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.
I'm a little south of France, secularism and laicism are built into our constituion and we still have a rather fresh memroy of what fascism was and did to our people and country.
Public school is to be non confessional, which implies you keep your personal beliefs private.
The best parallel I can find to the muslim code of dress would be the monastic dressing of catholic orders. It is not optional, it's enforced. But unlike the muslim dress code, the monastic dressing implies you are away from the common world 90% of your time and you actively and willingly chose that way of life.
Who would care if a muslim was to go every now and then dressed in their religious attire? It would be a personal choice, perhaps something moved the individual to dress that way on a given day as they felt fragile for a loss or some other reason where they felt the need to seek comfort in their belief. But mandated out of oppression, because women tempt men and thus need to be modest? That is saying that men are forever children (and by default stupid) and force women into a perpetual motherhood, from birth.
Catholics carry their cross around their necks but can easily tuck inside their clothes. Jewish men can fold and keep their head cover in a pocket (do women have any equivalent?). And so on and so forth.
I am French, I know very well how it works. Laws that tell people how they can dress are not secularist, they are authoritarian. Removing children from school because they aren't dress correctly is not secularism, it's authoritarian.
France is becoming fascist, that's all there is to see here.
Isn't it in Cannes that beach goers cannot be by the boardwalk without their shirts?
I remember seeing a news cover where a man, sitting on the dividind wall without a shirt, was acosted by the police and eventually walked to the police station.
Is that fascism as well?
I think it's exaggerated but the reasoning behind the ordnance was enforcing common social etiquette/decorum.
Do I agree with the principle behind this? No. But there should be no need to enforce basic social norms because one creed understands itself as being above all norms that are not perscribed by a book cobbled together from oral narrations, 600 or 800 years ago.
Religious belief does not deserve special treatment from the law.
Anyone from any non muslim country faces similar or worst impositions when settling on such a nation; "tolerated" is not "accepted".
You can generalize as much you like it's irrelevant. The matter at hand is that a law is 1) telling women how to dress and 2) fucking with Muslims.
The irony is that these dresses are deemed "too modest".
Also, what happen in a Muslim theocracy is completely irrelevant. We're talking about France policy. France doesn't have to become fascist just because theocracies are fascists. That's not how it works.
You're in your right to dislike or disagree of my arguments. Could not care any less.
The law is, to what I can gather, telling any and all religious confessions that no outter signs are tolerated in the school space. If the halfwit of the minister that divulged focused on the muslim attire, they are either idiots or aiming at picking up dirt to snuff some other event.
I wonder if this thread would have garnered so much attention if instead of muslim women the event would have had involved jewish male teens and their sideburns.
My parallel with the muslim nations was not to excuse a so called "fascist" imposition from the french government to cull religious zealotry but to remind what that same zealory aspires to have in nations where the creed is minoritary: total, complete, absolute and inquestionable control over people's lives, including what they can or not wear.
Are catholics religiously obligated to wear crosses at all times? Reform and conservative Jews only wear kippot while praying, but orthodox Jews wear them all the time and consider it to be an obligation to wear one all the time.
Do you also require orthodox Jewish and Muslim children to eat pork and shellfish in school lunches, and appreciate how flexible catholic parents are about letting their kids violate the kosher or halal rules?
Nowadays, I think it depends on who you ask.
Growing in a somewhat religious family, it was never a mandatory item to carry, although it was a common sight on both men and womens jewelry, usually made out of gold or silver.
Today I find it increasingly common to see more devout church goers using crucifixes or even rosary beads around their necks.
So... it depends?
Dietary difference is not on the table to discuss; it's a non subject. Many people have differentiated diets for multiple reasons besides a given creed.
And if the law stipulates that an animal must be slaughtered by a means that guarantees the least possible suffering, then the law is actually pushing aside religious precept over objective benefit.
If my memory serves me well enough, jewish and muslim slaughtering involves slicing the carothide artery to allow the animal to bleed out, which is a slow and stressful death. In my very own barbaric country, that is considered cruelty.
Although not a vegan or vegetarian, I find distasteful the image of an animal slowly fading away as it bleeds to the ground, when a more humane method os available.