French Education Minister, Gabriel Attal has imposed a ban on the religious over-garment donned by female students of the islamic faith at the state run schools.
France, a social republic and parliamentary democratic country has an estimated population of 68 million, off of which the country constitutes over five million people from the islamic community. The recent reports of the ban imposed on abayas by the French Government comes as a shock and despair to many.
The result comes through the continual debate, mulling over the anti-secular practices of wearing clothes or accessories projecting religious nature. A 2004 law stating a ban over wearing clothes or symbols revealing someone’s religion in educational settings, including large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves was made effective. However, Abayas, the cloak-like garment that complies with the islamic belief of modest clothing is made to be a topic of secularity opposing practices.
A public issue statement made by Attal, the education minister stated that “When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them,” hence justifying the political move of female students no longer being able to wear abayas.
Gabriel Attal about the recent ban on abayas :
Check out : Interdiction de l’abaya: “la République est testée, nous devons faire bloc” (Attal) | AFP Extrait
Let’s take a look at the long running debate concerning the political front:
Former education minister, Pap Ndiaye, met school board heads during his tenure urging respect for the 2004 law, emphasizing that no school was a place for “lawlessness”, according to his entourage upon which school trade unions asked for a clearer guidance on the issue.
The diverging views from the right wing, ushered prohibition of the abayas as ‘intolerable’ and ‘not a place for religious sentiments’, to further these claims Le Parisien, a newspaper wrote in an editorial with its shameful headline , “They talk about ‘modest dress’, but it looks a lot like a Trojan horse of Islamist entryism,” to which Mathilde Pinot, a left wing superior tweeted “Islamophobia sells, especially when it picks on women.”
On the front of civil liberties, The French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone were not “a religious sign”.
The debate that is overstimulated with stigma, remains yet another political spectrum of defying secularity vs protection of a growing minority community. Several school authorities anonymously have made references towards these female students in particular as a “pressure” for their peers, in all cowardice to certain media outlets.
Attal, along with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin is viewed as a public figure with immense potential post Macaron’s tenure in 2027. The current imposition of the ban has impressed a few and angered some. The prohibition of wearing the abaya will be effective as soon as the nationwide schools operate to commence, clear rules at the national level will be issued according to the minister.
Whether or not a ban is a suitable approach still remains contended over. Women across the globe have opined themselves , whether they are from Turkey, circumventing a ban on headscarves in public institutions, Saudi women having protested with abayas the opposite way round or Iranian women fighting for their right to uncover their hair; What should be the verdict for the French women is a hope for morality and legitimacy. Accurately denoted by Bouzar, a French anthropologist, that the expectation for a radical outcome comes only as a result of fluidity and complexity in a debate that safeguards civil liberty as well as a constitutional path.
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