Facially neutral French law banned hijabs in public schools without naming Islam

Evidence

On March 15, 2004, the French parliament enacted law number 2004-228, which restricted the wearing of “ostentatious” religious symbols in public schools. While the law’s language was facially neutral, meaning it did not explicitly name Islam or the hijab itself, it sought to ban the wearing of headscarves, or hijabs, by Muslim girls and women. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 701

Categorization

• SEED: The facially-neutral-but-targeted law strategy is a reusable pattern for an essay on how states encode discrimination in neutral language.
• XREF: Connects to Iftikhar’s global-synthesis view on state Islamophobia via legal language.