Known yet unacknowledged: France’s laïcité and Muslim citizens

France’s laïcité increasingly governs visibility rather than freedom, a shift widely seen yet seldom faced, with Muslim citizens living the unacknowledged effects.

This guest article was written by Dr. Muhammad Faisal Khalil, Research Fellow at Pembroke College and Associate Faculty Member in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.

Twenty years after its debut, Michael Haneke’s Caché returned to select cinemas, offering an unexpected lens for examining France’s contemporary secular policies. In the film, Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) receives anonymous videotapes forcing him to confront his childhood betrayal of Majid (Maurice Bénichou), an Algerian boy whose parents died in the 1961 Seine massacre¹. When he and Anne (Juliette Binoche) discuss their son’s absence, news from Palestine and Iraq plays unnoticed in the background, contemporary violence reduced to ambient noise in their comfortable home². The tapes’ message is not that Georges is being watched but that someone sees what his childhood lie did to Majid. Pushed to the edge of remembrance, the 1961 Seine massacre is now acknowledged yet remains unreckoned with. The memory is still refused. 

Caché, Haneke’s most striking chamber piece, provides the key to understanding France’s laïcité today. Like Georges caught in those close-quarters revelations, the nation lives with consequences it refuses to trace back through history. Secular laws that happen to exclude Muslim citizens continue unchanged. International reports, like mysterious videotapes, accumulate without explanation or resolution. France’s laïcité response mirrors Georges’ behaviour. Just as Georges cannot account for the past that shapes the present, France refuses to examine how its policies harm Muslims while maintaining they protect secularism. As Haneke observed, those who focus on identifying the tape-sender miss the real question: how do we live with what we have done?³ France, like Georges, cannot answer, because it refuses to acknowledge that the question exists.

How secularism became control

France’s laïcité has transformed from protecting religious freedom into monitoring religious visibility. Education Minister Gabriel Attal’s August 2023 abaya ban declared that “when you enter a classroom, you should not be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them.”⁴ This reveals the shift: secularism no longer means state neutrality but enforced invisibility. On the first day, 298 Muslim girls were stopped at school gates; 67 were sent home rather than remove their abayas.⁵

The 2024 Paris Olympics exposed this discrimination globally. While international athletes competed freely wearing hijabs, French sprinter Sounkamba Sylla initially faced exclusion from the opening ceremony.⁶ She could only participate after agreeing to wear a cap instead of her hijab⁷, highlighting the arbitrary nature of these restrictions.

These visible controversies rest on systematic monitoring. The 2021 US State Department report documented 672 Muslim establishments closed from February 2018 through October 2021⁸. By January 2022, French government data showed 24,887 investigations and 718 closures of Muslim organisations⁹. The state investigated 99 mosques and shuttered 24¹⁰. This surveillance apparatus functions like Haneke’s camera, constantly recording Muslim life while the state pretends not to see what its own monitoring reveals.

The trajectory reaches its logical conclusion with Gabriel Attal’s May 2025 proposal to ban hijabs for all girls under 15 in public spaces, with criminal penalties for their parents. The proposal states that the hijab “seriously undermines gender equality and the protection of children”.¹¹ Legal scholar Rim-Sarah Alouane calls this the logical endpoint of “weaponized laïcité”.¹²

The moral videotapes: witnesses to discrimination

Just as anonymous videotapes force Georges to confront his actions, diverse voices document France’s discrimination. These witnesses function as Haneke’s camera, recording what France pretends not to see. Each critique appears like another videotape at Georges’ door: Forcing France to confront both its colonial past and discriminatory present, only to vanish as policies continue unchanged.

Religious leaders across denominations have spoken out against France’s secular policies targeting religious minorities. Protestant theologian Olivier Abel argues that democracy requires allowing different worldviews to coexist^{13 14}. Lutheran historian Valentine Zuber’s archival research shows the 1905 law’s authors explicitly rejected clothing restrictions¹⁵ . Jean Baubérot, former chair at École Pratique des Hautes Études, coined “laïcité falsifiée” in 2012 to describe how state monitoring has replaced liberty as French secularism’s core principle¹⁶. Catholic Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort demonstrated interfaith solidarity by inaugurating Reims’ Grand Mosque on March 14, 2019¹⁷. Their unified rejection reveals how France’s policies violate not just Islamic principles, but the very foundations of religious freedom across faith traditions.

Secular scholars identify deeper patterns rooted in colonial trauma. Political scientist François Burgat’s four decades of research describe France’s need to control Islam as stemming from unhealed colonial wounds¹⁸. Historian Joan Wallach Scott reveals how France uses “republican universalism” to mask anxieties about Muslim women’s autonomy¹⁹. Legal scholar Rim-Sarah Alouane documents how laïcité has been “weaponized” against religious minorities²⁰. After Charlie Hebdo, sociologist Nilüfer Göle warned: “The response should not be a ‘clash of civilisations’ but creating a new European society where Muslims should play a great role in building it”²¹. Anthropologist John Bowen’s Lyon fieldwork shows how Muslims develop “pragmatic” approaches to maintain faith while navigating restrictions²².

The collapse of accountability

France monitors Muslim citizens while international bodies observe France, creating layers of surveillance without accountability. International bodies have repeatedly criticised French policies for their impact on Muslim women and girls. Amnesty International called the abaya ban a “discriminatory violation” that “violates fundamental freedoms”²³. These reports arrive like videotapes: momentary disruptions that appear, demand attention, then vanish, with both France and the international community allowing the issues to dissipate without meaningful consequences.

Each international condemnation briefly forces France to face its discrimination before returning to business as usual. Like Georges receiving tape after tape yet continuing his routine, France receives report after report yet continues legislating exclusion. The post-WWII accountability system has crumbled. Without enforcement mechanisms, moral witnessing cannot produce justice. Georges watches Palestine burn on television while continuing his comfortable life; France reads international condemnations while proposing new hijab bans.

Living with what cannot be acknowledged

This returns us to Caché’s central question: how do we live with our actions? Georges knows he destroyed Majid’s life, but continues his routine. France knows its secular laws harm Muslim citizens but continues legislating. Documentation accumulates – UN reports, scholarly studies, court challenges – like videotapes piling up at Georges’ door, yet nothing changes because no mechanism exists to transform recognition into accountability.

Haneke told viewers that those seeking the tape-sender “didn’t understand the film.”²⁴ The point is not who watches but who sees, and how we live with being seen. In Caché’s final shot, Georges’ son meets Majid’s son, a moment so subtle that half the audience misses it. Nothing resolves. The past remains with us, impossible to trace back through history. Georges returns to his television program; France continues invoking laïcité. Reports surface about the 1961 massacre, about colonial wounds, about how secular laws systematically exclude Muslims, all reduced to background noise. International bodies document how laïcité has transformed from protecting freedom to enforcing invisibility. These accumulate like videotapes: seen but not acknowledged. The state, like Georges, has reconciled itself to living ‘around’ what it does. The question is not whether evidence can enforce change, but how long societies endure while refusing to acknowledge what their principles have become.

By Dr. Muhammad Faisal Khalil

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