Gabriel Attal has made up his mind. France's minister of education has "decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school," he announced on the TF1 evening news, on Sunday, August 27. This was a "necessary and fair rule," he said, adding: "When you enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of pupils by looking at them." Attal had already issued a firm instruction to the regional heads of education he met with on Thursday: "Wherever the Republic is tested, we must stand together," he told them.
For almost a year, principals and school directors confronted with pupils wearing abayas (long Middle Eastern dresses worn over other garments) or qamis (long tunics for men) have been asking for "clear instructions" as to whether or not such garments ostensibly manifest a religious affiliation, contrary to the March 2004 law banning religious symbols in schools. In a confidential memo, France's Council of Advisors for Secularism and the Values of the Republic advocated taking a firm stand as early as June 2022, "anxious not to once again leave management staff to their own devices," said Alain Seksig, the body's general secretary.
But former education minister Pap Ndiaye did not want to make a decision. In November 2022, he issued a circular to "guide" school princiapls and to explain the steps to be taken to help them to make up their own minds. This was an issue that is also being debated within the Muslim community itself. The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) asserted in June that the abaya "is not a Muslim religious symbol" and that "in the Muslim tradition (...), a garment of any kind is not a religious symbol in itself."
The margin of interpretation Ndiaye left to school principals may have led some to prohibit such clothing and others to authorize it. "We don't want to be the arbiters of uncertainty. This could potentially put us in danger, as we stand at the gates of our establishments every morning," emphasized Didier Georges, school principal and national secretary of the SNPDEN-UNSA teachers' union.
Over the past year, reports of breaches of secularism have only increased. They are up 120% between the 2022-2023 school year and the previous one (4,710 vs. 2,167), according to a memo from the state services, a copy of which was obtained by Le Monde. Between April and June, the number of protests amounted to 1,892. This is an unprecedented figure since the introduction of this count in 2018, to be considered against the 12 million pupils in France last year.
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