Schoolgirls who refused to change out of the loose-fitting robes have been sent home with a letter to parents on secularism.
French public schools have sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas – long, loose-fitting robes worn by some Muslim women and girls – on the first day of the school year, according to Education Minister Gabriel Attal.
Defying a ban on the garment seen as a religious symbol, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing abayas, Attal told the BFM broadcaster on Tuesday.
Most agreed to change out of the robe, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said.
The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen headscarves forbidden on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.
The move gladdened the political right but the hard left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties.
The 34-year-old minister said the girls refused entry on Monday were given a letter addressed to their families saying that “secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty”.
If they showed up at school again wearing the gown there would be a “new dialogue”.
He added that he was in favour of trialling school uniforms or a dress code amid the debate over the ban.
Uniforms have not been obligatory in French schools since 1968 but have regularly come back on the political agenda, often pushed by conservative and far-right politicians.
Attal said he would provide a timetable later this year for carrying out a trial run of uniforms with any schools that agree to participate.
“I don’t think that the school uniform is a miracle solution that solves all problems related to harassment, social inequalities or secularism,” he said.
But he added: “We must go through experiments, try things out” in order to promote debate, he said.
‘Worst consequences’
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris before the ban came into force said Attal deemed the abaya a religious symbol which violates French secularism.
“Since 2004, in France, religious signs and symbols have been banned in schools, including headscarves, kippas and crosses,” she said.
“Gabriel Attal, the education minister, says that no one should walk into a classroom wearing something which could suggest what their religion is.”
On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron defended the controversial measure, saying there was a “minority” in France who “hijack a religion and challenge the republic and secularism”.
He said it leads to the “worst consequences” such as the murder three years ago of teacher Samuel Paty for showing Prophet Muhammad caricatures during a civics education class.
“We cannot act as if the terrorist attack, the murder of Samuel Paty, had not happened,” he said in an interview with the YouTube channel, HugoDecrypte.
An association representing Muslims has filed a motion with the State Council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities, for an injunction against the ban on the abaya and the qamis, its equivalent dress for men.
The Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM) motion is to be examined later on Tuesday.
As someone who comes from Muslim upbringing, I am 100% against face veils and abayas. But this is very clearly racist. Those girls are the victims, so why punish them even further? France is such a fascist place.
can you be racist if it’s targeting a religion? honest question. I mean you can be any race and musilm. is it religious discrimination? maybe, but they ban religious garbs for all other religions too, ironically from my understanding, the whole point of it is to level the education playing field so religion isn’t discriminated against during the Education process.
I guess you could argue some religious garb is heavily tied to cultural identity and that’s probably a fair argument that it disproportionately affects some more than others. Poples right to express their culture shouldn’t be infringed upon by the state, the policy is definitely messy, but i don’t think it’s racist.
I guess you have to check what % of native French are Muslim vs what % of immigrants from middle east are. If by targeting Islam you’re pretty much exclusively targeting immigrants I would say it’s kind of racist.
As you can read in the article, most simply agreed to wear something else. For those who refused, some talks with families will follow. To me it seems a fairly rational way to enforce the rule.
You are correct, this is part of a series of laws over the past decade specifically aimed at muslims in France, and it indeed issues from racism
But also:
lmao, wearing an abaya is not “being a victim”, it’s a fucking dress
How about just letting the girls wear whatever the fuck they want to wear
Man, the underlying philosophy of hexbear tankies really is hard to pin down. You defend it when China’s leader gets up and says batshit crazy stuff like “we need to focus on the sinofication of islam,” but you don’t like it when France says “we don’t want religion in schools.”
It almost feels like that underlying philosophy is “west bad.”
Clearly not racist. Same rules for everyone.
Weird how in practice this seems to only affect one group of people. Weird how all the bigots seem love this. But this couldn’t be the reason for this, could it? Who would ever try to exploit the widespread Islamophobia in France to gain popularity and distract from real problems?
From what I understand, this affects everyone. All religious symbols are banned from school. I do not know what the rest of your murmuring has to do with the specific topic.
because the Abaya is not a religious symbol. It is a long dress that is worn for religious reasons, in this case to not reveal too much of the body. So if they want to ban this religious “symbol” then they need to ban all clothes that arent very revealing.
Yes of course, it is just a piece of clothing. A piece of clothing that women are forced to wear in public in the women’s rights loving state of saudi arabia. It is not about very revealing clothing, you are intentionally missing the point here. It is specifically about this piece of religious clothing.
You are wrong. There is no forcing of women to wear an abaya in saudi arabia. they are forced to wear clothes that arent revealing, but it is not specific to this kind of clothing.
Also it is a weird flex to say that it is good to force women to wear certain clothing because saudi arabia forces them to wear different clothing. You still end up forcing women to wear or not to wear certain things, taking away their liberty.
Again it is not a religious symbol because it is not defined by the religion, unlike the robe of a priest, the cross or the head scarf.
If you want to ban the underlying “symbol” of not wearing revealing clothing, youd need to ban all clothing that does that and not just the abaya. But they wont do that because they are bigoted hypocrites.
Are urinals sexist?
Is the intention of urinals to bully women?
Please learn what fascism means.
And racism while you are at it.
Is this a “Islam isnt a race” thing or? Because the these types of laws in France are very clearly targetted towards Muslims and in the west Muslims have been heavily racialized. Races are made up categories so anything can be a race if its treated like one, and muslims are treated like one.
Also France might not technically be “a fascist country” but it has a lot of fascist policies and this would be one.
As opposed to muslims?
The middle east was a haven for philosophy and science, two thousand years ago. A shame so much of it fell apart due to religious extremism