France to ban the wearing of abayas for students in state-run schools.
France education minister said this before of the start of the new academic year that abaya, will ban in public schools.
As the Muslim minority has grown, France has struggled to modernise regulations. A ban on full face veils in public was established in 2010, which infuriated members of the country’s five million-strong Muslim population. In 2004, it outlawed headscarves in schools.
In an interview, Gabriel Attal, the education minister, stated, “I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools.” “You shouldn’t be able to tell a student’s religion just by looking at them when you enter a classroom,” the author writes.
Attal argued that the abaya is “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic towards the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.” “Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” Attal stated. Before the start of the school year following the summer brea. He promised to issue clear regulations at the federal level.
The wearing of huge crosses, Jewish kippas, or Islamic headscarves is not permitted in French public schools. Abayas, in contrast to headscarves, were in the grey region and had not yet been declared prohibited.
The decision was made following months of discussion on the wearing of abayas at French schools. Where women have traditionally been prohibited from donning the hijab.
The ban had been promoted by the right and extreme right, who claimed it would violate civil liberties.
Clothing alone is not “a religious sign,” according to the French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM). A national organisation that represents numerous Muslim organisations.
Since 19th-century regulations eliminated any traditional Catholic influence from public education. France has enforced a tight ban on religious signs, including huge crosses.
Across the political spectrum, from left-wingers preserving the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment to far-right conservatives seeking a bulwark. Against the rising influence of Islam in French society, the defence of secularism is a rallying cry in France.
