the teaching of whole sides of the program of history or sciences and life of the ground disorganize the training of these disciplines. Some girls resort to medical certificates unjustified to be exempted courses of physical and sporting education. Tests of examination are disturbed by the refusal of pupils of female sex to subject to the identity checks or to be heard by a male inspector. teachers or of the chiefs of establishment, with the only reason that they are women, see their authority disputed by pupils or their parents.
The access of all to the school is weakened by cases of descolarisation for religious reasons. Recourse to the postal tuition were announced. Moreover, certain schools deprived under contract accomodate only the pupils who can justify of their membership of the religion suitable for the establishment; they do not teach, in addition, the parts of the program which do not appear in conformity to them with certain aspects of their vision of the world.
All these attitudes are illegal. Even if they are not the fact that of one minority activist, they carry seriously reached to the principles which govern the public utility. This one is put at evil in its base even. These behaviors can cause reactions in return. It was thus brought back to the commission that teachers protested against the presence, in the school or the framing of a "school exit", mothers of pupils to the only reason which they carried a veil.
3.2.1.2 A the hospital
The hospital is not saved any more by this type of questionings. It had been confronted already with certain religious interdicts, such as the opposition to transfusions by witnesses of Jéhovah. More recently multiplied the refusal, by husbands or fathers, for religious reasons, to see their wives or their daughters neat or been confined by doctors of male sex. Women were thus private of péridurale. Looking after were challenged with the pretext of their supposed confession. More generally, certain religious concerns of the patients can disturb the operation of the hospital: corridors are transformed into privative places of prayer; canteens parallel with the hospital canteens are organized to serve a traditional food, with the contempt of the medical rules.
There still, the bases of the public utility are directly affected: principles of equality, continuity, respect of the medical payments and the requirements for health.
3.2.1.3 In the sector of justice
In the prisons, a great number of difficulties appeared. The law of December 9, 1905 and codes it penal procedure frame, according to the clean requirements of the penal establishments, the expression of the spiritual life and chocolate éclair of the prisoners. But in a medium where the collective pressure is very strong, of the influences are exerted on prisoners so that they are subjected to certain religious regulations. At the time of their visits, the families and friends of prisoners "are highly incited" to adopt a behaviour "religieusement correct". In this context of tension, the prison authorities can be tried, in order to maintain the order within the prison, to carry out Community regroupings. Such a solution is likely to engage a vicious circle, by reinforcing the influence of the group on the imprisoned individuals weakest.
Justice was not saved. A request for challenge of a magistrate was formed because of its supposed confession. After to be indicated, sworn bases wished to sit by posting ostentatious religious signs. , the Minister Minister of Justice for justice, was opposed so that a lawyer lends oath covered with a veil.
3.2.1.4 Behaviors which multiply
At the time of days of call for defense, of the difficulties were noted. Some girls did not want to take part in mixed