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.
Racism against children must be one of these "western values" I've been hearing so much about.
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.
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.
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
I'm French and actually he's bang on the money, it's entirely about racism under the bullshit cover of "secularity"
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
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.
Props honestly, I definitely have a hard time not digging my heels in
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
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...
Again, this is not racism. There are white Muslims and black christians everywhere in France
From wikipedia:
Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.
Did you know Irish people were considered "not white" at some point in history?
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"
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.
It's not racism, it's just a racism-adjacent form of bigotry. Feeling owned yet, tankie?
Actually, I shot everyone in that refugee camp regardless of religion so I didn't do genocide, just ordinary everyday mass murder
.This was an actual argument that was run in one of the Yugoslav tribunals BTW.
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.
If it's not from the racism region of France than it's just sparkling bigotry
"You can't be racist against Mexicans because it's a country not a race!"
"You can't be racist against Irish Catholics because it's a religion not a race"
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
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
Oh cool, looking forward to this rehashing of the 2017 era "Islam isn't a race, therefore islamophobia has no connection to racism" rhetoric.
I think a better line is that they have school on Fridays but not on Sundays
You're arguing with people from Hexbear. You'd have better luck against a brick wall.
Hexbears: Stronger than brick walls.
You heard it here first folks!
Love to tacitly admit I can't have a conversation if the other person points out things like "why what I said was wrong"
Yeah no shit a brick wall will let you say all the dumb shit you want without pushback
Race is made up. Anything can be a race if you treat it like one. And Muslims are treated like one.
Really disappointing to see this 2012 discourse point brought up by a lemmygrad user. As a communist you should know that race is made up, a social construct with no basis in reality. Any group that is treated like a race is a race within that culture. And Muslims have been racialized in most Western countries, and ESPECIALLY so in France.
"Its not rocket science" actually the subject of race is a pretty complex topic in sociology! Maybe you should read a book or two about it.
I want to ban people from eating tuna mayo sandwiches and rotting shark I'm not racist
In EVIL CEE CEE PEE CHYNA, Muslim children are denied education if they wear their cultural attire to school.
bit idea:
shove this in libs' faces and say "China has already annexed France, it's over"
Yes, let's exempt them from proper education. That'll solve the problem.
"We will forcefully integrate you into our culture by excluding you from our culture"
Genius, what could possibly go wrong.
:its so sad how those savages just refuse to assimilate into our superious culture 😔😔😔
The law covers that also. All visible religious garments are forbidden.
It's so funny to me that so many people in this thread are like "well technically it also applies to christians wearing crosses! So it isn't discriminatory." I guarantee you that a kid wearing a cross won't get in any trouble for it, they certainly won't be sent home. They'd probably be asked to hide it better and let off by the teacher, if anything at all was said.
These kinds of laws are classic examples of laws that are deliberately targeted at specific groups, but worded in a way which technically makes them apply to everyone, with the intent that enforcement will not target the group it wasn't supposed to.
also Christianity doesn't have a commandment about people wearing crosses at all times so it's not an equivalent ask to not wear a cross
It's France they're very xenophobic. Just look at how they treat the Corsicans, Brentons, Basques and Catalans.
Night and day to even a few hundred metres across the road in Spain or Andorra.
As someone who comes from Muslim upbringing, I am 100% against face veils and abayas. But this is very clearly racist. Those girls are the victims, so why punish them even further? France is such a fascist place.
You are correct, this is part of a series of laws over the past decade specifically aimed at muslims in France, and it indeed issues from racism
But also:
Those girls are the victims
lmao, wearing an abaya is not "being a victim", it's a fucking dress
How about just letting the girls wear whatever the fuck they want to wear
I never understood the depth of feeling over this.
In the west there are laws about public indecency which legislate what people may wear outside and these rules demand women wear shirts but do not demand the same of men. We therefore categorically do not culturally believe in the absolute freedom of a person to wear what they will and in fact are arguing a position of where the line is on acceptable dress
In the west there are laws about public indecency which legislate what people may wear outside and these rules demand women wear shirts but do not demand the same of men.
