Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said.
The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.
I’m not very comfortable with these type of bans.
People say women shouldn’t be forced to wear certain items of clothing and deal with it by forcing them to wear different items of clothing.
Doesn’t seem very productive.
I always think of that meme with a women in full body coverings and a women wearing a bikini and they’re both thinking about how awful it is that society pressures women to dress like the other.
Playing the advocate of the devil: the reason given is clearly stated as not being about being forced to wear anything, but about a general ban on religious signs in state schools. For example I imagine wearing a Christian cross around your neck is also banned.
A consistently enforced bad law is still a bad law. All consistently means is that everyone has to suffer.
Yeah, I simply stated what reason was given for the ban by the minister, which the comment above me seems to have read over.
Yep. Yarmulkes are also banned, and I wouldn’t be able to wander around the school with my 9 pointed star necklace or ring, even though NO ONE knows what they mean.
Still, schools shouldn’t be able to dictate how people can dress as long as they cover their genitals and their clothes aren’t dangerous.
Eh, maybe… In my public, absolutely standard highschool we still had a dress code, you couldn’t have bare legs or excessively low collars
I seriously doubt it. And I’m sure if it is, no one enforces it.
Edit: y’all can vote me down all day, but the law says “ostentacious religious insignia,” and I’m sure a little cross has been overlooked many times.
Maybe you should be less confident about things you don’t know. In this particular regard, the French are quite consistent.
It’s difficult to say whether someone is wearing what they are wearing through choice or because it is demanded of them.
I agree with you, demanding that they wear something else is not the answer.
Especially when they’re kids. People should be able to wear whatever they want. But kids don’t often get to choose what they want. They’re often at the mercy of what their parents want and that’s it.
There’s also something to be said about pressure from family members. Even if the kid chose to wear something, did they really do so out of their own free will? Or because their parents said they’ll burn in hell for all eternity if they don’t?
And it’s not like we’re talking about something like simple taste in clothing or mild culture differences. We’re talking about clothes that are drenched in misogyny. It’s not about literal clothing in a vacuum, but rather what those clothes imply about women as a whole.
Then you’re just replacing the oppressor with the state.
Let children wear what they want.
It’s not the point of the ban. You shouldn’t wear any religious signs. It’s the same as banning christian cross (which is obviously already banned since years and years)
I always think of that meme with a women in full body coverings and a women wearing a bikini and they’re both thinking about how awful it is that society pressures women to dress like the other.
Equating the pressure of society, at large, when you’re an independent adult, and the pressure of your parents, when you’re still under their authority is not fair.
It’s the same reasoning behind pride parades and banning hate speech. Right wingers will hide behind “free choice” to spread their oppression of women and to shelter their children from progressive ideology, therefore we must forcibly expose them to tolerant viewpoints in the name of equity.
I agree that it will not be effective in reducing the amount of these types of robes that will be worn. But it will be effective in reducing the visibility of this particular religious clothing, and thus the religion itself. We (everyone everywhere) already ban lots of clothing styles, there are minimums you have to attain. can’t have nipples or genitalia showing, and even though that might sound nitpicky, I’m from team #freethechest and having a covered chest is something I personally do not think should be required. It’s just nipples/boobs, everyone should just grow up and let it fly
Neither have these families I would imagine. How common is that in France?
Well, that’s called an honor killing. For a start, This article defines that concept in detail (which I tell you to forewarn that I’m immune to sealioning about the definition), has tables of trends, and has credible sources at the bottom. Honor killings, also known as shame killings, have attracted the attention of the EU as a major issue to be solved as a consequence of their spread. I can’t find a lot of data related to France specifically, but I do know the French consider their country to have a Femicide problem in general, and it’s reasonable to expect that if the total number of women being murdered is on the rise, the raw number of honor killings is climbing even if the proportion remains fixed.
