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Is the naqib inconsistent with French values? Of course it is, and so much the worse for French values.
I much prefer American values when it comes to freedom of religion. In the US it's assumed that a person has a right to wear what she chooses, and even the question whether she's chosen freely is regarded as a private matter. In the US so far the state hasn't taken on the psychological analysis of husband-wife relations.
In France freedom of religion means an attempt by the state to restrict religious garb and religious expression across the board, and the state has done its job when it places its boot equally upon the adherents of all religions. The practice originated in the French Revolution, when the Catholic Church's political power was seen as a threat to liberty, equality, freedom.
In practice, the restrictions are hardly equal, as several respondents mention. The rabbi or Buddhist monk won't find his garb a barrier to citizenship. The wife forced to assume domestic tasks by her wealthy white secular husband will be welcomed as a citizen. So will the daughter whose parents keep her from wearing makeup and going to movies. So will the son whose parents forbid a religious vocation. No one in France seriously proposes to limit citizenship in every case of domestic tyranny - only in those cases where the prospective citizen is sufficiently unlike the typical bovine citoyen or citoyenne to awaken fright.
So the question really must be raised - just what are "French values"?
If we look closely, what we actually observe is the state restricting [a] women, [b] people of color, [c] people who are poor, [d] people who are powerless, and [e] people whose religion is important to them.
If that's all that's going on, it's quite in line with traditional French practice. Anatole France said years ago that "The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The Dreyfus case is alive and well.
Those tired buzz words became inaccurate expressions of French values long before the French state convicted Alfred Dreyfus of the crime of a Jewish background and sentenced him to the punishment appropriate to treason. When the state tells people what they can wear it's not liberty. When the state imposes this only upon women it's not equality. What we have left is simply fraternity, which means roughly all of us wealthy, white, secular, politically empowered males banding together, as males, to tell less privileged people how to live their lives.
Women are also allowed to become honorary fraternity members, if they agree to mask their restrictions of other women as defenses of those same women against the restrictions imposed by their husbands. Thus it is that French feminists, firmly rooted in the clouds of French feminist theory and liberated from real acquaintance with real Muslim women, are complicit in their oppression. Plus ca change ...
