ABSTRACT
When in March 2004 the French parliament adopted a law banning the veil, or any obvious religious signs, from public schools, one could see in this national legislation a specific domestic answer to the so-called ‘veil affairs’ which started in France as early as 1989. For almost fifteen years, teenage Muslim girls were constructed as a threat to the unity and stability of the French Republic because their (assumed) attachments, loyalties, and goals were seen as incompatible with the values, principles, and common project expressed by a Republican ideal.
