Hayat Boumeddiene, top of the Most Wanted list in France though she may actually be in Syria, has been photographed with crossbow while dressed in a black Islamic niqab. The partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four innocent shoppers in a Paris supermarket two weeks ago before being shot dead himself, she had earlier been dismissed from her job in Paris for insisting on wearing her niqab. This may deserve nothing more than a small footnote in the story of the making of a terrorist, and it excuses nothing. But it does illustrate a feature of French life that is unfamiliar this side of the Channel. The secularist principle of laïcité dictates such a complete separation of Church and State that any outward display of religious belief is frowned on, if not actually illegal. This