Compared to some of our neighbours, it's not frowned upon to be a mother and work in France.

The fact of leaving one's country, one's family, one's roots, can be painful. My father had already found his place, but for us, for my mother, it was very difficult to get our bearings.

Some Muslim students experience secularism as an act of aggression.

School is at once a place of hope, but it's also a laboratory that exposes our differences.

How can a child adhere to school and the notion of secularism when they see their mother rejected from a school outing, stigmatized, left on the sidelines, just because she has a scarf on her head?

We have to be careful not to have a form of militant secularism in our country, which is counter-productive for children we would like to see - adhere - to secularism.