  A key empirical assumption here is that combating patriarchal practices within minority communities would be easier if the burdens on more benign practices, such as wearing headscarves, are lessened. Cecile Laborde’s analysis of the headscarf controversy in France provides support for this assumption: the effect of preventing Muslim girls from wearing headscarves is to encourage their parents to withdraw their daughters from civic education and send them to religious schools where they would not be exposed to the diversity of world views found in public schools. Formal restrictions on Muslim religious expression in the public sphere may make, in Laborde’s words, “members of dominated groups close ranks around the denigrated practice, precipitating a defensive retreat into conservative cultural forms and identities” (2008, 164).