Two decades after France banned the headscarf in schools – the pioneering order in Europe caused a great stir in its day – the French Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal, now announces that from this school year it will not be will be able to wear the abaya (dress worn by Muslim women) in the classrooms of primary and secondary schools. Another unprecedented rule on the continent. The Government of Emmanuel Macron assures that the measure is just another appendix to the application of the law approved by the French Parliament in 2004, with a strong majority, which prohibits the display of religious symbols in schools.
The so-called “veil law” had left the use of the abaya up in the air. Twenty years later, we want to close the chapter not written in its day, with the clear inclusion in the rule of extending the veto to long tunics in schools. And how does the French government justify the new step? “When you enter a class, you should not be able to identify the religion of the students when you look at them”, argued the French Minister of Education on Sunday when he announced the measure, which already has, as expected, so many detractors as sympathizers Not unusual in a country with approximately five million Muslims.
The first to show its disagreement with the ban has been the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM). Experts in Islam, affirm that the tunic is not a religious symbol and explain that its use “is much more ambiguous than that of the veil”. The CFCM fears that the rule will stigmatize Muslims. They already stated this last year when the Ministry of Education published a circular authorizing schools to ban the abaya, as well as bandanas and very long skirts. The measure also included the long tunics, qamis, worn by men.
But this was only a recommendation, and schools demanded clearer and stronger instructions to implement it. This is what is now intended to be done so that no one has doubts from the Macron Executive, with the drafting of a specific rule, on how to act with students who wear robes. And he aspires to act from September, when the school year begins. “Before, the slogan was not clear, now it is and we congratulate ourselves for that”, says the National Union of National Education Management Staff.
Gabriel Attal states that the abbey “does not comply with the strict rules of secularism” in French education and adds that “secularism is not a limitation, but a freedom”. The French Minister of Education announces that this very week he will contact the educational centers to give them all the keys to the “new rule”. The aim is to train 300,000 school workers each year.
The most critical of the clothing worn by many Muslim minors in France, which covers the entire body except for the face, hands and feet, have been right-wing and far-right politicians. On the contrary, from the left it is denounced that the measure “is unconstitutional”.
Gabriel Attal reaffirmed yesterday, in response to criticism of the measure, that “secularism is the freedom to emancipate oneself through school”. He believes that going to school wearing an abaya is “a religious gesture, intended to test the Republic’s resistance to the secular sanctuary that school should be”. The Government spokesman, Olivier Véran, defended, for his part, that the Macron Executive has always been clear on the matter: “The school is a temple of secularism”, he declared on the BFM TV channel.
The announcement of the new veto on the clothes worn by schoolchildren coincides with the conclusions of a study carried out after the murder of teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by Abdullakh Anzorov for having taught caricatures of Muhammad. The report warns that, after the crime, in France there has been an explosion of “secularism attacks” in schools.
In Spain there is no law on this, despite the fact that the Supreme Court did endorse in a judgment handed down in 2013 the decision of a school in Pozuelo de Alarcón that banned a student wearing a hijab from entering class. In our country, it is the centers that set the criteria, which continues to cause conflicts because there is no clear rule. One of the last known cases took place in a school in Malaga. Two schoolchildren decided to change schools because they were not allowed – they denounced the fact – to enter the classroom wearing a veil.
