My take on this:It is because the French elite are acutely aware of the power of culture. They were recently involved in a Kulturkampf themselves (with the English, which reached its height during the Colonial Era) and are still sensitive about the subject. The failure of French foreign policy in Algeria during the 1960's did not help matters any.
The head shroud is a symbol of the foreign, the hostile. This is what Islam is to the more conservative and nationalistic factions within France. The crucifix is a symbol of the traditional, the 'French'. Catholicism is an old part of French culture. The comparison would most likely be made by those of a more 'leftist' persuasion (a hostility towards Christianity, and embracing of the ostracized as allies). The idea would be to show the French traditionalists as hypocritical and absurd. This attitude of course increases the xenophobia of the elites. And so on.
This sort of thing is paradoxically the major obstacle preventing France from dominating Europe. Meanwhile the Americans, who see in a woman wearing a head shroud a customer of head shrouds (or worse, someone whose supressed sexuality can be lucratively exploited), are still increasing their cultural presence in France by an inevitable osmosis. A thought that gives the French Right no easy slumber time, I would assume.
Incidentally, cultural pecking orders go a long way in explaining the Russian tolerance (and indeed, almost a grudging admiration) of Bolshevik excesses, and the brief (a bit over a decade) German flirtation with that decidedly Teutonic version, Nazism. Just a thought.
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