Paris ? A French journalist being held hostage along with a colleague in Iraq called on French President Jacques Chirac to give in to militants’ demand to rescind a head-scarf ban to save their lives, according to a video shown late Monday on the Al-Jazeera television station.

The video was broadcast hours after France insisted it would go ahead with the ban on Muslim head scarves in schools, standing firm against scrapping the law just hours before a deadline set by the captors.

“I appeal to the French people to go to the streets … because our lives are threatened,” journalist Georges Malbrunot said in English on the video. Speaking in French, fellow hostage Christian Chesnot called on Chirac and his government to rescind the ban, according to the newsreader, who interpreted his remarks into Arabic.

The video showed the two unshaven men seated together in front of a gray, mud wall with a small window above them.

In a video broadcast Saturday, a militant group calling itself “The Islam Army in Iraq” gave the French government 48 hours to overturn the ban but mentioned no threat against the men’s lives. However, a militant group with a similar name was believed to have killed an Italian freelance journalist last week after Italy’s government rejected a demand that it withdraw its 3,000 soldiers in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera said the group had extended its deadline, which would have ended late Monday, by 24 hours.

Earlier Monday, the Chirac government held firm in its refusal to rescind the ban. “The law will be applied” when school doors open Thursday, government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said.

Muslim leaders at home and abroad rallied around France with statements of support and calls on the shadowy Islamic Army of Iraq to free the two reporters. Two marches in Paris converged on a square near the Eiffel Tower, with hundreds of people chanting “Free the hostages.”

The kidnapping has been a shock to many in France, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has pursued generally pro-Arab policies.

“The French have discovered that having opposed the Iraq war does not make them immune from the wrath of Islamists,” said Bruno Tertrais at the Foundation for Strategic Research.

The measure’s passage in March triggered many protests by Muslims, who call it discriminatory.