French secularism is usually presented as an exceptional variety of more moderate and acceptable versions of secularism in Europe, particularly after France's adoption of the controversial law of 2004 prohibiting the wearing of headscarves in public schools and while performing public functions. However, in one important regard it presents an exaggerated version of other European secularisms, rather than an exception to them, and so we can learn from the French case to understand secularism in a broader European context. As I argue, a crucial motive that French secularism shares with a more general European strand of interpreting the secular is the idea that it implies the "interiorization of religion."