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.
Why are government officials all-powerful and all-weak at the same time? Funny how that works. The law is dumb, problematic, impossible to enforce? Hands are tied. The law makes sense and easy to perform? Selectively enforced if at all.
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.
Baha’i?
Yes, but did you know that before looking it up? Also we aren’t the only ones to use the symbol, just the latest.
I admit I did not. I appreciate you sharing your anecdote, I learned something new today thanks to you.
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
And here in sweden the justice system has to dole out yearly reminders to schools that dressing freely is protected by the constitution, and dress codes or uniforms are literally illegal.
That’s….amazing tbh
That’s amazing, why don’t we have something like this in Germany
God that sounds dreadful. I used to get mocked outside of school for wearing poor clothes when I was young. Imagine having to deal with that literally all the time.
Yeah here in sweden we have welfare so everyone can afford basics like that.
We have welfare too. Doesn’t change the fact that people on welfare aren’t regularly buying expensive clothing. Same goes for Sweden.
i thought you meant that they had ragged clothes, people don’t really flaunt expensive clothes that much here.
any bad treatment in schools here is generally just down to kids having bad home environments and taking it out on those they percieve as weaker, or kids having undiagnosed autism/adhd and having trouble with being social so they just sorta get forgotten about.
You don’t generally get bullied for being poor here because you don’t generally really notice that people are poor, and with high living standards there simply ends up being less bullying.
I’m really sorry to hear you have that experience that sounds awful, the concept of poor clothes doesn’t exist everywhere though so I’m not really sure what to say, I really wish I could’ve worn whatever I liked at school since I had to wear coats in summer at the cost of my health (my skin kinda sucks ngl) and the uniform they asked us to buy was so expensive and ill fitting. Again, you’ve got a different experience and I respect that.
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.
It is 100% banned. Any religious apparel or trinkets are banned.
No it isn’t. The 2004 law banned “large” crosses and allowed small ones but banned ALL hijabs.
It was never equally enforced.
Allowed small ones, obscured by clothing.
A necklace under your shirt is fine. That applies as equally to a cross as it does to an islamic moon and star.
They just aren’t allowed to be massive so that they’re visible even under some clothing.
The law is already unequal and discriminatory and that’s before we even get to the unequal enforcement. Muslims are sent home from school while Christians are not for the same rule violations (e.g. Christians in France who observe Ash Wednesday).
Don’t you think it’s culturally biased? The norm for Christians is a small cross necklace. The norm for Muslims is not. Isn’t it quite convenient that the exception fits well with one religion but not the other?
Actually,
Up for debate.
Maybe you should be less confident about things you don’t know. In this particular regard, the French are quite consistent.
That’s the law. That’s pretty vague. So, I’m pretty confident not everyone is enforcing a tiny cross necklace.
If I was a French teenager I would wear a cross to school and claim it was a T.
Just wear all the symbols and say you’re being inclusive.
Coexisting like a stone cold mother fucker.
Is this a “Brave New World” reference?
If you’re going to copy and paste something several times, and are representing it as a quotation from law, maybe spell-check it? Also, I think there are good arguments to be made on both sides of this issue, but comparing an inconspicuous piece of jewelry to an abaya seems disingenuous. If small crosses were allowed, but small star and crescents weren’t, that would obviously be wrong.
It’s a quote. It’s copy and paste. If someone spelled it wrong, it’s not me.
Either way. If a tiny cross is allowed and a tiny star is not, that’s bad.
No symbols should be allowed of any kind. 🤷♂️
I wonder how they handle tattoos.
You would be very wrong
“ostentacious religious insignia” is the law.
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.
What if their community’s pressure is the reason why they wear certain types of clothing?
This is the only reason why anyone wears any particular type of clothing. There is no style of clothing that it objectively makes sense to wear.
A solid reason not to be part of that community anymore.
Try that when you’re 10 👍
The trick when you are 10 is to memorize and record every single detail of it. Which adult did what on what day and which did nothing to stop it.
That way when you get older you can be crystal clear why you disowned the ones that did nothing and go after the ones that actively harmed you.
The religious deserve as much forgiveness as they have shown everyone else.
Ok… It doesn’t allow you to quit the community while you’re young though…
We’re talking about children. They don’t have choice.
And we see from Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, that families can and will often disown you and treat you like shit over it.
I’m in agreement with France here. They’re very consistent. Go to a state school? Keep religious displays out of it, full stop.
So your solution to kids not having a choice is to not give them a choice?
Who says what I want is for kids to be able to choose to wear literally anything they want?
I was pointing out that kids don’t wear these out of choice, so it’s silly to act like the government is oppressing the kids by banning them.
I’m all for France aggressively separating religion and state institutions.
The eradication of the will to wear this stuff is the answer. Without religion, barely anyone will want to wear religious signs.
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)
Yes. France is extremely militant about keeping religion and state separate. That extends to state institutions like state schools.
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
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Neither have these families I would imagine. How common is that in France?
I’m French, stonings occur every other Tuesday morning
I still don’t get why we can’t get an app for it or something. The paper lottery system is just so primitive. Has to be a better way to decide who gets stoned to death for conformity and harvest.
That depends hugely on the region. They do it on Thursday where they say Chocolatine.
They’re not really French though
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.