France's unique approach to "laïcité" — loosely translated as "secularism" — has been increasingly stirring controversy from schools to sports fields across the country.

The struggle cuts to the core of how France approaches not only the place of religion in public life, and also the integration of its mostly immigrant-origin Muslim population, Western Europe's largest.

Signs of faith barred

Perhaps the most contested ground are public schools, where visible signs of faith are barred under policies seeking to foster a shared sense of national unity.

That includes the headscarves some Muslim women want to wear for piety and modesty, even as others fight them as a symbol of oppression.

"It has become a privilege to be allowed to practice our religion," said Majda Ould Ibbat.

She was considering leaving Marseille, France's second-largest city, until she discovered a private Muslim school, Ibn Khaldoun, where her children could both freely live their faith and flourish academically.

"We wanted them to have a great education, and with our principles and our values," added Ould Ibbat, who only started wearing a headscarf recently.

He teen daughter, Minane, hasn't felt ready to.

Her 15-year-old son, Chahid, often prays in the school's mosque during recess.

Navigating French culture and spiritual identity

For Minane, as for many French Muslim youth, navigating French culture and her spiritual identity is getting harder.

The 19-year-old nursing student has heard people say even on the streets of multicultural Marseille that there's no place for Muslims.

"I ask myself if Islam is accepted in France," she said in her parents' apartment, where a bright orange Berber rug woven by her Moroccan grandmother hangs next to Koranic verses in Arabic.

Minane also lives with the collective trauma that has scarred much of France — the gripping fear of Islamist attacks, which have targeted schools.

They are seen by many as evidence that laïcité (pronounced lah-eee-see-tay) needs to be strictly enforced to prevent radicalisation.

Minane vividly remembers observing a moment of silence at Ibn Khaldoun in honor of Samuel Paty, a public school teacher beheaded by a radicalised Islamist in 2020.

A memorial to Paty as a defender of France's values hangs in the entrance of the Education Ministry in Paris.

Secularism - pros and cons

For its officials and most educators, secularism in public schools and other public institutions is essential.

They say it encourages a sense of belonging to a united French identity and prevents those who are less or not religiously observant from feeling pressured, while leaving everyone free to worship in private spaces.

For many French Muslims, however, and other critics, laïcité is exerting precisely that kind of discriminatory pressure on already disadvantaged minorities.

The see it as denying them the chance to live their full identity in their own country.

Amid the tension, there's broad agreement that polarisation is skyrocketing, as crackdowns and challenges mount for this French approach to religion and integration.

While open confrontations are still numbered in the dozens among millions of students.

It has become common to see girls put their headscarves back on the moment they exit through a public school's doors.

"Laws on laïcité protect and allow for coexistence — which is less and less easy," said Isabelle Tretola, principal of the public primary school whose front gate faces the door to Ibn Khaldoun's small mosque.

She addresses challenges to secularism every day — like children in choir class who put their hands on their ears "because their families told them singing variety songs isn't good."

"You can't force them to sing, but teachers tell them they can't cover their ears out of respect for the instructor and classmates," Tretola said.

"In school, you come to learn the values of the republic."

Secularism is one of four fundamental values enshrined in France's constitution.

The state explicitly charges public schools with instilling those values in children, while allowing private schools to offer religious instruction as long as they also teach the general curriculum that the government establishes. Read more

• Giovanna Dell'Orto is a freelance journalist for Associated Press and Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Mass, University of Minnesota.

The show's producers were informed by mail that it was being excluded from a "pass culture" scheme that allows teachers to take groups to cultural events for free, for not respecting the principle of laïcité, a complex republican tenet often translated as "secularism".

Roberto Ciurleo, a co-producer of the show Bernadette de Lourdes, described the decision as "brutal and senseless" and said the production team would contest it.

"Our show is a historical reconstruction in the form of a police investigation, drawn from the official records … it tells the story of Bernadette's interrogations," Ciurleo said.

"There is no apparition of the Virgin Mary in the grotto." He added: "The director is an atheist, as are the songwriters." Read more

This time, the debate erupted after a far-right politician asked a woman who was accompanying her son and other children on a school trip to a regional council headquarters to remove her headscarf when entering the building.

It is a reminder that, for all our progress, Islamophobia is still rife - in France, and right across Europe.

As a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf, it is really frustrating and obviously upsetting to face discrimination just for following the tenets of my faith. I know too well the pain of experiencing Islamophobia first hand in the UK.

I have been verbally abused and harassed by members of the public just because my faith is visible to them.

The Muslim mother targeted in this instance was also left in tears, in front of her child, after being publicly humiliated by Julien Odoul, a member of Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party, who said he was acting on behalf of "secular principles in the wake of killings by a radicalised extremist".

This excuse is unacceptable.

There is nothing in French law that stipulates that women are not allowed to wear the hijab in or outside school gates while accompanying classes on outings.

What happened was this: a woman wanted to take part in her son's school trip was deliberately victimised in an attempt to keep visible Muslims out of sight and deter Islamic integration into French society.

Remarkably, many ministers of Emmanuel Macron's centrist government-backed the stance of the politician, claiming defence of French secularism.

Luckily, others within the same government quite rightly disagreed, citing that this position goes against the religious tolerance that "laïcité" is supposed to defend.

But the political defence of religious tolerance in France is laughable given that formal restrictions have already been placed on wearing religious symbols.

France has had a long history of political controversies surrounding the hijab, resulting in a legal ban on wearing a hijab in classrooms and government offices in 2004.

More worryingly, a recent opinion poll found that two in three French people are in favour of prohibiting parents accompanying kids on school trips from wearing visible religious symbols - but this attitude restricts individuals from expressing their true identity.

France has the largest population of Muslims in Europe (approximately 10 per cent of the population), and yet this large minority now feel they are being asked to hide themselves away.

It is so frustrating for visibly Muslim women to have to keep justifying their right to wear what they want in accordance to their faith; to be judged and made to feel that we are in support of acts of terror when we denounce it and are completely against it.

Many Muslim women in France have told me that they are often subjected to Islamophobic abuse on their daily commute and some have not taken jobs in teaching because the rules surrounding the profession would require them to compromise their religious beliefs.

I myself have been asked to take off my hijab when I was on holiday in France.

France became a secular state when it officially separated itself from the church in 1905 to abide by a set of national principles.

The country purports to be neutral in matters of religion, therefore not conferring privilege on any particular religion or set of beliefs.

However, what the modern French government has failed to realise is that their idea of secularism is restricting human rights, and is now being abused as a shield for discrimination and Islamophobic abuse. Continue reading

• Tasnim Nazeer is an award-winning journalist, author and producer