France’s education minister has announced a ban on long robes in classrooms starting with the new school year, saying the garments worn mainly by Muslims are testing secularism in the nation’s schools.
“Our schools are continually tested. We know that,” Attal said at a news conference a week ahead of the start of the school year. He said that the wearing of abayas and khamis, a “new phenomenon,” has recently grown, and must be met with a firm response to tackle what sometimes amounts to “infringements, attempts at destabilization.”
French authorities have increasingly moved to defend secularism, a constitutional principle meant to guarantee religious neutrality, as society grows complex in a multicultural nation in which some French Muslims seek to show their religious identity. Authorities fear that religious symbols are a gateway to Islamic radicalism, while some Muslims feel stigmatized by efforts to make them conform. Islam is the second religion in France.
Attal’s predecessor as education minister, Pap Ndiaye, failed to crack down on long robes in the classroom, effectively leaving the choice to school principals as the phenomenon grew. In the past year, signs of infringement on secularism increased 120% between the 2022-2023 school year and the previous one, from 2,167 to 4,710, according to a confidential note obtained by the newspaper Le Monde. The increase was largely due to the wearing of abayas and khamis.
To enforce the ban on abayas and khamis in classrooms, Attal said that 14,000 educational personnel in leadership positions would be trained by the end of this year to deal with the matter, and 300,000 personnel would be trained by 2025. Top administrators will visit schools seeking help as well as those “where we judge specific needs to manage the start of school with them.”
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