Several hundred people, mostly young women wearing veils, marched through central Paris on Saturday to protest against a government bill to ban the headscarf from state-run schools in France.
Several demonstrators carried the red-white-and-blue national flag and one of them wore it around her head, to symbolise her attachment both to her religion and the French republic.
The National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a bill to bar "conspicuous religious insignia" from state schools.
President Jacques Chirac, his conservative government and some Socialist opposition MPs say the bill will preserve the separation of state and religion enshrined in France's constitution, but the demonstrators described the proposed law as discriminatory and racist.
One women carried a placard inscribed "my grandfather was a road-builder, my father built houses, you haters of Islam seek to destroy me." Others carried banners reading "Proud to be Muslim and French".