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.
Wow. As a religious minority it’s incredibly depressing to see how many people on here support this violation of religious liberty.
Yeah I agree with you. It’s one thing to say the school can’t promote a religious creed to the pupils, it is another to limit self-expression of dress when it doesn’t impact other students
French secularism is way different than what americans have, it is pretty unique. Remember it
Really? What’s it like?
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The US over here was supposed to be that way, with the separation of church and state.
As you have likely seen—due to the ceaseless amount of news about the US everywhere—that is a fucking joke now. Our country is overridden by the devils evangelical spawn.
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The idea was that they stay out of politics, the government stays out of religion, because that’s mutually beneficial.
Now they’re on the cusp of reaping what they’ve sowed with the unholy evangelical alliance. People aren’t interested in churches anymore and young people especially. Republicans are one election away from nonviability for president (knock on wood, and please let it be the election in 2024). Young people fucking loathe Republicans and evangelicals.
Are there young people still casting their lot with them? Absolutely. But the proportional difference is disastrous in politics. Even a 45-55 split is massive, and millennials and Zoomers are certainly more than that on Republicans.
So what is the solution for religious families then? Are they forced to private institutions/homeschool?
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I’m interested to know if there’s any kind of religious education in the French school system?
In the UK I was in a CofE school (Christian) but our Religious Education classes taught about all religions pretty equally.
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So violate their faith for school? That’s not an ideal solution
It’s been part of France’s political culture that religious signification has no place in public institutions. Given that Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Britain offer ways to religious groups to punish others through the legal system for not accepting their criteria regarding what constitutes legitimate criticism [*], but France doesn’t, I’d argue that France is doing something right.
In 2018, a youth in Spain was condemned to pay 480€ for publishing an edited photograph of a Christ image with his own face.
This event emboldened fanatic religious organizations, which sought charges against an actor for saying “I shit on God and Virgin Mary!” in a restaurant. Fortunately he wasn’t declared guilty, but he suffered a judicial process of 2 years. This doesn’t mean they didn’t achieve their goal: they sent everyone the message that you should think twice the next time you consider you have freedom of expression.
If you let religious people think their beliefs must be protected from any criticism, many of them will start to see their privilege as the norm, and eventually encroach the freedoms of everyone else.
France may be good for not respecting a religion and disallowing abuse of religious systems that would attack the freedom of non-religious/minority-religious citizens, but are going to the opposite side of this problem. Abayas don’t hurt anyone and, from what I can tell/correct me if wrong, are used as a religious observation. France is going out of their way to impose restrictions on elements that are generally harmless that these people may see as a religious necessity, attacking the freedom of religious citizens. There has to be a balance and they’re off on the other arc of the pendulum swing here.
Enforcing Muslim girls and women to hide their hair does definitely hurt someone: those who want to leave religion. It is a very common problem for ex-Muslim women and teenagers to suffer harassment both at home and elsewhere from bigoted Muslims who think they do not have the right to apostate. As soon as you stop complying with an enforced form of clothing, you’re signalling those people that you’re a sinner.
old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/9cnyvl/help_muslim_security_guard_at_work_told_my/
It’s obvious that the “we should give women from oppressive backgrounds the choice to volunteer to oppress themselves in public schools” folks didn’t grow up in an oppressive religion. It is actually quite easier to understand if one thinks of ALL religions as cults for a moment, to remove the veneer of the sacred.
What technically could be called a “choice” is often far from it. On the mild side, maybe your momma or daddy isn’t “forcing” you to wear an abaya/floor length jean dress/bonnet/whatever, but if you choose NOT to wear it, you face disapproval and pushback from co-religionists. On the harsh side, choosing not to wear whatever garb can lead you to being harshly punished, ostracized, even beaten.
Giving the kids half a chance to form a self-concept that is larger than their family’s own religiocultural worldview is a kind of freedom, and yes, it diverges greatly from the US view of “religious freedom,” which is includes the freedom to try and indoctrinate one’s kids to ensure that there will be a future generation of primitive baptists/mainstream evangelicals/US anglicans/muslims/etc. that continue to teach that women are subserviant to men.
