The outrage over Maryam Boujettou’s hijab reveals the fragility of France’s commitment to equality, challenging a state that champions freedom of expression yet struggles with the freedom of a woman to dress according to her beliefs
By Prof Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi
In recent weeks, a 19-year-old French Muslim student has unexpectedly altered the national conversation on secularism, identity, and citizenship in France. Maryam Boujettou, the newly elected president of the National Union of Students of France (UNEF) at the Sorbonne, appeared briefly on the television channel M6. Her few minutes on screen were enough to provoke a storm of political commentary and media outrage, not for anything she said, but for the simple fact that she wore a hijab. In a country where secularism is often interpreted as the absence of religion from public life, her presence in a position of student leadership challenged the unspoken boundaries of French political culture and exposed the fragility of its proclaimed commitment to liberty and equality.
The response to Boujettou’s appearance was immediate and intense. The French Minister of the Interior publicly said he was “shocked” to see a veiled student leader representing a national student union. His reaction was paradoxical, considering that wearing a hijab is entirely legal in French universities and that French law, at least in its formal text, guarantees freedom of religion. Yet the minister’s comments revealed something deeper: a political reflex that views visible Muslim identity with suspicion, unease, and at times open hostility. Boujettou, by merely being herself—a French citizen, a student leader, and a Muslim woman—unwittingly exposed this contradiction.
The Minister for Gender Equality soon followed with her own criticism, arguing that the hijab represented “a form of political Islam,” an assertion that rests on the assumption that a Muslim woman’s choice to cover her hair carries ideological motives. This argument has long been central to French debates about veiling, where the personal motivations of Muslim women are often ignored or replaced by state-imposed interpretations. In the case of Boujettou, the accusation served to delegitimise her leadership by implying that her faith was incompatible with republican values. It was a message heard many times before, but its impact was amplified by Boujettou’s age and position: a young woman, democratically elected by her peers, running France’s most prominent student union.
If the criticism from government officials was expected, the reaction from parts of the French media was even more revealing. Charlie Hebdo, known globally for its provocative satire and controversial caricatures, depicted Boujettou in a cartoon comparing her to a monkey. While the magazine claims to defend freedom of expression, critics have long argued that it often employs racialised and Islamophobic imagery under the guise of satire. For Muslim communities in France, this latest caricature confirmed a long-standing grievance: that they are convenient targets in a media landscape where their identities are commodified and caricatured with little consequence.
This incident is not occurring in isolation. It is the latest episode in a decades-long struggle over the visibility of Islam in France. Since the 2004 ban on “conspicuous religious symbols” in public schools—legislation widely seen as targeting the hijab—France has enacted a series of laws and policies that restrict certain forms of religious expression. The 2010 ban on full-face veils in public spaces further entrenched the idea that the state has the authority to police Muslim women’s clothing. More recently, debates around the “burkini” have sparked tensions on beaches and in courts, with several municipalities attempting to prohibit modest swimwear despite the absence of any legal basis. Each controversy has reinforced the perception that Muslim identity, especially when expressed visibly, lies at the centre of a cultural battle over the meaning of French secularism.
Yet the case of Boujettou is particularly emblematic because it coincides with broader demographic and generational shifts. France is now home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, and its young Muslim citizens increasingly view themselves as fully French—culturally, civically, and politically. Many grew up after the major legislative battles over the hijab and have developed a stronger sense of agency and confidence in asserting their identity. Their presence in universities, media, and public institutions challenges a model of secularism that was originally designed for a society far more homogenous than the one that exists today.
The idea of laïcité, often translated as “secularism,” is central to French political identity. But its contemporary interpretation is increasingly contested. To many within the French political mainstream, secularism requires the complete privatisation of religion, particularly Islam. To others—legal scholars, sociologists, and many minority communities—this interpretation distorts the original intent of the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, which aimed to protect individual freedoms and prevent state interference in religious life. The tension between these two visions of secularism is now at the heart of France’s cultural politics.
Boujettou’s situation also underscores the selective nature of Western discourses on personal freedom. Feminist groups that champion bodily autonomy and women’s right to choose often remain silent when the choice in question is the hijab. Politicians who defend freedom of expression in the context of satirical cartoons appear far less willing to defend the freedom of a Muslim woman to dress according to her beliefs. In this double standard, Muslim women find themselves uniquely positioned: they are celebrated when they conform to Western norms and criticised when they do not.
The symbolism of a veiled 19-year-old student leading the UNEF chapter at the Sorbonne—one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe—is powerful. For some observers, it represents a successful integration story and a testament to the pluralism of modern French society. For others, it challenges entrenched assumptions about who has the right to represent French institutions. The Sorbonne, historically a centre of intellectual debate on culture, religion, and identity, has long been associated with scholars who shaped Western understandings of the Islamic world. The idea that its student body could be represented by a veiled French Muslim woman represents, for critics, a symbolic inversion of that tradition.
But Boujettou’s rise is perhaps most significant for what it reveals about young French Muslims. She is part of a generation that refuses to be divided between their religious beliefs and their national identity. They are fluent in France’s civic ideals, comfortable in academic and professional settings, and unwilling to remain silent in the face of discrimination. This emerging confidence poses a challenge to traditional political narratives that portray Muslim citizens as inherently foreign or incompatible with republican values.
The controversy surrounding Maryam Boujettou may fade from the news cycle, but the questions it raises will not disappear. Can France reconcile its strict interpretation of secularism with the lived realities of a diverse population? Can it uphold equality while selectively policing religious expression? And can its political institutions accept that the face of the Republic—whether in universities, media, or government—may increasingly be veiled?
For now, Boujettou has chosen to remain focused on student issues, declining to respond to the insults and political attacks. Her silence, deliberate or not, carries its own message. Sometimes the most powerful challenge to prejudice is simply to continue existing, succeeding, and leading—on one’s own terms. In that sense, the young student who unintentionally unsettled an entire political establishment may have already left a mark on France’s ongoing conversation about identity and belonging.
—Dr Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi (also known as Dr Hamidullah Marazi) is a distinguished contemporary Islamic scholar whose work significantly contributes to the dialogue between Islamic philosophy and modern Western thought. He is the author of several books. Through a rigorous comparative methodology and an emphasis on epistemological integrity grounded in Tawhid (the oneness of God), Marazi critiques secular paradigms and advocates for an integrative intellectual tradition. His scholarship not only critiques Western thought but also calls for mutual enrichment between traditions, emphasising Islamic metaphysics, ethics, and educational reform as central to contemporary challenges.
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