(CN) — Dozens of French girls were sent home after they showed up for the first day of school on Monday wearing the abaya, a loose-fitting long robe worn mostly by Muslim women, the education minister said on Tuesday.
The French government recently announced that wearing an abaya would no longer be permitted in public schools because the garment allegedly violates the country's strict secularism laws, which do not allow the display of religious symbols in classrooms.
In a television interview on Tuesday, Gabriel Attal, the French minister of education, said 298 of France's 12 million students showed up Monday wearing abayas and 67 were sent home after they refused to remove the robes.
“We also gave a letter to their families explaining that secularism is not a constraint, it's a freedom,” the minister said on BFMTV, a French broadcaster.
The abaya is being banned under a 2004 French law that forbids students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in primary and secondary state schools. The ban also applies to boys wearing the khamis, a long robe worn by Muslim men. The 2004 law already forbids students from wearing large Christian crosses and Jewish yarmulkes.
On Tuesday, the Council of State, France's high court overseeing administrative justice, examined a challenge to the law brought by a Muslim civil rights group, the Action Droits des Musulmans. The high court was expected to issue a decision on the constitutionality of the law soon.
The abaya ban has become the latest flash point in a long-running debate over the place of Muslims in France, which has been traumatized by a series of terrorist attacks in recent years. But many Muslims say they suffer from racism and discrimination. Racial tensions erupted in France in June when riots broke out following the killing by police of a teenage driver with North African roots.
In 2016, Muslim students were banned from wearing veils in state primary and secondary schools, and in 2010, Muslims were forbidden from wearing full-face coverings in public.
Many French see the bans as safeguarding their country's strong secular traditions. A recent poll for BFMTV found that 71% of respondents favored banning the abaya in schools, with only 16% disapproving.
Attal said counselors will speak with the families of students who refuse to take off their abayas. He predicted the banned students will return to school because they must attend by law. But critics warn the ban will drive students into hard-core private Islamic schools.
The ban is controversial not only because it restricts personal freedom and may lead to racial profiling, but also because many Muslims view abayas and khamis as cultural and fashion expressions and not strictly as religious garments.
“It's extremely weak on a legal level,” said Rim-Sarah Alouane, a legal scholar at the University Toulouse Capitole, during a debate on France 24, a French public broadcaster. “It is not the role of the state to decide what is religious or not. You refer to religious authorities.”
Meanwhile, the abaya controversy is sparking debate about reintroducing school uniforms in France. Attal said he would present plans this autumn to possibly allow schools to try out uniform policies.
Uniforms stopped being obligatory in French schools in 1968, but discussion of their reintroduction has returned amid an outcry over the decline of discipline in schools.
“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.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has made defending France's secularism laws a centerpiece of his government. He's been pushed in this direction due to the rise of far-right anti-immigrant forces, led by the National Rally's Marine Le Pen, and by deep anger in France over horrific terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists.
In past speeches, he's declared Islam a troubled religion around the world and warned that France's core values are being undermined by “Islamic separatism.”
His government has instituted crackdowns on radical Islamic groups and sought to stamp out what he perceives as a “counter-society” of Muslims who refuse to join French life and demand France adapt to their beliefs by serving halal food at school cafeterias and separating men and women at public swimming pools.
In an interview Monday for the YouTube channel HugoDécrypte, Macron defended the abaya ban and said the beheading of Samuel Paty played a part in his government's decision. Paty was killed in October 2020 by an Islamic extremist outraged over the teacher's decision to use controversial images of the Prophet Mohammed in a freedom of expression class.
“We live in our society where a minority of people are hijacking a religion and challenge the republic and secularism,” Macron said.
He said he didn't want to make a “parallel” between Islamic extremists and the abaya, before adding that “the issue of secularism in our school is a deep issue.”
France puts strong emphasis on the principle of laïcité, the French word for secularism. In France, perhaps unlike anywhere else in the world, secularism carries with it a deep, powerful and complicated symbolic meaning. It's a central pillar in French society and it rests on the idea that every citizen — regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender — is equal.
In pursuit of a “color-blind republic,” France does not recognize ethnic and racial differences. It is illegal for the government to gather information about a person's ethnicity or religion. This policy was written into the post-World War II constitution in response to the Vichy regime’s role in identifying and deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
For this reason, it is also impossible to know exactly how many Muslims live in France. Estimates range between 3 million and 6 million (or between 4.5% and 9% of the total population); regardless, France has the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe.
But many question whether this policy model is actually contributing to the discrimination and injustices faced by French Muslims, who often find their cultural differences under attack for allegedly breaching France's sacred laïcité.
“Laïcité has been weaponized since the 1990s,” said Alouane, the legal scholar.
“I think France has a problem with change,” she added. “France is in denial with the fact that it's becoming a diverse country.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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