French training minister proclaims ban on Islamic costume in colleges – POLITICO

PARIS — French Training Minister Gabriel Attal introduced on Sunday that France will ban the Islamic garment generally known as the abaya in colleges.

“The college of the Republic was constructed round sturdy values, secularism is considered one of them. … Once you enter a classroom, you shouldn’t be capable of establish the faith of pupils,” Attal mentioned in an interview with French TV channel TF1.

“I announce that [pupils] will now not be capable of put on abaya at college,” he mentioned.

The abaya is a protracted, flowing costume generally worn by Muslim girls because it complies with Islamic beliefs on modest costume — nevertheless it’s additionally worn by different communities in North Africa and the Center East. In 2004, France banned non secular symbols in colleges, together with giant crosses, Jewish kippahs and Islamic headscarves. However the abaya occupies a grey zone and hasn’t particularly been banned.

Attal, who was appointed in July, introduced that he would lead talks within the coming weeks earlier than issuing new “clear nationwide guidelines” for colleges.

The give attention to abayas follows a reported improve in ladies carrying Islamic clothes in French colleges, in a development that some say is a violation of the nation’s secularist values. Final month, President of the Nationwide Meeting Yaël Braun-Pivet, who’s a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance social gathering, known as for “a completely secular state faculty” the place there’s “no ramadan, no abaya, no ostentatious non secular indicators.”

Whereas some politicians had been calling for brand new laws to ban non secular costume, it seems the federal government will merely give faculty principals new pointers.

Secularism in French colleges has at all times been a hot-button matter with supporters claiming that faith, and Islam specifically, has been encroaching on the general public house. Critics, then again, keep that non secular minorities face discrimination in a traditionally Christian nation.

Tensions over training and faith worsened in 2020 when a radicalized Chechen refugee beheaded a French instructor who had proven caricatures of the prophet Mohammad at school.