French secularism, in French, laïcité (pronounced [la.isiˈte]) is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State. During the twentieth century, it evolved to mean equal treatment of all religions, although a more restrictive interpretation of the term has developed since 2004. Critics do not consider it neutral but hostile to religion, whereas since World War II, some have seen the evolution of a "positive" laïcité which manages competing pluralities rather than serving as secular alternative to religion. Dictionaries ordinarily translate laïcité as secularity or secularism (the latter being the political system), although it is sometimes rendered in English as laicity or laicism. While the term was coined in 1871 in the dispute over the removal of religious teachers and instruction from elementary schools, the term laïcité dates to 1842.

Alain Soral (born October 2, 1958) is a French essayist, and film maker, as well as being the author of several polemical essays. He is the brother of the actress Agnès Soral. Soral lives in the French Basque Country. Since June 2004, he has been a boxing coach. Alain Soral considers himself to be in the political "avant garde" of French society, claiming that his remarks and comments are always at first condemned and later widely accepted by the mainstream French public.

Soral was born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie and grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (department of Haute-Savoie), where he attended a local primary school. When Soral was about 12, his family moved to Meudon so that he could go to a reputable private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris. Soral spent two years doing small jobs before being accepted into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts at 20, where he studied for two years. Soral was then taken in by a family of academics, who encouraged him to enrol at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he attended lectures given by Cornelius Castoriadis.

Vincent Benoît Camille Peillon (French pronunciation: [vɛ̃.sɑ̃ pɛ.jɔ̃] ; born 7 July 1960 at Suresnes) is Minister for Education in the French Government. He is a longstanding French politician and since 2004 has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West France (allied with the Socialist Party and the Party of European Socialists).