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.
You may have a leg to stand on in terms of premodern history, but for the last 150 years most wars have been due to capitalism, not religion. You are not exactly incorrect, but you are in my view taking symptoms as the disease, when we really need to zoom out, religion itself isn’t the base level problem, its authoritative structures not derived from the consent and for the betterment of the people, religion is but a powerful historical tool
You’re right. I have no argument with your statement other than to say that religion has justified violence on a non-war scale. Take all the violence that has been influenced by religion that isn’t a war and factor that in with the wars.
Yes, capitalism is destroying lives, the world, etc. Absolutely.
The thing that I was thinking about last night is if I had one wish that would come true, what would it be? I hate that there are people unhoused. I hate that there are people who are abused. I hate that there is hunger. But to cure all terrible things, I think erasing religion would be the greatest step to removing barriers in finding consensus. I think it’s the thing most responsible for dividing people. Tribalism will still exist, but if you removed this all-present motivation from personal interactions and people’s sense of morals, I think we’d make progress on all other fronts.
Capitalism is positive to no one’s lives but a vanishingly small % of the smallest % of the world, and does great harm to all others
Religion is integrated into a number of oppressive systems that largely prop up capitalism, but is also neutral for many people.
I definitely don’t disagree that humanity has moved past the need for religion as we have now, and it’s destruction would definitely be a net positive.
The thing is though, destroying capitalism and bringing about communism would also destroy organized religion as it now exists, but the opposite is not true, deleting religion from the world would do almost nothing to change anything for most people.
Palestinians would still be getting genocided by Israel, because it’s not religion that is the cause of that, it’s just a tool for the messaging of the Israeli state, not the actual reason, for one concrete example
Sure, it would probably make the world a better place, but it would not advance humanity much towards a brighter future
We’d just have the current world but instead of division along religious lines, it would be more explicitly along economic or racial/ethnic lines
US Evangelical Christian’s wouldn’t suddenly become good nice people, they’re still vicious racist monsters, the way they talk about the people they hate and dehumanize would simply be slightly different words
Organized religion like Catholicism is an undebatably malignant social entity, but religion in general? I think Marx has it completely right:
When he calls it “the opium of the people” he doesn’t mean “they do it recreationally and it kills them,” he means “though it hampers them, it anesthetizes pain inflicted on them from without”. If you want humanity to be free of religion rather than merely having an atheistic upper class be free of needing to see the rabble practice religion (by persecuting the latter), then the primary answer is not to legislate against religion but to legislate against the problems that, in turn, drive people to religion. It can be difficult to accept, but whether it matches your personal experience or not, religion serves useful social functions, just as opium serves useful medical functions (whatever else we may rightly say about both). If you want to get rid of religion, you need to do the good that it does better than it. If you want the oppressed creature not to sigh, end its oppression. To simply stifle its sigh is to strangle it.
Great response. I’d counter that fear of death will still provide a gateway to religion, but there’s nothing else with which I’d quibble. Cheers!