Laicism refers to the policies and principles where the state plays a more active role in excluding religious visibility from the public domain.
[1] The term laïcité was coined in 1871 by French educator and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ferdinand Buisson, who advocated a religion-free school curriculum.
The term "laicism" arose in France in the 19th century for an anticlerical stance that opposed any ecclesiastical influence on matters of the French state, but not Christianity itself.
Domestic political upheavals, latent antisemitism and attempts by clerical-restorationist circles to exert influence led to years of social polarization in the country.
[2] Domestically, the 1905 law on the separation of church and state came into effect, which the then deputy and later prime minister Aristide Briand in particular had worked to have passed.