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The ruling unleashed fury across much of Italian society, with some opponents of the decision suggesting that Italy's cultural foundations in Catholicism were being undermined by Muslims using secular arguments as cover. Smith lambastes such notions: "This is Italy's old Catholic fundamentalism coming to the surface. You must not confuse culture with the state and the rights of its citizens. You can keep your crucifix in your home or your church or around your neck, but not at my child's school."

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu disagrees. "The crucifix is not only a religious symbol; it represents 2,000 years of history and culture," he told Time. "Immigrants' cultural and religious identities must be respected, but they must also be expected to follow the established judicial and political system of our country. How can a court side with one Muslim parent over the wishes of [all the school's] Italian parents?" Italian parents may yet get their way. Italy's Education Ministry has appealed the ruling, and a judge has temporarily suspended the original decision, delaying the removal of the crucifix until at least Nov. 19.

In France, the case of the teenage sisters Lila and Alma Lévy-Omari — expelled last month from the Henri-Wallon public high school in suburban Paris for wearing their head scarves, or hijab — has refocused attention on a cultural fracture that began in the late 1980s. Critics claim that's when Islamic fundamentalists seized on head scarves as a symbol of women's affiliation with their hard-line beliefs; others say the hijab's prevalence was simply the way daughters of immigrants embraced Muslim traditions and identity. Muslim families who want their daughters to wear head scarves at school argue that the garment is an integral and private part of their faith. Opponents claim that the scarves are a symbol of militancy, incompatible with French rules prohibiting religious expression in public schools.

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) The law supports, at least partly, the head-scarf cause. A 1989 ruling by the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest legal body, stated that outward manifestations of religious faith by students are not "incompatible with the principle of secularity." But the Conseil also noted that "ostentatious or militant" displays of crucifixes, yarmulkes or head scarves constituting acts of "pressure, provocation, proselytism or propaganda" should be banned. The Conseil failed to define precisely what it meant by "ostentatious or militant" displays, and the Education Ministry left it up to individual schools to determine what was a violation and what was not.

The result: some French schools ban head scarves entirely, while others have no problem with them. Still others, like Henri-Wallon, allow what history and geography teacher Philippe Darriulat calls a "compromise scarf" that leaves the head only partially covered. (That's the one the other dozen students in the school are allowed to wear.) But Lila and her 16-year-old sister wear a hijab that covers everything except the face, which officials at Henri-Wallon say is provocative. Lila, 18, points out that the sisters had already agreed to modify their dress, wearing light-colored scarves that tie at the back of the head, combined with turtlenecks that cover the necks. "The only alternative they gave us was wearing a scarf that leaves our hair, neck and ears visible," Lila says. "The function of the head scarf is to hide these things." The school and the Lévy-Omaris were unable to arrive at a compromise, so the girls were expelled.

To avoid conflicts like this one, more and more female Muslim students are enrolling in private schools run by Catholic, Protestant and other religious groups, such as Marseilles's Saint Mauront. But some non-Muslims say taking head scarves private only allows people to avoid confronting the fact that Western culture and Muslim attitudes toward women are incompatible. Feminists denounce the hijab as a symbol of female subjugation — a view many Muslim women find patronizing. Says Iyman Alzayed, 45, a teacher in Hanover: "My head scarf is just something that hides my hair."

Germany has been grappling with these issues for more than a decade. In 1995, its Constitutional Court prohibited overwhelmingly Catholic Bavaria from applying a state law requiring that crucifixes be hung in classrooms. (The verdict has since been skirted by a Bavarian regulation allowing crosses, unless parents object.) In 1998, a young Muslim teacher named Fereshta Ludin applied for a job in Plüderhausen in Baden-Württemberg, but was rejected because she insisted on keeping her head veiled in the classroom. She sued the Stuttgart school authority, and after years of legal wrangling won her case in September, when the Constitutional Court ruled that Muslim teachers have the right to wear head scarves in school. "I felt discriminated against for years," says the Afghanistan-born Ludin, who now works in a private Islamic school in Berlin, "and this decision comes as a great relief."

But the Court also decreed that Germany's 16 states were "free to establish the legal basis" for a head-scarf ban. In other words, state legislatures could ban head scarves from public-school classrooms if they felt their presence interfered with the obligation to provide a religiously neutral education. More liberal states are likely to allow teachers to cover their heads, but conservative ones like Bavaria have already announced they will prohibit it. Many Germans feel it's unjust that crucifixes should be removed from classrooms while Muslims are allowed to wear head scarves, even though the hijab is a personal statement and the crucifix on the wall a state initiative.

Some European countries have found a better balance between state secularity and personal religious expression. In Britain, laws protect a person's right to wear a head scarf at school or work, and the hijab and other forms of religious observance are largely viewed as nonthreatening. Greece and Denmark have no problems with the hijab in schools, and head scarves are considered of little concern in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. But until Italy, Germany and France find a compromise that believers and secularists alike can embrace, the separation of church and state will continue to cause social division.