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.
New criminal offense: Learning while Muslim.
what’s next sikhs can’t wear turbans in school
The law covers that also. All visible religious garments are forbidden.
ok so straight up religious persecution of multiple groups
Except the Catholics of course, can’t touch them
“Gabriel Attal, the education minister, says that no one should walk into a classroom wearing something which could suggest what their religion is.”
I was initially torn on this, but as long as it’s for all religions, I support it. I firmly believe that I shouldn’t know your religion unless I ask. Religion is toxic.
I do think you should have the freedom to wear religious signifiers as an adult. I just don’t approve. But I don’t want to stop you. Children in school? This is the same (to me) as requiring them to leave their phones at home.
I was initially torn on this, but as long as it’s for all religions, I support it.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread
Yea they made it so nobody could wear religious cultural clothes but there’s only one religion that includes wearing those clothes as a belief.
Would you also support a policy that nobody named @some_guy should be allowed to talk, no matter who they are.
Yea they made it so nobody could wear religious cultural clothes but there’s only one religion that includes wearing those clothes as a belief
there are multiple such as Islam and Sikhism to give two examples. This law is just an example of religious persecution against religions that don’t fit in with the French idea of which religions a French person should have
Your right should have said there’s multiple religions it was discriminating against just highlighting how it lines up with Frances history of Islamophobia.
The first is a good argument. And I support breaking that law.
The second is a good argument in that I wasn’t factoring the requirement (which I kinda don’t care about because I reject religion, so I know that I’m wrong even though I reject religion, fuck religion). Were religion not so toxic, I would have more sympathy. In this case, I’m gonna sound like a real fuckwad, but assimilate.
The third is just silly.
My North African grandfather lost a leg to untreated necrosis defending that gallic shithole from nazism, they can go assimilate his rotted leg
I’m gonna sound like a real fuckwad, but assimilate.
can’t believe you just said “facing persecution for your religious faith simply don’t be a member of the religious minority being persecuted”
“Just assimilate to Christian culture, Muslims. I’m anti-religion of all kinds, btw.”
You are too caught up in liberal abstraction to allow yourself to understand the material reality.
Wow. So literally saying they should just assimilate, so much for that whole “they have to respect our culture because we respect theirs”
Also yea the third point was stupid, it was to illustrate how dumb your argument was.
Bit then you just came out and admitted to being a bigot and leapfrogging my point.
I am bigoted against religion. I otherwise accept everyone for who they are. I have no shame in taking this stance.
What the fuck I thought Christopher Hitchens died
Dawkins and Harris yet live, unfortunately
Yea bigots generally aren’t shameful about their bigotry they just usually try to tap dance around the word bigot, good for you for being honest I guess.
The point people are trying to make is that it’s not the religion that’s being targeted, but the minority non white culture, and it’s being done in a way to hide its true intent, which you are supporting based on its appearance.
This has nothing to do with secularism and everything to do with punishing and invalidating nonwhite culture
I suspect that you’re right and if that’s the case, that’s terrible. I would support removal of religion from schools simply on the basis that it’s the source of most of the world’s wars. In the US, I think we should take the gloves off and churches should pay taxes. I detest that it causes people to vote and behave irrationally and is used as a smoke screen to excuse bad behavior. My support for kicking religion out of schools is based in that and does not apply as a tool to suppress non-western peoples.
It’s unfortunate that what you’re suggesting is probably the real reason. Put me in charge and it really will be because I’m sick of religion in a completely colorblind fashion.
world’s wars
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
In the Americas there were schools for native American children where they forced them to dress, eat, speak, and behave “properly” and not practice their religion. The goal was to eliminate their culture and make them homogeneously American or Canadian. (They also killed a fucking ton) This sort of nationalism has generally been looked back on as a mistake and a horrible atrocity. Why should it be acceptable towards other religious groups?
These kids aren’t being taken from their families. They aren’t being forced to give up their religion in their homes. These are not the same. This isn’t about “other religious groups.” It’s all religions while at school, and I’m fine with that.
The goal is to replace religion with nationalism, which isn’t an admirable goal. They may not literally say it out loud, but it’s pretty obvious.
I’m not in support of nationalism. I don’t know if what you said is accurate or not. I simply approve of keeping religion out of schools.
This is like the democrats who applaud gun control even when it is used with surgical precision to prevent black communities from defending themselves from police violence. “I don’t support police violence, I simply approve of gun control”.
