By Rumki Chowdhury
Only recently, did we hear about a French journalist who called out Moroccan footballer, Nouhaila Benzina, and her choice of wearing hijab during the FIFA World Cup, as “regressive.” However, FIFA lifted the hijab ban in 2014.
The only thing regressive is going back to the days of colonialism and segregation, which people have fought so hard against and still find themselves battling to preserve. The 1960’s civil rights movement in America, for one, fought the segregated “Coloreds Only” signs on bathroom doors, school doors and hospital doors, among other public sectors. With the French government’s ruling on the “abaya ban” for students in state schools, perhaps this is heading toward or rather…heading backward: “Muslims Only?”
The abaya is a long-sleeved, ankle-length, loose-fitting dress so how does one know the difference between a normal maxi dress compared to an abaya? There’s only one way, really…the hijab. As long as a woman is wearing a modest dress with a hijab, she is scrutinized by the French Police.
According to sources including Al Jazeera, to enforce a ban on abayas in the classrooms of public schools, 14,000 educational personnel are expected to be trained by the end of the year and 300,000 by 2025. Meanwhile, Loubna Regui, President of the ELF-Muslim Students of France, tells Al Jazeera that the ban clearly targets immigrants and is “inherently racist.” She is not alone in that opinion; according to France24, Clementine Autain of the left-wing opposition France Unbowed Party, denounced the ban describing it as “policing of clothing,” “unconstitutional” and against the founding principles of France’s secular values; she goes on to say it is an “obsessive rejection of Muslims.” The founding principles that Autain refers to are part of a declaration at the top of the French Constitution: “The French Republic is indivisible, secular, democratic and social.”
Who was it that proposed this ban? Gabriel Attal is his name. He is a French politician of the Renaissance Party who served, since July, 2023, as Minister of National Education and Youth under Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
“When you enter a classroom, you should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion by looking at them,” Attal told the TF1 television channel on Sunday, August 28, 2023. According to Attal, the abaya is “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.”
In response, The French Council of the Muslim Faith released a statement that the abaya is not a religious garment and that the government should not take it upon themselves to decide what is considered religious and what is not: “Unless all long dresses are banned altogether in schools, for students and teachers, regardless of their faith, it will be impossible to apply a measure specifically targeting the abaya without falling into the trap of discrimination and arbitrariness.”
Reuters, News18 and Al-Jazeera have quoted French sociologist, Agnes De Feo, who said, “It’s going to hurt Muslims in general. They will, once again, feel stigmatized. It’s really a shame because people will judge these young girls while it (the abaya) is a teenage expression without consequences.”
France is the first Western country to have started banning clothing and successfully so. It all began with the burkini, then the burqa, then hijab and now abaya. Other countries have followed in France’s footsteps including Switzerland and Germany. As of July 15, 2021, the Highest Court of the European Union banned hijab in the workplace; this means that an employer is legally permitted to dismiss any employee who has refused to remove the hijab when asked to do so.
“The abaya has no place in our schools, no more than religious symbols,” proclaimed Attal. “Schools must, at all costs, perhaps even more than any other institution, be protected from religious proselytism, from any embryo of communitarianism, or from the refusal of our most important common rules.”
Attal faces the challenge of distinguishing an abaya from a maxi dress, a risk of seeming discriminatory and breaking the four principles that the French Republic are expected to uphold and the misconception that an abaya is a religious garment when it is really a cultural one.
Sources:
–https://www.cbsnews.com/news/france-ban-islamic-abaya-pupils-attempt-convert-islam/
https://twitter.com/CfcmOfficiel/status/1696098111645454444
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/world/europe/france-ban-abaya-robes-schools.html
https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/28/france-abaya-ban-how-far-will-clothes-police-go
About the Author:
Rumki Chowdhury is Editor of World Hijab Day Organization. Moreover, she is a professional editor and an award-winning published author and poet. She has an MA in English Literature from Queen Mary University of London, a BA in English Writing from William Paterson University of New Jersey and an English Subject Teaching Degree from Gävle Högskolan in Stockholm, Sweden. She speaks Bengali and Swedish fluently! She has years of experience in the media and publishing worlds. Rumki lives with her husband and their three daughters.
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