The French government justifies banning the abaya in schools: a “political attack”
Ministers in the French government said today, Monday, that banning the wearing of the abaya in French schools responds to the need for unity in the face of a “political attack”, justifying the measure announced by the Minister of National Education and Youth Gabriel Atal on Sunday.
In a press conference held today in France under the title “United for our school”, on the occasion of the start of the new academic year 2023-2024, Atal stated that the issue is about “forming a unified front” in the face of attacks targeting secularism.
For his part, French government spokesman Olivier Ferrand told PFMTV: “It is a political attack, it is a political signal,” denouncing what he described as a form of “proselytization” by wearing the abaya.
Atal explained in today’s conference that “forming a unified front means being clear: there is no place for the abaya in our schools,” and promised to train “300,000 employees annually on issues of secularism until 2025,” in addition to training all 14,000 administrative staff by the end of the year. 2023.
The Minister of National Education stressed that “our schools are being tested. In recent months, attacks on secularism have increased dramatically, especially through the wearing of religious clothing such as gowns or long shirts that appeared and continued at times in some institutions.”
Yesterday evening, Sunday, Atal spoke about banning the cloak in schools in response to the request of school principals, who demanded the issuance of clear directives on this controversial issue.
And it was stated in a memorandum issued by the state agencies that violations targeting secularism have increased significantly since the murder of teacher Samuel Paty in 2020 near his school, and it increased by 120 percent between the academic years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. Atal believed that “the firmness in the response of educational institutions is being tested through these new phenomena (…) in the face of encroachments, attacks and attempts to destabilize. We have to form a united front. We will be united.”
In this context, the main union in secondary education (middle and high schools) considered that “allocating this amount of time on the abaya is disproportionate.” “This is not the main problem of the beginning of the new school year,” said Sophie Venetitay, the union’s general secretary, stressing that the problem lies in “the numbers (students) in classes and the lack of teachers.” She added, “We know that the government is also looking for support from the right, so we are not deceived by the political maneuvering behind this.”
For his part, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the “France of the Fatherland” party, expressed in a post on the “X” website (formerly Twitter) his “sadness to see the return to schools subject to political polarization, through a new absurd and completely artificial religious war over women’s dress.”
And last June, Melenchon had stated that the mantle “has nothing to do with religion,” and that the school’s problem is not in this dress, but in “the lack of teachers and insufficient places.”
However, the move of the Minister of National Education was welcomed by other left-wing parties in the name of secularism. It was praised by Socialist MP Jerome Guidge, Socialist Mayor of Montpellier (South) Michael Delafosse, and Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel.
It should be noted that the French concept of secularism is confined to the private sphere by virtue of a law issued in 1905 dealing with the separation of the Catholic Church and the state.
(AFP)
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2023-08-28 19:52:58
