France has no doubt made many mistakes in attempting to enforce secularism in recent years. The niqab ban was pretty stupid and contributed to alienating a good number of Muslims. I'm more conflicted on the 2004 law on religious signs at school (because come on, public school is not the place to express your religious beliefs) but in practice its enforcement had to be problematic.
The core of the issue, of course, is the fact that many politicians use secularism as a pretense to stigmatize Muslims and stir up hatred against them. And of course these politicians are the same who criticize secularism when it goes against their ultra-Catholic buddies... So the problem isn't really with secularism as much as it is with xenophobia.
