This Monday, back to school day, students will no longer be able to go to school dressed in an abaya, this traditional long dress covering the whole body. At the microphone of RTLPrime Minister Élisabeth Borne refuted “any stigma” about this government announcement.
“Each of our fellow citizens, whatever their religion, has its place in our country. Then, there is a principle, it is secularism. There is a law that prohibits the wearing of any signs or outfits by which a student shows his belonging to a religion. It is the law that must apply to everyone,” insists Elisabeth Borne. “We will ensure that it is well applied,” she adds.
On RTL, the Prime Minister denounces “manipulation and attempts at provocation on the part of some. I am thinking in particular of La France insoumise”. LFI deputy Manuel Bompard had proposed to seize the Council of State faced with a measure “contrary to the Constitution” and “source of discrimination against young women”. The French Council for Muslim Worship (CFCM) considered in June that the garment was not a Muslim religious sign.
A “memo” sent by Attal
How will it apply from this Monday? The Minister of Education Gabriel Attal recently sent 15,000 national education officials ” a service note “, of which Le Parisien had been informed. It was to set a regulatory support for school heads, based on the law of March 15, 2004, which prohibits the wearing of outfits or signs showing “ostensibly a religious affiliation” in schools.
If a student shows up this Monday with one of these two outfits, he will not be able to attend cles, but should be able to enter the establishment. for an exchange with a manager. After this phase of “dialogue with the pupil”, if “the latter refuses to give up (to the abaya or qamis) within the school or during school activities, a disciplinary procedure must be initiated.
“Supporting” school principals
This Sunday, Elisabeth Borne reaffirmed that the heads of establishments will be “accompanied by the teams to explain the law to the students”, while adding that ultimately the law “must be applied”.
Friday, September 1, during a trip to a vocational high school in Vaucluse, Emmanuel Macron had promised that the government “will not let anything p” on the wearing of the abaya and the qamis in the school environment.
VIDEO. Abaya at school: “We will not let anything p”, ures Macron
“Beyond words, we will take action. We know that there will be cases (…) by negligence perhaps, but many to try to challenge the republican system. We must be intractable, ”continued the head of state. “We will be intractable on the subject”.
On the same day, the former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had indicated “having moved” on the issue, deeming the banning of the abaya at school “a good thing”. He was Minister of Education in 1989 when a circular on secularism left teachers free to accept the veil in cl or not. “I moved, but it was above all the world that moved, he pleads on France Inter. In 1989, when I was Minister of Education, there had not been 9/11, the Islamic State, a development of mive Islamism. And I had respected the indications which had been given by the Council of State, at the time. I think that the context has absolutely changed. »