Racism against children must be one of these “western values” I’ve been hearing so much about.
You’re mistaken on the definition of racism. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with how France deals with secularism
“You can’t be racist against Mexicans because it’s a country not a race!”
“You can’t be racist against Irish Catholics because it’s a religion not a race”
Well, yes. “Hating Mexicans” is not racism. Just like hating the French, Poles, or Americans. It’s nationalism, xenophobia, chauvinism etc, but not racism
Religion in France is racialized as it is in most parts of the world, pretending otherwise is just a denial of reality and history, the French state couldn’t care less for secularism on its own merits, it only cares about religion in the context of the eternal “immigrant” communities who it refuses to actually integrate because of the continuous French colonial mindset and a 19th century conception of frenchness which is centered around white pan-europeanism
If secularism was the point, the french state would have launched a social crusade against the Catholic church decades ago
It’s not a coincidence the law was implemented in 2004 at the height of the war on terror
Yeah, everything to do with secularism. That’s why France has Christian public holidays. And Macron called for closer ties between the state and Catholic church, and said Europe has “Judeo Christian roots”. Oh wait…
Europe doesn’t have judeo-christian roots?
No, it has Christian roots. I’m Jewish, and I hate the term “Judeo-christian.” We do not believe the same things, and we do not share the same history. Christians have been persecuting us for well over a thousand years, they’ve driven us out of our homes, murdered us en-masse multiple times in multiple different countries in multiple different centuries, and have refused to give us any respect and dignity until after World War 2, when it became politically convenient for them to do so.
Our values are different, our history is different, the only thing we have in common is that the Christians read our bible sometimes when it’s convenient for them to cite it to reinforce their intolerance.
Fair enough, though one could also see it at recognizing the Jewish roots of the christian religion. And I genuinely believe that the holocaust and general hardships endured during WW2 bought the Jewish people a fair amount of goodwill, it’s not all cynical political calculations.
It got us so much good will that the French still ban us from wearing religious garments in public, and antisemitic attacks across Europe have been increasing steadily for at least 20 years, with governments seemingly unable to do anything about it.
If you “recognize your roots” but changed your name and also have spent your entire lifetime attempting to murder your parents and grandparents, I think it’s fair to say that you don’t respect or care about your roots.
Again, this is not racism. There are white Muslims and black christians everywhere in France
Racism isn’t exclusively about skin color you dolt.
What’s even the point of this line of argument? At best you prove that this technically isn’t racism in the strictest definitional sense but it’s still just as harmful to kids and Muslims as racism.
It’s not racism, it’s just a racism-adjacent form of bigotry. Feeling owned yet, tankie?
Actually, I shot everyone in that refugee camp regardless of religion so I didn’t do genocide, just ordinary everyday mass murder
.This was an actual argument that was run in one of the Yugoslav tribunals BTW.
I don’t think you could define this as strictly not racist, since “race” constitutes arbitrary characteristics decided upon largely by white hegemony. It’s how Africans became a singular black race despite being different cultures and language groups. It’s why Jews are sometimes white, sometimes not.
It’s absolutely why most Americans consider a native Spanish speaker a different race, no matter how white they are. We’re in a moment where being Muslim is a racial marker excluding a person from whiteness.
Here’s a trick I do. Go show an uniformed white American a picture of Bashar al-Assad. Every time I’ve done this, they’ll say he’s a white guy. Then tell them he’s the president of Syria and a Muslim. They instantly flip.
I’m French and actually he’s bang on the money, it’s entirely about racism under the bullshit cover of “secularity”
I’m also French and I don’t know, maybe you’re right and that’s a way to hide the real racist motives. I’m probably biased because I dislike all religions equally though
I’m an antitheist and, speaking as one, let me request that you pull your head out of whatever it is stuck in. France is notoriously Islamophobic and these are girls who are just wearing loose-fitting clothes because of a religious practice based on modesty. Is either the religion or the practice itself above critique? Certainly not, but forcing people not to do something so harmless is ridiculous religious discrimination.
You know what? I’ll think about it
Props honestly, I definitely have a hard time not digging my heels in
Do they ban catholic children wearing crosses around their necks?
I think a better line is that they have school on Fridays but not on Sundays
Religion is not a race
Race is made up. Anything can be a race if you treat it like one. And Muslims are treated like one.
