The education minister says female Muslim students will not be allowed to wear the loose-fitting robe.

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.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    113·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • finkrat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      63·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        104·
        1 year ago

        Abayas don’t hurt anyone

        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/

        • Guntrigger@feddit.chEnglish
          32·
          1 year ago

          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.

    • Leer10@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      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

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        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

        This term, the Supreme Court decided two cases involving religion: Groff v. DeJoy was a relatively low-profile case about religious accommodations at work; 303 Creative v. Elenis was a blockbuster case about the clash between religious exercise and principles of equal treatment. (The legal question was technically about speech, but religion was at the core of the dispute.)

        In both cases, plaintiffs asserted religiously grounded objections to complying with longstanding and well-settled laws or rules that would otherwise apply to them. And in both, the court handed the plaintiff a resounding victory.

        These cases are the latest examples of a striking long-term trend: Especially since Amy Coney Barrett became a justice in 2020, the court has taken a sledgehammer to a set of practices and compromises that have been carefully forged over decades to balance religious freedom with other important — and sometimes countervailing — principles.