PARIS, Oct 12: The Jewish father of two Muslim girls expelled from their school in the northern Paris suburbs for wearing Islamic headscarves described the decision on Sunday as “scholastic apartheid” and promised to launch an appeal.

Lila and Alma Levy, aged 18 and 16, were suspended two weeks ago from the Henri-Wallon lycee in Aubervilliers after refusing to loosen their scarves so as to reveal “ears, neck and roots of hair.” After a disciplinary board meeting on Saturday they were told that they have been definitively expelled.

“The upholders of radical intolerance can be very satisfied. They have chosen scholastic apartheid. My daughters only want to study and they have been stopped,” said Laurent Levy, a human rights lawyer who describes himself as an atheist Jew.

Lila and Alma — whose mother is a non-practising Muslim of Algerian origin — have become the latest focus in the bitter debate over whether Islamic headscarves in schools are a breach of France’s century-old separation of religion and state.

The row has caused a deep split in left-wing political circles, with traditional secularists opposed by a powerful lobby who believe that excluding the girls is an act of anti-Islamic discrimination.

“This expulsion is a crushing victory for intolerance. We are not in favour of wearing the headscarf in school, but Lila and Alma are in absolutely no danger of being fundamentalists,” said Mouloud Aounit, head of the Movement Against Racism (MRAP).

“It is a sign of the Islamophobia that reigns across France,” he told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

But Remi Duloquin, educational councillor at the lycee, described the girls as “militants. It is a great pity because their place is in the school. But our role in this kind of lycee is to maintain a balance which their extremism puts in danger.”

The student body at the lycee is made up largely of Muslim immigrants.

After a secular upbringing, Lila and Alma began to become interested in Islam two years ago and they insist they have not been influenced by radical preachers. They say that to adapt their headgear to comply with the authorities’ demand would be an infringement of religious rules.

Writing in Le Monde newspaper last week, the girls’ maternal grandmother suggested their Jewish blood may have been a factor in their religious conversion, as they had been teased at school by other Muslims.

The girls were to continue their studies at home. Lila hopes to qualify for university where the ban on headscarves does not apply.

France’s centre-right government is considering whether to pass a law explicitly banning headscarves from schools, and a committee of enquiry into the issue is currently hearing evidence.—AFP