So surely forcing them to take it off while at school is exacerbating that problem. They either comply with the state and be seen as a sinner by their religion, or stick to their religious belief (forced or not) and are at odds with the state.
The point is that by banning it, they remove agency from the kid. So the parents will be WAY less likely to take out their displeasure of their kid not wearing religiocultural garb on the kid, since the kid has no choice. Far better than the beatings and other less physical abuse that will rain down on a substantial minority of kids if they voluntarily opted out of the garb.
I get the idea that it’s freeing children from having to follow their parental oppression, but it would be nice to see some honest statistics on how many kids this actually is.
I would be inclined to think the more rabid fundamentalist types would simply seek a move to a school which allows their kid to wear it. Thereby not really reducing fundamentalism as is the supposed goal, instead segregating and entrenching it.
And it’s not even a niqab of hijab we are talking about here, its just a type of traditional dress.
Too bad the thing you want hard data on is virtually impossible to accurately gather with any reliability. What I do know is that as a former fundamentalist evangelical xtian examining my own former in-group, there was a ton of active coordination to poison the well of our young minds against “the world,” which meant science, evolution, sex, role of women, higher education, and anyone who was not our flavor of christian. Most kids willfully mimicked their parents opinions, like I did. And of my then in-group, it seemed that for every handful of families, half of them had insane parents (domineering fathers and submissive mothers) that were very happy that the Bible gave a divine mandate/suggestion to beat their children to enforce compliance with the dictates of their faith.
Yeah honestly. As much as we’ve struggled with developing and even enforcing it today, I think America has a good balance between freedom to practice and freedom from state sponsored religion
Probably not the best moment in that country’s history to make that claim
https://web.archive.org/web/20230719103441/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/supreme-court-religion.html
I honestly don’t understand the contradicting argument of “there should be no religious symbol in a state school, if you want that go to a religious school” and “no religious symbols allowed will set them free”.
Surely if you are funneling all of these kids into religious schools and away from the state system, you’re going to entrench them in that religion further, not “set them free”. It just serves to divide kids even more than if you allowed them all the freedom to mingle in the same school with all their religious garb.
Religion has no place in the modern world.
And the real reason is unmasked. This isn’t “freedom,” this is pushing atheism. There’s a reason the US Supreme Court has struck down similar policies for nearly a century, because it privileges atheism over any religion.
The US Supreme Court has struck down similar policies because US population are religious zealots.
You say that as if atheism is just another religion, which is missing the point. It’s not an unreasonable bias if the government agrees with me that 2+2=4 and that those trying to convince you 2+2=3 are doing you intellectual harm. I know religious people love the “but atheism is just another kind of religion!” adage, but it doesn’t hold water. Nobody is being denied human rights in the name of just atheism, nobody is being oppressed by just atheism.
Remember when we were kids and we were told not to judge people by how they look or other factors they can’t control, but rather to judge them by the things they say, do, and think? Yeah somewhere religious people started this lie that religion is some intrinsic part of being, like sexuality/sexual identity, but this isn’t the case. Religion is a choice. Religion is a belief. Exactly the kind of thing you should judge people for, same as any of their other beliefs or opinions.
The idea that a government shouldn’t endorse atheism, or at least legislate from an atheistic point of view, is insane to me, tbh.
Religion isn’t a choice - you can’t choose to believe something. I used to be obsessed with my religion and my relationship to god. Then I had a nervous breakdown, saw a shrink, and was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. Two weeks into taking wellbutrin, ALL CARES about my immortal soul and god and whatever just turned off entirely, like a giant breaker being thrown. It was amazing, and made me realize that people’s brain chemistry has as much to do with them being religious as cultural factors.
