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.


  • Piye@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’m ok with this. If you truly want atheism and secularism then what’s wrong with making a broad ban on all religions?

    • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      This is not a religious garment (not that it’d matter if it was IMO, it’s hardly obnoxious); this is a cultural one, mostly (even that is pushing it, a lot of them look basically indistinguishable from the basic dress).

      Let people wear what they want

      • Piye@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        “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”

        It literally says in the article it’s religious. If you’re a real atheist, and I suspect none of you really are, then follow your principles, otherwise, please feel free to also shut up about Christianity then seeing as it’s a 1500 year old religion now and older than Islam

        The hypocrisy is off the charts, either you’re an atheist or you’re just lying about being one

        • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Do you think a requirement of being atheist means you have to embarrass kids or be racist? Do you think atheists have a moral obligation to do genuine persecution against people for wearing a robe?

          Secularism in education doesn’t mean you have to strictly control what clothes kids wear. Just don’t have private religious schools, it’s as easy as that. That’s what socialist governments do when they have a secular state ideology, they ban religious schools, shelters, hospitals, etc and replace them with secular, public ones. They don’t ban religion outright because that’s absurd, it’s a waste of time, and it’s needless cruelty.

          Why does it matter if some people are Muslim? Do atheists have a moral obligation to control what Muslims wear or believe? Why?

            • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              do you trust the state of France to do something that largely targets Muslims and there to be a positive outcome? Furthermore I should mention the abaya isn’t even religious, it’s just a dress worn by some people of northern African or middle eastern culture/ancestry. Nothing about Islam mandates wearing it and not all Muslims wear abayas.

              listen, only about 50% of Cubans profess they’re part of a religion, compared to other places in the Caribbean like the Dominican Republic where the number is a much higher 97%. Cuba didn’t ban religion outright or wearing religious clothes, they banned religions from operating public services, charities, etc. The Cuban government gave people things that religions had previously given them, rather than taking away things like what kinds of clothes they could wear.

              even if you’re an atheist and you believe in secularizing the entire world, changing beliefs, do you really think the way you do that is by first deciding what kids are allowed to wear to school? Do you think there are any positive ways to persecute a religious group, not even the leadership or whatever, but persecuting literal children and telling them which clothes to wear? If you’re some kind of atheist proselytizer then I’d expect you wanna go for methods that actually work.

              I’m gonna quote an obscure guy named Marx you don’t seem to have read much of:

              Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

              if you wanna criticize religion, then criticize the thing that makes religion happen, namely human suffering. Don’t cause more suffering. Demand people’s real happiness.

        • SpaceDog [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          There’s nothing religious about an abaya, apart from that they’re fashionable among Muslim women. It’s just a modest, loose-fitting dress.

          • GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I get what you’re trying to say - historically “Muslim garb” was just “desert garb” suited to the dry heat but I do also think these terms have some religious connotation now.

            What really grinds my gears in this is that actual Muslim feminists, not just white knight crusaders (and i pick that word deliberately) Europe are out there and people who claim to be worried about how Islam treats women could you know, listen to their perspectives instead of just assuming European “secular” values are objectively better.

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          If you’re a real atheist, and I suspect none of you really are, then follow your principles

          to be an athiest you only have to not believe in a religion yourself that’s it the sole principle required for athiesm

          do you think it should be illegal to follow religions you personally don’t approve of because what gives you the right to dictate what others are allowed to believe

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          If you’re a real atheist, and I suspect none of you really are

          lol

          then follow your principles,

          Yes, let me just consult the Atheist bible for the definite set of principles all atheists have.

    • GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s conveniently targeting one group and their religious expression. It’s different when they do it to themselves, like in Turkey before the AKP took power and started weakening secularism there.

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          secularism means the state not involving itself in matters of religion. Banning a religion is the state involving itself in matters of religion and therefore definitionally not secular

          also it’s a violation of human rights and just a terrible idea as you can’t effectively ban a religion the outside pressure tends to make religious groups more insular and can even deepen faith especially in abrahamic religions which have doctrines about martyrdom and oppression

          • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I would argue that indoctrinating a child into wearing religious dress is a violation of that child’s human rights and that they should be protected from it by the state.

      • Armen12@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Religion is not being banned, so that argument is invalid

        Try again

    • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      More accurately, this is french secularism, not a ban on religions, just good old state/church separation applied to public institutions where religious symbols are not welcome.