French authorities are to ban the wearing in school of abaya dresses, which are long and loose-fitting and worn by some Muslim women, the education minister has said, arguing the garment violated France’s strict secular laws in education [1].
A law of March 2004 banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools.
This includes large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.
Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.
“It will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” education minister Gabriel Attal told TF1 television, saying he would give “clear rules at the national level” to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.
“Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” Mr Attal said, describing the abaya as “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.
“You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them,” he said.