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.


    • Kosh [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      French people will claim that secularism is the most important value in all of France but them half of the national days off are Catholic holidays.

      • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Also I’m willing to bet really good money that if a nun wore a habit to a beach, she wouldn’t get fined. A muslim woman wearing a burkini would though.

      • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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        There’s such a thing as cultural heritage. Revolutionaries tried to do away with it but it didn’t take. Most of them were pagan holidays which were co-opted by the church anyway.

      • Elderos@lemmings.world
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        Because we keep national days purely for religious reasons, right? How about we abolish Halloween too, all those hypocrite atheists all over the world pretending not to believe in religions.

    • pedro@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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…

          • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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              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.

              • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  the French still ban us from wearing religious garments in public

                  This is completely wrong. You are legally free to wear a kippa or any other religious signs almost everywhere in France. Exceptions are:

                  • in public schools
                  • at work if:
                    • you’re a civil servant
                    • there is a legitimate reason for a ban (security, hygiene, …)

                  That’s literally it. I lived in a Jewish neighborhood in Paris and saw kippas constantly, nobody gave a fuck.

                  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.

                  OK?

        • pedro@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Again, this is not racism. There are white Muslims and black christians everywhere in France

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              1 year ago

              It sounds like they’re not saying that Muslims are not allowed to practise their religion. They’re just not allowed to do it in school, but no one’s allowed to practise their religion in school apparently so not it’s not racist.

              • Harrison [He/Him]@ttrpg.network
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                1 year ago

                “The law in it’s great magnanimity prohibits poor and rich alike from sleeping under bridges and stealing bread.”.

                A law can be applied equally to everyone and still target a specific group of people.

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

            Ok it’s a slightly different form of bigotry does that make it ok since your only argument seems to be “it’s not racism because it doesn’t explicitly say it’s discriminating against a specific race”

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

        I’m French and actually he’s bang on the money, it’s entirely about racism under the bullshit cover of “secularity”

        • pedro@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            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.

          • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            Dislike all religions equally… blah blah blah… some religions more equally than others blah blah

            Maybe think of the outcome of your country’s rightism instead of being so preoccupied with sticking it to the religions very-intelligent

            • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              When did the far left become so pro-religon? Back when I used to go to punk shows as a teen, the far left were militantly atheist.

              • Devorlon@lemmy.zip
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                There’s a difference between not believing in a religion and not wanting the views of religion forced apon you. (secularism)

                Vs.

                Banning all religious symbolism. (Fascism)

                • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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                  I think fascism is a bit far unless they’re banning the religon at all and are investigating people at home or closing mosques.

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

        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.

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

            Actually, I shot everyone in that refugee camp regardless of religion so I didn’t do genocide, just ordinary everyday mass murder smuglord.

            This was an actual argument that was run in one of the Yugoslav tribunals BTW.

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

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        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

        • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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          I think you’re underestimating how aggressive french laicity originally had to be to extract a church that was entrenched deep within government and culture and felt entitled to exert more ultraconservative political influence than it is today:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State

          In 1886, another law ensured secularisation of the teaching staff of the National Education.[10][11]

          Other moves towards secularism included:

          the introduction of divorce and a requirement that civil marriages be performed in a civil ceremony[12]

          legalizing work on Sundays[13][14]

          making seminarians subject to conscription[14][15]

          secularising schools and hospitals[8][12]

          abolishing the law ordaining public prayers at the beginning of each parliamentary session and of the assizes[14][16]

          ordering soldiers not to frequent Catholic clubs[17]

          removing the religious character from the judicial oath and religious symbols from courtrooms[18]

          forbidding the participation of the armed forces in religious processions[14]

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

        secular means not taking a religious stance and being neutral about it. Being secular would mean letting people wear them as they choose not allowing people to wear religious attire is taking a religious stance and thus isn’t secular

        rather than secularity this is religious persecution

        • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.info
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          No, secularism is about people having the freedom of religion. Being forced by family or peers to wear religious clothing is incompatible with freedom of religion.

      • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Firstly, Religon is a choice, nothing about your skin tone or where you were born scientifically dictates you must follow a Religon.

        Secondly, this applies to all religions in France, it’s just that one particular religion takes their costumes a bit more seriously than others so it seems like they’re being singled out.