PARIS, Jan 17: Thousands of Muslim women, flanked by their menfolk, demonstrated in France, Britain and the Middle East on Saturday against a looming ban on headscarves in French state schools.

Chanting "the veil is my choice", up to 5,000 marched in Paris amid French and Islamic flags and banners denouncing the veil ban that French politicians hope will stem rising militancy among some of the country's five million Muslims.

Large demonstrations of several thousand each were held in Beirut and the Gaza Strip while smaller groups protested in London, Brussels, Bahrain, Bethlehem and occupied Kashmir against the ban President Jacques Chirac and most French politicians favour.

"You're playing with fire, Mr President," shouted Paris protest leader Mohamed Latreche amid rousing choruses of Allah-o-Akbar. "We will never accept a law that violates our dignity and liberty."

France, which sees the ban on veils, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses as a way to defend its strict separation of church and state, plans to debate the law in parliament in the coming weeks and impose it from September.

The small number of schoolgirls who refuse to abandon their veils face expulsion from state schools once the law is passed.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith umbrella group urged Muslims not to march in Latreche's protest. There was confusion about the turnout, with march organizers saying only 5,000 and the police - who had predicted up to 20,000 - saying 10,000.

In an impassioned speech to the crowd, Mr Latreche - head of the small Party of French Muslims in Strasbourg - showed why many groups shun him by launching into a denunciation of Zionism as "an ideology of hate, racial discrimination and apartheid".

"Our religion demands this, God says we should wear it," Nafouanta, a Paris lycee pupil, said of her veil. Like most other protesters, she declined to give her family name. Several women behind her marched wrapped in the French tricolour flag.

"I am free to wear the veil or not," said Ilham, a bareheaded Muslim woman who came from Brussels for the march. "It's between me and God, but this is a personal liberty."

Elsewhere in France, 3,500 marched in Lille, 1,800 in Marseille, 1,500 in Mulhouse and hundreds in other cities, police and organizers said.

Lille university student Yamina Bouasla said: "This law aims to solve a problem that doesn't exist and will create insurmountable problems next September. It's stupid."

In London, thousands of British Muslims took to the streets to denounce the French plans.

Two demonstrations - one of some 2,000 supporters of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir and another of around 700 people - came from all over Britain to picket the French embassy and declare their anger.-Reuters