Protestors assemble in front of the French Embassy in Vienna on September 16 to protest the country’s ban on abayas in schools.(Credit: Aşkın Kıyağan/Anadolu Agency)
Nadine Osman
France’s highest court, the Council of State, has ruled in favour of a government abaya ban in state schools.
The government’s ban of the full-length garment did “not constitute a violation of fundamental freedoms,” ruled the court on September 7. This followed calls for an injunction against the ban filed by the Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM).
The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools. The government said the abaya broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen hijab’s banned. The moves are aimed at enforcing France’s separation of state and religion.
“This ban is not based on any legal text. It’s a purely political announcement on the part of the Ministry of Education, to coincide with the start of the new school year,” argued Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer with Paris Bar Association.
“It’s a garment that hasn’t been precisely defined, and which is considered to be a non-religious garment,” he added.
Defying the ban, nearly 300 girls arrived at school on September 4 wearing an abaya, according to Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, who said that most agreed to change, but 67 refused and were sent home.
Muslim leaders have reacted angrily to the sudden move by the French government to ban the abaya in state schools.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings because they claim they violate laws on secularism. Announcing the ban, last month Attal said, “When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them. I have decided that the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.”
The law, which does not apply to university students, is the first major policy decision by Attal, who was appointed France’s education minister by President Emmanuel Macron on July 20. Attal’s predecessor as education minister, Pap Ndiaye, last year avoided issuing a ban, saying he did not want “to publish endless catalogues specifying the lengths of dresses”.
Attal told a press conference on August 28: “Our schools are continually put under test, and over the past months, breaches of lacité have increased considerably, in particular with [pupils] wearing religious attire like abayas and kameez [long shirts].”
Macron addressed the dress code for the first time publicly after visiting a professional school in the Vaucluse region of southern France on September 1, vowing that the government will be uncompromising on the overgarment ban in schools.
“We know there will be cases” of students testing the rule, the president said, including ones trying to “defy the Republican system.” Macron said they would not be able to slip into class, stressing that “we will be intractable on the subject.” Addressing how the new measure would be enforced, Macron said “specific personnel” would be sent to “sensitive” schools to help principals and teachers and to dialogue with students and families, if needed.
The ban has been welcomed by conservative politicians, but Muslim and civil rights critics, as well as lawmakers on the left, have accused the government of policing what women can wear or of trying to appeal to right-wing voters. Some critics have argued that it would be impractical to ask schools to decide what is an abaya and what is simply a long dress.
Left-leaning parties were also divided. “How far will the clothing police go?” said Clémentine Autain, a lawmaker for the leftist France Unbowed party, saying the ban exemplified an “obsessive rejection of Muslims.” And far-left lawmaker Jean-Luc Mélenchon said he was saddened to see the back-to-school season “politically polarised by a new absurd [and] entirely artificial religious war over women’s wear,” while Sandrine Rousseau, a lawmaker with the Green Party, said the ban was a form of “social control over the bodies of women and young girls.”
The French Council of the Muslim Faith, an umbrella group of Muslim organisations, said that the abaya was not religious but an ill-defined garment tied to Arab culture. The government shouldn’t decide what is religious or not, it said.
“Unless all long dresses are banned altogether in schools for students and teachers, regardless of their faith, it will be impossible to apply a measure specifically targeting the abaya without falling into the trap of discrimination and arbitrariness,” the Council claimed in a statement.
Abdallah Zekri, Vice President of the French Council for Muslim Worship, also said the abaya “has never been a religious symbol anyway”.
Instead, he said the ban was yet another example of politicians using dresses worn by mainly women and girls to attack some five million Muslims living in France.
“I think the minister could have asked for the opinion of religious leaders,” said Zerkri. “For me, the abaya is not a religious dress; it is a form of fashion. If you go to some stores, you will find abayas. It’s a long and loose dress at the same time. It has nothing to do with religion.”
“In the name of secularism and the principle of separation of religions and the state, the CFCM [strongly] disputes that a secular authority can define what is or is not religious instead of the religious authorities of a faith,” the council said in a statement. Online, some French people joked that, to enforce the new ban, school administrators and teachers would be given the unenviable task of distinguishing between abayas and regular long dresses.
Cécile Duflot, an environmentalist, and former French minister of territorial development, posted a photo of a long black and green dress, asking why that should be seen as “an attack on secularism.” A commenter responded by saying a girl would only wear such an “ugly” dress for religious reasons, at which point Duflot revealed that the dress was not an abaya but rather a €2,980 silk Gucci dress.
In 2010, France banned the wearing of full-face veils in public, provoking anger among Muslims about the so-called “Burqa Ban”. The country has enforced a strict ban on religious signs at schools since the 19th century, and now items also banned include the Jewish kippa.