I get this completely. This is nothing new for France, they have been blocking Christians from wearing crosses and Jews from wearing kippah’s for a very long time, it’s only reasonable that the Muslim population gets treated equally. Schools should remain completely secular, I am in complete agreement with France there.
Except abayas are basically just some loose-fitting clothes that can be worn by anyone regardless their religion. It’s like banning kimono or sari.
If it’s just an outfit and not religious clothes than there should be no problem, right?
It’s still targeting ethnicities. There’s no denying that these bans have a racial component to it.
No problem meaning they shouldn’t care about not being able to wear it? Or that the French government shouldn’t care in the first place?
How people dress is none of the government’s business. This is just authoritarism.
Except when you want it, because you like it when you don’t see other people’s genitalia. Then it suddenly is the governments bussiness. In this case it’s even just for during your attendance at a public school.
Public indecency laws are more of a hygiene issue. Making religious clothes or jewelry illegal to wear at school sits very weird with me.
Whoever people sleep or get married with is none of anyone’s business, but Muslims are against homosexuality.
Funny, I know Muslims who aren’t against gays but they still wear headscarves. Maybe it’s more complex than the Saudi policy line?
Also, are you saying authoritarian government is good if they only discriminate against people you don’t like? I guess that’s something an Auth would say…
They banned crosses for Christians because they ban Muslim headwear. They had to do something for Christian or it would have been the most obvious racism.
Read the article. Crosses have been banned for a long time, before the Muslim headwear.
I’m not sure I like this. I sort of get not allowing religious symbols to be worn, but you’re forcing people to dress in a certain way. I don’t think the government should be able to do that
This is where I landed. They should simply continue to permit children to remove it at school if they choose, while they are under the guardianship of the state.
I feel like conflicted is the “correct” way to feel. On one hand, the government is literally enforcing clothing laws. On the other hand, this may prevent children from being forced into something they did not choose. I feel like a religion wrapping up your child in cloth so they lose their individually as a human being is cult-like behavior.
It would be better if the religion just wasn’t allowed to make them do this, but then they would just “suggest” women do this. This “suggestion” of course is actually coercion at best.
It’s a dress. It isn’t a headscarf or something. It’s just a loose dress.
The accompanying image appears to be showing a head covering? I am visually impaired though so correct me if I’m wrong.
France has been enforcing secularism since the turn of the 20th century. If you turn up with a turban, or a yarmulke, or a cross you’d be sent home too. If parents feel so aggrieved that the state disallows religious symbolism & clothing on state property they can send their kids to a private school.
I never felt like there was much of a point for them. It was annoying for my family because we always had to buy specific clothes for school
The whole point nowadays is to stop kids being bullied for not being able to afford the “right” clothes; that’s part of the point of this law too
I’m not against it, honestly. I have seen the pros and cons of each. We had a loose dress code at my school but no uniforms, and style of dress certainly became one mode of division among students. Rich kids, poor kids, athletes, nerds, etc. were all separated by dress.
I’m not the biggest fan of conformity, but uniform dress codes allow the students to basically be at a level playing field as far as visual expression goes. I’ve worked in schools with uniforms and the students there seem to prefer not having to put any thought into what they wear.
I get you, but… isn’t religion supposed to be a free decision? you’re agreeing to their terms and conditions (I know, I know, you can stop the laugh track).
You really believe that families religious enough to force their kids to wear certain clothes would accept that they renounce their religion?
As for religion you have the choice to follow it or not, and following it comes with the burden of wearing certain things but you can choose to not follow that religion whenever you want if you want to dress differently. In a public school you should be able to choose what you wear, because you pretty much have to go to school.
I agree with this. But my girlfriend would certainly not. We’re in France and yet the pressure of her family on religion makes it that even on point she doesn’t care much about, there is so much behind her that it’s a real real pressure to respect the religion, which is hard to sometimes imagine, and to me an atheist seems ridiculous, you should make your own choices, well, for her, simply because of the people she is with. Not following certain religious rules can cost her a lot. Economically or Mentally for exemple
The especially dumb part of this is that abayas aren’t specifically Muslim or religious in nature, they’re cultural. They are a long flowing dress, without even a head covering. A bunch of non-Islamic women wear them in a variety of countries.
