Fabric of Society; Banning Headscarves Is Right. but It's Only a Start in Bringing France's Muslims into the Social Mainstream

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Byline: Gilles Kepel, Kepel is chair of Middle East Studies at Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris and author of "Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam."

Good news. Islamist radicals and U.S. neocons have joined ranks--finally--and buried the hatchet to launch a joint jihad cum crusade aimed at... the French. What could possibly forge such a bizarre and unholy coalition of the willing? The higab --the female veil, or head-scarf--worn by some Muslim pupils in French schools.

Ever since President Jacques Chirac announced his intention to ban the wearing of "all ostensible religious signs" in state schools, firebrand Muslim clerics have taken to Al Jazeera, lambasting the archenemy of Islam, France and its impious laicite, or secularism. At the other end of the political spectrum, libertarians and civil-society advocates at home and abroad have mounted a rear-guard offensive (in the guise of a moral crusade) against the …