Islamists around the world are gathering petitions against the new law in France which prohibits religious signs in public schools. Here is why their assessment is flawed:

First of all those little girls in schools are being forced to wear hijab by their parents and there has never been a choice involved.
There is no difference between forcing a 10 years old girl to marry a 40 years old man and forcing her to wear hijab. They both represent repression, although at different levels. Majority of the girls, once they experience they are the same without headscarf as with it, and provided there is no pressure from the family, they would choose to drop it. However, if they be forced to wear it for a long time they get so used to it that later on, when they grow up, it feels strange to stop wearing it. They will feel like they are not wearing clothes at all.

Second of all, as for the assessment, according to petitioners, that most of the families will, in reacting to this law, send their kids to private schools, experience shows that this only applies to a small fanatic minority. The majority would simply accept the facts and move on with their lives, although a portion might whine for a while. Not all Muslim families still practicing hijab are religious zealots to deprive their kids from education entirely or isolate them in private sectarian schools, as suggested in the petition. I come from an Islam-hit country myself, and this is my so-called hands-on experience with Muslims in these countries where the great majority are Moslums just by virtue of having been born in "Moslum" families. Let us bear in mind that other preventative measures that we take for granted today, like not allowing "Muslim" girls in the West to be forced into marriage at the age of 9, would be subjected to the same resistance if the Islamic codes in that respect had been allowed in the first place. Someday in the near future today’s ban in public schools which is, quite rightly, to prevent families from repressing and alienating their young girls using the tool of religion, will be viewed as a given; as so many other such things in history before.

I hope Canada too will put civil rights and freedoms ahead of all religious doctrines, and prevent parents from forcing their non-adult children to adopt something that is right in their view. Such matters must be strictly kept out of children's lives until they are able to decide upon them independantly as adults.