France will ban children from wearing the abaya – the loose-fitting, full-length robe worn by some Muslim women – in state-run schools. French education minister Gabriel Attal made the declaration on a TV channel interview.
“When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them,” the minister said.
“Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” he continued, describing the abaya as “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the Republic towards the secular sanctuary that school must constitute”.
France has enforced a strict ban on religious signs in state schools since 19th-century laws removed any traditional Catholic influence from public education. But it struggled to update guidelines to deal with a growing Muslim minority, Al Jazeera reported.
In 2004, France banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools. This ban included large crosses and Jewish kippas as well as Islamic headscarves.
In 2010, it passed a ban on full-face veils in public, angering many of its five million-strong Muslim community.
The French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone were not “a religious sign”.
