Muslim Women Resist Stereotyping

Young women, Fregosi said, also struggle to break free from the cultural traditions of their immigrant parents, including shunning arranged marriages.

"Their priority is to have a pious husband, not a cousin or another man chosen by the family," he said. "And that is something new."

Religious anthropologist Dounia Bouzar sees two factors at work: a "return to belief" but also a "questioning of the Western model, of the woman who knows what she wants with her body. A lot of young girls are wondering whether that really means more liberty."

Most French Muslims are hardly pious practitioners of their faith. A 2006 survey by the CSA polling agency found that although nearly nine in 10 Muslims observe the holy month of Ramadan, only 17 percent go to mosque regularly. Separately, the CSA poll found that 91 percent approved of equality between the sexes.

The dress and habits of France's Islamic community of 6 million, many of them immigrants from Turkey and North Africa, strikes a particularly sensitive chord in France.

In 2004, the French government banned students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools. Although the edict included large Catholic crosses and Jewish skull caps, it was the Muslim headscarves that sparked the most controversy.

More recently, town officials in the village of La Verpilliere forced Mayor Patrick Margier to rescind his decision to allow separate swimming pool hours for women, after the matter stirred local furor. Amara, the French urban affairs minister, called the pool rules a "dangerous" reflection of pressure by religious fundamentalists.

But the mayor said he stands by his original decision.

"This wasn't about a threat to secularity," he told Le Monde newspaper. "The 50 women who participated were of all ages and nationalities, in swimsuits without any distinctive (religious) signs. We wanted to reach out to them, and I regret people aren't more tolerant."