El use of the Islamic headscarf by girls in France has sparked an important debate on laicism, multiculturalism and religious freedom. This debate has reached the European Court of Human Rights, which has delivered several judgments concerning it. The requirement of neutrality, a fundamental principle of laicism, allows the secular State, in order to protect the freedom of conscience of non-religious people, to relieve the exercise of religious freedom to the domestic sphere and, while requiring neutrality, it intends to impose in the public sphere a sort of civil religion, by denying the right to freedom of expression in religious matters. These two elements are not only in the founders and in the current representatives of laicism, but can also now be seen in authors who, without speaking secucists, propose to relegate self-conviction to the private and to have a sort of civil religion at social level. The underlying fundamental mistake lies in the conception of freedom that they have inherited from illustrated liberalism, an error which ultimately reflects a limited human conception. The claims of these positions are unworkable, since religion cannot be relegated to human beings alone, and if the States assert themselves in these positions there will be no limits on the encroachment of individual freedoms. Therefore, instead of seeing religion as a toxic element in the social sphere, the relationship between the State and religion must be characterised by positive laicism, with legitimate autonomy between the two, while recognising the positive value of religion for individual and social life, to the point of being enshrined as a human right.