Why the French Far-Right Embraces Secularism (Laïcité)
By Sapna Suresh
After Donald Trump was reelected in November 2024, he pledged to bring prayers back to school. However, school prayer is not forbidden in schools. What is prohibited is government-sponsored school prayers since the United States government is supposed to be officially neutral.
Trump’s comments illustrate the nuances in the United States government’s attitude toward religion. Trump's comments are in line with how the Republican Party seeks to pass legislation to make religion more prevalent in public life. More broadly, despite being a secular state, religion is part of public life as presidents take their oath of office using the Bible (or other religious book), and phrases like "God Bless America" and "In God we Trust " are prevalent.
These practices add further spotlight onto how American secularism is different from France’s laïcité. It would be a national scandal if a French president used their holy book when taking the oath of office. Moreover, unlike the U.S., many in the French right openly embrace secularism primarily to use it as a tactic to justify more significant restrictions on immigration.
In 1905, a law was passed that officially separated the Church and State, declaring that the state was neutral on religious matters and ensuring French citizens the freedom to practice whatever religion, which ended the 1801 Concordat. The 1958 French Constitution states that “France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race, or religion. It shall respect all beliefs." (In 2018, the word "race" was removed from the Constitution, so it now says “regardless of gender, origin or religion.”
What makes France’s version of laïcité different from the American version of the separation of Church and State is that “U.S. secularism focuses on individual freedom of religion whereas French laïcité focuses on collective freedom from religious institutions.” Aside from those differences, the French far right actively promotes secularism. In fact, the most important and strategic decision the French far right made was to embrace the French Republic's idea of universalism.
By doing so, the French right has crafted the narrative that they stand for secularism, whereas the French left is concerned with getting ‘Islamist’ votes. This narrative taps into the fear narrative the French government has created and exploited since the 1980s. However, paradoxically, this fear-mongering was started by the leftist socialist president François Mitterrand.
Since the second half of the 20th century, massive immigration from North Africa has occurred in France. In 1983, a movement by North African immigrants called the Marche des Beurs protested growing racism and discrimination. “The Marche marked a significant turning point in race relations, but also specifically in the relations between French authorities, the public, and France’s Muslim minority.”
In response, François Mitterrand and the French government at the time framed these protests as an issue of race to ignore the impact of French colonialism and genuine grievances for the community. Linking these protests solely to race led the immigrant community to look toward Islam.
From a broader perspective, “the Marche heralds the slow beginnings of the politicization of Islam in contemporary France — on the part of some of the excluded youth and then mirrored and exploited by RN.” Since then, the French far-right has framed Islam as a danger to French culture and especially French secularism. For example, one of the RN's campaign posters in 1994 wrote, "In 20 years, France will be an Islamic Republic," which served to fearmonger about how growing immigration from North Africa would bring in Sharia law.
While the American far-right has also framed Muslims as a danger to American culture and propagates xenophobic rhetoric, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, their solution to that is giving Christianity a greater role in public life. For example, the Patriot movement, which is a far-right militia, insists that the United States needs to return to its Judeo-Christian roots and that the American Constitution is derived from the Bible.
By contrast, the French far-right has promoted the importance of upholding secularism. For example, the FN's 2017 manifesto said “Promote laïcité and fight against communitarianism. Enshrine in the constitution that 'The Republic recognizes no communities.' Re-establish laïcité everywhere, to extend it to the entirety of public space, and enshrine it in the Labor Code.”
Even in the instances of Marine le Pen invoking Christianity, she frames it in such a way that it was Christian traditions that allowed for secular thinking rather than emphasizing the religious element of it as the American far-right does. Moreover, the RN has also portrayed themselves as the protectors of women and the LGBTQ+ community against the Islamist threat. Eric Zemmour, a politician who is more to the right than Marine le Pen and has a history of saying anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric, said that Islam is incompatible with French secularism.
With a global trend of increasing far-right politics, viewing these parties as a homogenous group is tempting. While there are ideological similarities, each far-right party is shaped by its country's historical and political context, making it have differences. Understanding these differences is essential to effectively counter-messaging the far right.
