Secular schools
No abaya in the state schools.
The French education minister has said that nearly 300 pupils arrived at school on Monday wearing the abaya, the long Muslim robe which was banned in schools last week.
Not just pupils; female pupils. It’s so BBC to omit that from the lede.
Most of the girls agreed to change into other clothes.
According to official figures, 298 girls – mainly aged 15 or more – turned up at school in the banned garment. Under instructions laid down by the ministry, there followed in each case a period of dialogue with school staff.
67 girls refused and were sent home. Next step is dialogue with the families; if that fails the girls will be excluded.
It’s difficult, because that’s bad for the excluded girls, and there’s always the worry about xenophobia, religious freedom, all that. On the other hand the whole idea that post-puberty female humans have to be treated as a dangerous contaminant is bad for every girl and woman in France and for that matter the world.
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.
The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools. The garment is being increasingly worn in schools, leading to a political divide over them, with right-wing parties pushing for a ban while those on the left have voiced concerns for the rights of Muslim women and girls.
But it’s a peculiar kind of “right” of women and girls to be extinguished like a candle just because they’re women and girls.
In 2010, France banned the wearing of full-face veils in public, provoking anger in France’s five million-strong Muslim community.
As usual, the BBC words it in such a way as to nudge us into thinking all French Muslims are Islamists.
I’ve known quite a few Muslims here, and apart from the occasional veil, I rarely see any overt sign of being Muslim. Which is good, because such things would cause clashes with the students wearing crosses. I would like to see those go, too.
I see much overt religious symbolism as a sign of aggression, in a sense. Christian t-shirts that say “bow now or bow later”, for instance, are an obvious threat…even if that is interpreted as after life threat. It’s hostility. And that goes for a lot of symbolism, even that which seems benign. Religious symbols are meant to do just that…symbolize who you are, and that you are in the right and everyone else is wrong. Even for a religion not known for violence, there is a sense of “I’m chosen, you’re not”.
Schools are for learning, not for praying.
Most French Muslims are Islamists though; most Muslims are Islamists. Fluffy liberal Muslims like Hasan Minaj are fucking weird and usually end up as ex-Muslims instead since you’ve got to apply a Protestant level of scriptural denial to be a non-Islamist.
That said, if you can ban these articles of clothing, you should (at least until they become optional, say in a hundred years time perhaps). Would never fly in the US but I can’t help admiring France’s laicite…
BKiSA @2: I’m not sure it’s fair to say “Most French [or other Western] Muslims are Islamists”, if you mean by that individuals who wish to impose sharia law on their current nation, or advocate for the establishment of a Caliphate, or whatever. Sure, the Muslims that fit that bill are highly visible, but I think that, while dedicatedly liberal Muslims might be rare, I’ve seen plenty of Muslims in the U.S. who just go about their business and don’t think much about it except during holy days and services. (I’m not saying Islamists are a rare breed, but declaring them a literal majority, especially when talking about subdivisions such as particular nationalities, could have the effect of giving them more power than their numbers would justify.)
On the bans, I’m always torn. While I understand the impulse, I am concerned about the fallout. Those 68 girls who refused to the point of getting sent home? They’re precisely the ones most in need of exposure to outside influences, which historically has been the best way to break anyone out of a conservative religious mindset. Treating them as pariahs, unwelcome at the school at all, simply makes them more vulnerable to the indoctrination and programming they get at home. (As has been noted many times, some religious groups–Mormons, Jehova’s Witnesses–actually ~encourage~ their members to engage in behavior that induces social rejection from outsiders, specifically to better isolate them.)
I don’t think that is true of the (many) Muslims that I know. The imam of the Great Mosque of Paris made the point on a programme that my wife watches on Sundays that requiring women to wear the abaya, or hijab, etc., has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a political question, not a religious one. The imam of the Great Mosque of Bordeaux has said much the same thing. We don’t have a Great Mosque in Marseilles, which is a bit anomalous in view of the large Muslim population.
MEMRI, and other reporters, are constantly engaged exposing the difference between what ‘community leaders’ say in public in French/English/German, and what they say in Arabic/Turkish/Farsi/Hebrew to their own audience.
Competitive veiling is hardly a real universal tradition in Islam. Neither is it reasonable to claim that 12-15 year old girls are ‘choosing to express their idennity’ by vanishing into a sea of cloth. Maybe we should recognize social contagion in more fields than we do now.