France's distinctive secular framework, laicite, was formalized by the 1905 law separating church and state, which ended the Napoleonic Concordat system, stripped the Catholic Church of state funding and property while guaranteeing free exercise of religion, and established the principle that the state neither recognizes, salaries nor subsidizes any religion, a settlement that took decades of often bitter conflict with the Church to achieve and that remains a foundational, closely guarded feature of French republican identity. This framework has produced repeated controversy over religious symbols in public institutions, including a 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols, effectively headscarves for Muslim students though also affecting large crosses and Jewish kippot, in public schools, and a 2010 law banning full-face coverings such as the niqab in all public spaces, both defended by supporters as protecting laicite and neutral public space and criticized by opponents, including United Nations human rights bodies, as disproportionately targeting Muslim women.
France has experienced a severe wave of jihadist terrorism since 2015, including the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks and the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty over his use of Muhammad cartoons in a free-speech lesson, incidents that have sharpened national debate over the limits of religious accommodation within laicite.