In some western countries, there are ones that do not make a distinction
In the west there are laws about public indecency which legislate what people may wear outside and these rules demand women wear shirts but do not demand the same of men.
Such laws are categorically reactionary and misogynistic, and we should obviously oppose them
so if you're in a mcDonalds you think that a man should just be able to show anyone his dick then because that's what a lack of public indecency laws would entail
I was mostly referring to laws setting different requirements for men and women's clothing in public. However I grew up in a place where it was not unheard of to walk down the street completely naked. It was just something some people did. So I will say that there is a big difference between being naked and deliberately trying to flash your genitals.
dude it's literally a fucking scarf. you are saying you're against people wearing scarves
I am AGAINST women wearing JEANS AND T SHIRTS because they are being OPPRESSED into NOT SHOWING more of their skin in a WONDERFUL and MISOGYNY-FREE alternative such as a BIKINI or THONG
I am not against the abaya itself. I am against women or girls being coerced into any kind of clothing. Unfortunately, most girls wearing abayas are coerced by their families. But again, I am against France coercing clothing onto girls too. What they do is even worse.
Is this a "Islam isnt a race" thing or? Because the these types of laws in France are very clearly targetted towards Muslims and in the west Muslims have been heavily racialized. Races are made up categories so anything can be a race if its treated like one, and muslims are treated like one.
Also France might not technically be "a fascist country" but it has a lot of fascist policies and this would be one.
All the students should start wearing abayas.
It will entirely break down the argument that it's a religious symbol.
While secularism is important for the school as an official institution, the fact that this applies to private persons is absolutely dumb.
literally lmao
Like the school year started three days ago here in
and there have now been several examples of "abaya" dresses being stopped despite not "being abayas"; and the reverse as well (and of course there would be; they're fucking casual dresses, I'm fairly certain you'd get a different answer on whether one is or isn't even from fucking textile experts or something). Often with the deciding factor being the color of the skin of the person wearing it.The whole thing is a racist trip; along with a sadly common recurrent theme in french politics to divert the national attention when other shit is going on
Let me, a smart white man, tell you dumb brown people what your religious garments actually represent
I think its more opresive to force someone to undress in public when they dont want to.
undress in public
That seems like a dishonest wording, suggesting they would be publicly visible while undressing.
The article talks about "change out of". I assume this is done with the normal level of privacy: In a separate room, or a cabin.
Unless the girl in question puts on a similar garment before leaving, the end result is that she ends up undressed in public.
also the french had soldiers on beaches ripping off islamic garments there is no reason to trust they would handle this with any sensitivity whatsoever
Why did you immediately jump to the conclusion that these kids aren’t wearing their abayas voluntarily?
“Gabriel Attal, the education minister, says that no one should walk into a classroom wearing something which could suggest what their religion is.”
I was initially torn on this, but as long as it's for all religions, I support it. I firmly believe that I shouldn't know your religion unless I ask. Religion is toxic.
I do think you should have the freedom to wear religious signifiers as an adult. I just don't approve. But I don't want to stop you. Children in school? This is the same (to me) as requiring them to leave their phones at home.
I was initially torn on this, but as long as it's for all religions, I support it.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread
Yea they made it so nobody could wear religious cultural clothes but there's only one religion that includes wearing those clothes as a belief.
Would you also support a policy that nobody named @some_guy should be allowed to talk, no matter who they are.
Yea they made it so nobody could wear religious cultural clothes but there's only one religion that includes wearing those clothes as a belief
there are multiple such as Islam and Sikhism to give two examples. This law is just an example of religious persecution against religions that don't fit in with the French idea of which religions a French person should have
Your right should have said there's multiple religions it was discriminating against just highlighting how it lines up with Frances history of Islamophobia.
"Just assimilate to Christian culture, Muslims. I'm anti-religion of all kinds, btw."
You are too caught up in liberal abstraction to allow yourself to understand the material reality.
