A Russian Orthodox Church leader on Sunday criticised a French decision to ban Islamic headscarves from public schools, as Paris faced an ultimatum set by hostage-takers in Iraq to rescind the ban.
Father Vsevolod Chaplin described the French ban on conspicuous religious insignia as a "desperate act on behalf of secular civilisation, which has lost its bearings and is defenceless faced with stronger conceptions of the world".
"The time when the state decided which clothes people should wear should belongs to the past," the number two of the Patriarchy's external relations department told Moscow's Echo radio.