PARIS, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Four months ago, French public school children arrived to class under the glare of international media attention, as a new ban against wearing Muslim headscarfs -- and other such "conspicuous" religious symbols as large crosses and Jewish skullcaps -- went into effect.
On Monday, the estimated 12.5 million pupils returned with little fanfare to France's schoolrooms after a two-week holiday break.
Indeed, the biggest news capturing the educational agenda at the start of the new school term, according to the French Education Ministry, was how teachers should explain the Asian catastrophe to their pupils.
But that doesn't mean the headscarf ban controversy has faded into history. As Europe struggles to integrate its swelling Muslim population, the French model is providing an example to be emulated -- or rejected.
In France, too, the religious symbols ban has delivered mixed results.
Of some 640 problematic cases that cropped up since the new law went into effect, 595 have been "resolved," the Education Ministry reports -- in most cases by female Muslim pupils ultimately agreeing to discard their religious headdress while in school.
Some 41 Muslim girls who refused to do so have been expelled from school, according to the Education Ministry, along with four Sikh boys who refused to remove their turbans.
Monday's return to school was "fairly calm" said a spokeswoman for the Education Ministry, adding that so far as she knew not a single problematic headscarf case cropped up.
Passed last year, the ban seeks to offer a single set of rules for French educators struggling to deal with scattered but highly publicized cases involving girls who refused to remove their veils or more casual scarves.
More deeply it reflects strong convictions among many here that public spaces are not places to assert religious convictions.
But the religious symbols ban has also proved deeply divisive. Even as many French Muslims argue in favor of the legislation, others like Noura Jaballah continue to staunchly oppose it.
"Wearing the headscarf isn't meant to marginalize women," said Jaballah, a mother of three who lives outside Paris, and a member of the European League for Muslim Women, a conservative activist group.
"To the contrary," she added. "It's aimed to make women equal to men in the workplace and at school -- so that women are no longer considered sexual objects."
Jaballah also claims that school administrators have gone beyond the law's stipulation of banning "conspicuous" symbols, by barring Muslim girls from attending class in more informal bandannas and bonnets.
"Because she's called Fatma, she's not allowed to wear a hat," Jaballah said, giving the example of a typical Muslim name. "But if she were called Christine, then it would be all right."
The religious symbols ban is causing ripples far beyond France's borders.
Last month, three appeal court judges in Britain ruled an English school acted illegally by barring a Muslim girl who wanted to wear head-to-toe religious dress.
And in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a court ruled that a local ban against wearing the headscarf in public schools must apply also to Christian nuns.
In Belgium, some politicians are pushing for a French-style symbols ban, in a movement that also reflects a larger, European-wide uneasiness about Islam.
That uneasiness is even growing in such seemingly tolerant countries as the Netherlands, where the Nov. 2 killing of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh sparked a backlash against the country's Muslim population.
But perhaps the most obvious manifestation of Europe's mixed feelings about Islam is the groundswell of popular hostility to allowing Turkey to enter the European Union -- even though E.U. leaders agreed last month to accept Ankara as a candidate for membership talks.
During a July meeting in London, Muslim activists from 14 European countries agreed to launch a European-wide campaign to defend women's rights to wear headscarves.
"We're trying to explain (the headscarf ban) is not the best solution, the best future for Europe," said Jaballah, of the Muslim Women's League. "It's our fear that Muslim women will no longer have the choice of whether to veil or not."
Beyond the several dozen school expulsions, France's headscarf ban has spawned surprising side effects.
Extremists holding two French reporters hostage in Iraq last year demanded that the French government rescind the legislation. Paris refused to do so.
Ultimately, the two men -- Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot -- were released, just days before Christmas.
Other ban-related stories are more amusing.
In December, teachers in the northern French town of Coudekerque-Branche shipped back 1,300 boxes of Christmas chocolates to the city hall that donated them. The candy, shaped like crosses and Saint Nicholas figures, technically violated the religious symbols legislation.
Then there was the story of an innocent Christmas tree, removed from another Paris-area high school, after a pair of pupils protested its presence on similar religious-symbols grounds.
The innocuous fir was reinstated only after teachers issued a statement that Christmas trees were pagan symbols long before they were Christian ones.