I don’t agree with your interpretation of constitutes an intrinsic quality. I do agree elements within organized religion exist to prey on various vulnerabilities, including those related to brain chemistry, but I don’t think those pressures or vulnerabilities absolve you the responsibility of thoughtfulness and choice. I have suffered from a genuine mental illness my whole life, and that fact does contribute to my choices and and may explain some of my behavior, but it never absolves me or excuses my behavior. Religion may arguably be a difficult or loaded choice, but it is absolutely a choice. A person isn’t a Baptist in the way that they might be inherently and intrinsically gay; a person chooses to be Baptist, even if that choice is one of passive cultural acceptance.
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Whether a person believes they have divine inspiration or not, it is still their choice to follow it. In fact, that’s a key tenant of the faith in question. A deluded person is deluded; we don’t have to and shouldn’t indulge their delusion as if it was reality. And to be clear I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about genuinely mentally ill people as you describe. If a mentally ill person truly believes they are a duck it does not mean they are a duck, even if they choose to behave like one. When a mentally ill person believes they know the holy spirit Spirit it does not mean they know the holy spirit, even when they choose to behave as such.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the real world should not indulge delusion. The fact that major world faiths rely on encouraging and fostering mental illness for their very existence is a horror. On the other hand, there’s research showing that religious integration is correlated with better outcomes for schizophrenic folks, if you discount the research that suggests a higher incidence of suicide in religiously-involved schitzophrenics. But maybe we don’t need more Joan of Arcs. I once read that Ireland’s secular interventions for folks with schizophrenia (focused on normalization etc.) led to a massive decrease in violent content in the voices folks were hearing. I’m not schizophrenic myself, but I hooked up with a girl who was, and who was extremely well adjusted considering the fact that she was frequently hearing shit that only existed in her world.
Sorry, went off on a major tangent. At the end of the day, I don’t particularly care if it’s a choice or if people are just wired different. What I do care about is protecting secularism where it can be found. France’s secularism was hard won, and I don’t blame them for being protective of it.
The people here do not represent what the world outside looks like and anonymity emboldens extreme views.
Yeah its why I’m downvoting people, they seem to think Christianity is the only religon in existence and that anyone who follows religon ends up like those domestic terrorists in america
It reminds me of athiest reddit
The same law applies to Christians, too. For instance, you also wouldn’t be allowed to wear a cross at school.
I’m not against freedom of expression as long as it doesn’t bring harm to anyone
Wearing symbols of a religon or faith someone subscribes to doesn’t harm anyone just like dressing with a person’s own preference of clothing does not harm anyone
People should be free to express themselves and not be forced to hide parts of themselves away in public because someone in government thinks dressing a certain way or wearing a symbol of faith or religon inherently leads to something bad happening for example americas domestic terrorists
And just to he clear I’m not supporting right wing bigotry with my comment, I will never be tolerant of bigotry and intolerance
And I’ve seen a lot of people in this posts comment section being in support of this being rude & inflammatory
YOU NEVER TAKE AWAY THE RIGHTS / EQUALITY OF PEOPLE WITH GOOD INTENTIONS IN MIND
Protecting the society’s Overton window concerning women from being shifted toward any religious group’s preferred direction (let alone a minority group that has a terrible present tract record insofar as female equality is concerned) is a real hard thing to get right. Quite honestly, having grown up as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian and having spent years deprogramming myself from my childhood indoctrination, I would have zero issue seeing the same laws equally enforced against public expressions of religion in this country as well. Any space children have from their family to form their own opinions, without being forced to “other” themselves through religiocultural garb, is good space.
In a way I get it, your way of life is being discriminated against. But with thousands of years of history and present day to go off of, I still feel it’s a good thing.
I kinda compare it to smoking cigarettes. There are a ton of people who do it, but it’s so obviously unhealthy. I won’t go on with the analogy, but you can get pretty grim with it.
You can have a fulfilling and culture filled life without blind hope for a greater power and possibly being negatively influenced by that belief; either through authority figures in your church or you’re own interpretations of religious teachings.
Another thing I saw mentioned was that it’s a state run school. Separation of church and state is something I vehemently agree with. So while it might suck for you, your grandchildren will be better off because they’re not losing anything.