You have seen the law, which its authors call a shield for secularism and social cohesion. You have not yet looked for the cost of that shield, which is always paid by someone. Let us, with all courtesy to the legislators, follow the logic of their intervention a little further and introduce into the account those whom their accounting has omitted.

The seen is a public servant, perhaps a teacher or a bailiff, who is no longer permitted to wear a hijab, a kippah, or a crucifix. The benefit, we are told, is a state that appears neutral, a public square scrubbed clean of visible religious identity. This is what is celebrated. It is a tangible, visible good for those who believe a shared civic identity is forged in the absence of difference.

But let us now consider the unseen. The first unseen cost is the career foreclosed, the vocation abandoned. A talented teacher, whose faith is expressed in a piece of cloth, must now choose between her conscience and her calling. The state has not created a new, secular teacher to replace her; it has merely prevented this one from serving. The classroom is poorer for her absence, though the law only records the sterile neutrality of her empty desk.

We must trace the consequences further. The law does not merely remove a symbol; it sends a message. It tells a portion of the citizenry that the full expression of their identity is incompatible with full participation in the life of their nation. The seen is a symbol removed from a civil servant. The unseen is the subtle, lingering doubt planted in the heart of a young citizen: do I belong here? The law intends to build unity by enforcing uniformity, but the unseen consequence may be to foster alienation by codifying exclusion. It is a profound irony that a law meant to banish division may well cultivate it in the shadows, where it is less visible but more corrosive.

And then we must ask: who benefits from this redirection? The seen beneficiary is the politician who can point to a law that does something visible. But the unseen beneficiary is the purveyor of a more insidious ideology - the notion that the state is the proper arbiter of conscience, that it may legitimately reach into the realm of private belief and demand its concealment for the public good. This is a dangerous precedent, for the definition of “offensive” or “divisive” symbols is a slippery one. Today it is a religious sign; tomorrow it may be a political pin or a badge of protest. The force that can tell you what you cannot wear can eventually tell you what you must think.

The final unseen cost is the most damning: the innovation and vitality that a society sacrifices when it excludes capable individuals from public service on grounds wholly unrelated to their competence. We see the neutral state. We do not see the brilliant jurist who never serves, the inspiring principal who never leads, the compassionate social worker who never comforts, because the price of entry was a piece of their soul. We count the symbol that is gone; we cannot count the contributions that will now never be made.

The lawmakers have looked at a diverse society and seen a problem to be solved by restriction. They have not seen that true laïcité is not the forced invisibility of belief, but the generous equality of all citizens before the law, each bringing their whole self to the public square without fear or favour. They have broken a window to appease those who dislike the light, and they ask us to admire the glazier’s bill while ignoring the sunlit room now plunged into shadow.