Hawzah News Agency - This is one of the first suggested search terms that appear on a Google search when putting France and religion in the same sentence. It serves as a good introduction to the confusing and often contradictory realm of French social politics and religion's place in the country.

The latest in a string of bans targeting, very specifically, Muslim women, the French senate voted to forbid veiled mothers from accompanying public school trips - a central pillar of the public school system (trips happen monthly).

Many French citizens I spoke with found the ban particularly absurd, and some recalled fond memories of Muslim mothers regularly participating in their own or their children’s lives. A former school teacher from a village near Toulouse said that in many cases, Muslim mothers seemed more engaged with school activities and their children’s education and progression.

This whole uproar started during an incident involving a National Rally politician and a veiled mother, named only as Fatima E, who accompanied her son and other children on a school trip to a regional political meeting.

During the meeting, Julien Odul leader of the political party in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region of France demanded she removes her “Islamic veil” in the name of the nation’s secularist principles.

Reports and the video show that “the woman was attending the meeting with a group of local school children – including her son who, in response to Odoul’s words, started to cry.”

She said, “They have destroyed all the work I was doing indirectly with this class, where children of immigrant roots often had an attitude of thinking France was against them.”

While some in the room came to her defence, others began to chant “secularism.” 

Two weeks after this event, the nation’s senate passed a bill banning veiled mothers from attending school trips. This will be moved to the national assembly and needs to be approved before being implemented.