Pure reactionary sophistry. They are not made to go to church, but they still get the Christian Sabbath off but not Muslim Jumu'ah (their equivalent, midday prayer) on Fridays. France is "secular" but it just so happens that the laws of its "secularism" cut in a direction that wildly favors Christianity.
You claim to be a communist, don't you? You should know this quote:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
-- Anatole France
As I said, liberal abstraction that obscures the deliberate material impact of the laws.
I was taking an opportunity to demonstrate a point with what you said, not suggesting that all bread stealing should be legalized.
Your ideology is a joke. "Surely, some girl wearing too baggy a dress will hamper education and heighten religious differences. No, we must teach these children tolerance by socializing them in an environment where we have eliminated any visible deviations from the dominant (liberal Christian) culture. Then, when they go out on the street and see people who look different, they will in fact be more tolerant of people with traits alien to how they were socialized."
Every word you say is just laundering reactionary bullshit under a veil of virtue.
How can you be so far gone that you don't see the Islamophobia all over France as being connected to Christianity?
I'm gonna sound like a real fuckwad, but assimilate.
can't believe you just said "facing persecution for your religious faith simply don't be a member of the religious minority being persecuted"
Wow. So literally saying they should just assimilate, so much for that whole "they have to respect our culture because we respect theirs"
Also yea the third point was stupid, it was to illustrate how dumb your argument was.
Bit then you just came out and admitted to being a bigot and leapfrogging my point.
I am bigoted against religion. I otherwise accept everyone for who they are. I have no shame in taking this stance.
Yea bigots generally aren't shameful about their bigotry they just usually try to tap dance around the word bigot, good for you for being honest I guess.
The point people are trying to make is that it’s not the religion that’s being targeted, but the minority non white culture, and it’s being done in a way to hide its true intent, which you are supporting based on its appearance.
This has nothing to do with secularism and everything to do with punishing and invalidating nonwhite culture
I suspect that you're right and if that's the case, that's terrible. I would support removal of religion from schools simply on the basis that it's the source of most of the world's wars. In the US, I think we should take the gloves off and churches should pay taxes. I detest that it causes people to vote and behave irrationally and is used as a smoke screen to excuse bad behavior. My support for kicking religion out of schools is based in that and does not apply as a tool to suppress non-western peoples.
It's unfortunate that what you're suggesting is probably the real reason. Put me in charge and it really will be because I'm sick of religion in a completely colorblind fashion.
world's wars
You may have a leg to stand on in terms of premodern history, but for the last 150 years most wars have been due to capitalism, not religion. You are not exactly incorrect, but you are in my view taking symptoms as the disease, when we really need to zoom out, religion itself isn't the base level problem, its authoritative structures not derived from the consent and for the betterment of the people, religion is but a powerful historical tool
You're right. I have no argument with your statement other than to say that religion has justified violence on a non-war scale. Take all the violence that has been influenced by religion that isn't a war and factor that in with the wars.
Yes, capitalism is destroying lives, the world, etc. Absolutely.
The thing that I was thinking about last night is if I had one wish that would come true, what would it be? I hate that there are people unhoused. I hate that there are people who are abused. I hate that there is hunger. But to cure all terrible things, I think erasing religion would be the greatest step to removing barriers in finding consensus. I think it's the thing most responsible for dividing people. Tribalism will still exist, but if you removed this all-present motivation from personal interactions and people's sense of morals, I think we'd make progress on all other fronts.
Capitalism is positive to no one’s lives but a vanishingly small % of the smallest % of the world, and does great harm to all others
Religion is integrated into a number of oppressive systems that largely prop up capitalism, but is also neutral for many people.
I definitely don’t disagree that humanity has moved past the need for religion as we have now, and it’s destruction would definitely be a net positive.
The thing is though, destroying capitalism and bringing about communism would also destroy organized religion as it now exists, but the opposite is not true, deleting religion from the world would do almost nothing to change anything for most people.
