(Speaking as one raised Christian Lebanese)
Well, it is not quite the "religious freedom" issue most impugn. Students of history will remember where, when, and under what political circumstances the garment in question came from.
The locale is the country of Lebanon, and it is the early '70s (really started to gain heavy acceptance in '72) and during the (basically) civil war between the Christian Lebanese and the Shiites. The Shiites wanted to differentiate between "their" women and anybody else's. The solution? The Hijab.
Now the Shiites could rape and kill women without worrying about if they actually were nonShiite women. "Good" Shiite women were wearing the hijab, and the rest were targets of opportunity.
Nobody complains about suppression of religion when the Catholic nuns are forbidden to wear the formal habit, although the countries that do forbid it have a lot more egregious restrictions on Christianity than any western country does on Islam (even considering France to be a western country, at least until the RIF take over). The Catholic Church recognizes that it is not a sin, or admonished against by God, for a nun to not be wearing the habit. It is recognized as a CULTURAL expression of faith, and an organizational requirement (when allowed by law) and external testament of faith that does not preclude nuns from being there, and the suppression of the habit itself is, of itself, not considered a suppression of the Catholic faith. The habit was a protection from certain excessive behaviors toward women that the culture was not willing to forbid in regards to the treatment of "regular" women. Behaviors from flirting with, to pinching, manhandling, and "stolen" kisses were behaviors that were not really prosecuted when performed against women (in general). Nuns were given the protection of the habit to protect those women as out of bounds to that behavior.
The Hijab was, like the habit, to provide the same protection; but, like the habit, only to those wearing them. Behaviors from assault, to rape and murder, are condoned by those cultures when performed against those not a noticeable part of the Muslim religion and visibly complying by the wearing of the habit. Behaviors that even France seems to recognize are not appropriate to allow to be committed against women just because they are not part of the "Religion of Peace".
France seems to recognize that they will be inciting massive retaliation from the rest of France if they allow the RIFs to start that same cycle of raping and murdering nonMuslim women for the crime of not following current Islamic cultural requirements.