France Announces Ban on Islamic Abayas in Schools
"Abayas won't be allowed anymore in schools", France's new education minister Gabriel Attal declared late on Sunday.
Attal said 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," the minister 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.
The ban had been spearheaded by the right and far-right political elite, despite an argument by the left asserting that it would encroach on individuals' religious freedoms and civil liberties.
Clementine Autain of the left-wing opposition France Unbowed party denounced the move as the "policing of clothing."
Attal's announcement was "unconstitutional" and against the founding principles of France's secular values, and a sign of the government's "obsessive rejection of Muslims," she argued.
The French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has also said data-x-items of clothing alone were not "a religious sign."
Source: Agencies