Palestinians would still be getting genocided by Israel, because it’s not religion that is the cause of that, it’s just a tool for the messaging of the Israeli state, not the actual reason, for one concrete example
Sure, it would probably make the world a better place, but it would not advance humanity much towards a brighter future
We’d just have the current world but instead of division along religious lines, it would be more explicitly along economic or racial/ethnic lines
US Evangelical Christian’s wouldn’t suddenly become good nice people, they’re still vicious racist monsters, the way they talk about the people they hate and dehumanize would simply be slightly different words
Organized religion like Catholicism is an undebatably malignant social entity, but religion in general? I think Marx has it completely right:
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
When he calls it "the opium of the people" he doesn't mean "they do it recreationally and it kills them," he means "though it hampers them, it anesthetizes pain inflicted on them from without". If you want humanity to be free of religion rather than merely having an atheistic upper class be free of needing to see the rabble practice religion (by persecuting the latter), then the primary answer is not to legislate against religion but to legislate against the problems that, in turn, drive people to religion. It can be difficult to accept, but whether it matches your personal experience or not, religion serves useful social functions, just as opium serves useful medical functions (whatever else we may rightly say about both). If you want to get rid of religion, you need to do the good that it does better than it. If you want the oppressed creature not to sigh, end its oppression. To simply stifle its sigh is to strangle it.
Great response. I'd counter that fear of death will still provide a gateway to religion, but there's nothing else with which I'd quibble. Cheers!
Well if we look at the Romans, Assyrians, British, French, and Germans and their wars it's abundantly clear that most of their wars were for the aquisition of wealth. The vast majority of wars even in the middle ages were openly about arguments between noble families over land
You're discounting the Protestant Reformation and Crusades, not to mention all other wars for religion. Yes, people fight for territory and resources. People also fight for a fictional man in the sky.
yeah if you discount all the secular motives behind the wars of the reformation as well. The French have basically always been trying to keep Germany down as Germany's large population worries them financially and militarily. Henry the 8th didn't convert for religious reasons he converted because he needed a strong male heir to keep the plantagenots at bay and the pope wouldn't let him annul his marriage to Catharine of Aragon who kept having stillbirths
I would support removal of religion from schools simply on the basis that it's the source of most of the world's wars.
This is false. It was used as the pretext for most of the world's wars, just as secular equality is used as the pretext for this law, but the actual cause of those and virtually all wars lies in material motivations (land, resources, etc), just as the true objective of the law is to forcibly assimilate minorities.
My North African grandfather lost a leg to untreated necrosis defending that gallic shithole from nazism, they can go assimilate his rotted leg
In the Americas there were schools for native American children where they forced them to dress, eat, speak, and behave "properly" and not practice their religion. The goal was to eliminate their culture and make them homogeneously American or Canadian. (They also killed a fucking ton) This sort of nationalism has generally been looked back on as a mistake and a horrible atrocity. Why should it be acceptable towards other religious groups?
These kids aren't being taken from their families. They aren't being forced to give up their religion in their homes. These are not the same. This isn't about "other religious groups." It's all religions while at school, and I'm fine with that.
The goal is to replace religion with nationalism, which isn't an admirable goal. They may not literally say it out loud, but it's pretty obvious.
I'm not in support of nationalism. I don't know if what you said is accurate or not. I simply approve of keeping religion out of schools.
This is like the democrats who applaud gun control even when it is used with surgical precision to prevent black communities from defending themselves from police violence. "I don't support police violence, I simply approve of gun control".
as requiring them to leave their phones at home
you can't just leave religion and culture at the door and freedom of conscience isn't a right only adults are entitled to nor is it comparable to playing on your phone
Are kids meaningfully capable of exercising their freedom of conscience though
arguably not but you could also make that argument in favour of all children being forced to wear islamic dress.
yes religious parents put their finger on the scale of the kids decision but so do non-religious parents with regards to their kids religious views that's just how raising children within a culture works. It's not a lifetime commitment the same freedom of conscience that means they have a right to practice their faith also means they have a right to abandon it if once they are older they change their minds.
ols can and should seek to eliminate these kinds of cultural differences within the student body because it teaches kids to segregate themselves, that's why school uniforms are generally a good thing.
school uniforms are a good thing but exemptions to uniform rules on religious grounds have been a long recorded tradition. When the British forced sepoys to use cartridges that meant they had to partially consume beef and pork fat were the Indians wrong to compain or were the British merely removing cultural differences between the Muslims, Hindus, and British.