So this is more attempting to ban entire cultural outfits, which is ridiculous.
You forgot to mention that the abaya is compulsory in Saudi Arabia (except for tourists) and Qatar.
And that’s bad. Can we agree that making a dress compulsory and making a dress banned are both bad, because they both restrict choice?
For context, the French are very strict about any form of symbol on what students wear. I couldn’t even wear a baseball cap with a team logo and that’s not religious.
Lol what the only reason they could prevent you from wearing a cap is because it’s considered ‘rude’ to keep your hat inside classroom. A private school can do whatever they want and force student to wear uniforme but in public school you can wear whatever you want except specific banned religious symbole (cross, kippa, headscarf etc…)
They just want to have a rule that doesn’t discriminate against any specific religion. Public schools have whatever rules the Government has elected. We had a weird mix between the local Government rules (mandatory uniform) plus the French public school rules (no outer religious symbols).
I am mildly in favor of that. Kids can’t decide what to wear it’s their parents who do.
This will simply reduce the artificial divide between those wear that type of stuff and who doesn’t.
I also don’t believe it’s a freedom endangering, because they’re aren’t spontaneously people wearing abayas or burka or whatever just for the pleasure of it, I interpret the fact of wearing it as religious propaganda and artificial separation.
I don’t know the law in France, but I’d worry it’ll cause religious parents to just keep their kids out of state school and do some form of private religious education, causing a greater divide. The best counter to these attitudes is exposure to diversity and other viewpoints. Maybe the kids going to school and seeing that there are other ways is better.
“Maybe the kids going to school and seeing there are other ways is better”. Yeah, but they aren’t the ones deciding how they dress. They parents are the ones that do.
Of course. And if the parents dress them in that and keep them isolated the kids will pass that on to the next generation. If the kids go to school and see there are other options, maybe they’ll choose to be different when they’re independent or raise their kids differently. This is why cults always seek to isolate their members – exposure to diversity breaks the cycle.
Nah, girls just won’t be sent to schools.
This will be “the last straw” for many of their fathers.
Some will go, and their parents will begrudgingly accept (or turn a blind eye to their daughter dressing down as soon as she’s near school.). The majority reaction will be similar to what you see in other nations that don’t respect women enough to let them keep their autonomy.
That’ll get the fathers at least 6 months in prison in France, probably more for negligence etc.
And homeschooling requires a very good reason why they can’t go to school (pretty much always a health condition, and that needs proof) there are annual inspections and every other year the reason for homeschooling is verified.
can you explain why other people wearing culturally traditional clothing is “religious propaganda and artificial separation”? do you feel this way about other traditional garb, or is it just the scary muslims?
Yes i can explain. Literally nobody else does it. And if someone would, then my position will be the same: wear regular clothes in public institutions.
i think enforcing the local culture by telling women what they can and cannot wear is bad, actually
can you explain why you disagree with that stance
What about the Jews and their Yamakas? The Catholics and their Rosary? Other religions have certain dress codes and accessories, too. They are just not always a full body covering.
I would hope that schools in France ban other religious items like those if they are banning Muslim clothing and accessories.
If there was a uniform at school it would be different. Here it’s fashion police. Specifically targeted at Arab culture.
It’s an atheist theocracy. Also called fascism.
It’s obviously targeted, but at religion not a specific ethnic group. Moreover, that law will make those pupils look like anyone else, so if anything, this will reduce the stigma
It’s not targeted at religion because it’s not a religious dress. Ergo it’s a culture that’s targeted and it’s blatant racism.
Stigmatising people for their culture or religion never integrate them.
We should teach fascists how to read what’s written on our townhall though.