I don't want religion in schools, outside that, you're still free to practice what you want, but keep religion out of education. France got this one right
An abaya isn't religious, they're just worn in places that are usually Muslim and often worn by Muslims. This is racist discrimination.
even if it was religious (which it partially is) muslims have a right to practice their faith. Keep religion out of education is a slogan that means don't let religious groups control the content of educational content but has been coopted in this thread to mean "don't allow children the right to practice their parents faith"
I agree with the first point, and I think if they want to promote secularism (which is good) they should go about it by educating people in philosophy and logical reasoning as an additional class. Although, I still feel saying 'practice their parents' faith' is problematic. I don't think any kid should be taught that one religion is true since they can't really logically think or reason and are very emotionally immature, at least before being a teenager. The indoctrination of young children is very damaging and much harder to get out of. This goes for any ideology, but religion especially since belief is based only on faith. They can wear what they want ofc, but there is also a problem with acting like religion can't be criticised. However, here the way they went about it is just unproductive.
if they want to promote secularism (which is good)
you mean athiesm. Secularism is when you don't take any stance about what people should believe.
and you can't just have parents not involve their children in their religious belief even athiest parents involve their children in their beliefs on religion
Do they ban other forms of religious expression? Crosses/crucifixes? Yarmulke/kippah?
Or is it just Islamic symbols?From what I've read they ban all of it. Granted I don't live there nor do I see it in practice, but they've mentioned it in a few articles.
I read up on it a bit more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_conspicuous_religious_symbols_in_schools
It seems like regulations on religious attire are selectively applied. Small crosses and stars of David, some variations of Sikh turbans, Fatima's hands are acceptable and the final decision is left up to school headmasters.
It also sounds like the legislators who created it specifically intended to target Muslim headdress.
It's one thing to keep religion out of education. It seems that they're disproportionately concerned about suprsesssing Islam in their schools.
Ah, thanks for the link. Yes, they're definitely in the wrong if there's even an iota of selective enforcement.
I want to be very careful around judging the intentions of people who live 5000 miles away and speak a language I don't understand. There's a lot of room to misunderstand people's intentions.
But from what I can see, it's looking like there's an intentional bias.
France is so impartial towards Muslims, they even do their nuclear tests in unconsenting Muslim countries!
Cross, Star of David, Hand of Fatima, Om, etc.
Pretty much anything associated to (especially monotheistic) religion is a no go.
School in France is strongly Laic, and while it may vary from teacher to teacher (esp. with small symbols - earrings or pendants, etc - and discrete signs - triskelion, wheel of dharma, etc), obvious religious attire will definitely get you in trouble. It's like entering a bank with your motorcycle helmet on: its color doesn't matter, people will assume you are ill intended.
People tend to really forget that the defining event for the French republic, the Revolution, was as much about the church as it was about the nobility. And while the French society has regrettably become corrupt with an ever increasing tolerance to the return of nobility, it has fortunately retained a much more rigid stance towards religion. Religion is a personal affair. Once you start making it a public affair, be prepared for very public consequences.
not sure how the way you choose to dress isn't a private affair
so you have freedom to tell others how to dress and which religious beliefs they can practice but others do not have freedom to dress as they will or practice their religion got it
No. You set limits. I understand your confusion if all you know is authoritarianism, but "setting limits" is actually diametrically opposed to "forcing". Setting limits is literally how any fair society functions, literally how to educate, etc. Also, punctuation exists.
setting limits on whether or not minority ethnic groups are allowed to practice harmless and innocuous aspects of their faith. Which are enforced by being denied education if they don't comply.
Call it what you want but these limits are in violation of the UN recognised rights of freedom of conscience and the right to education
you're the one who wants to tell the teacher on islam
we have enforced dress on a gendered basis in our society
