Just before the All Saints’ Day holiday, a first year student was scolded by her Spanish teacher for wearing an abaya, a type of veil similar to a long dress. What is it and how is it problematic?
The law is formal. “It is prohibited to wear signs or clothing in which students appear to show a religious affiliation.” However, with abaya-type veils, it is “the apparent” who questions.
Confusion about abayas
If they are well taken into consideration by the Secularism and the Dress Act 2004abayas give ai a hard time educational institutions. Worn over clothing, these traditional long gowns that originate from the Middle East are sometimes confusing. It’s not always easy differ from non-religious dress.
Interviewed by The world in October, Franck Antraccoli, head of the ID-FO principals’ union, summed up the situation “Colleagues tell us that they don’t know how to approach the subject. In the same city, some principals may judge that these long dresses are not problematic and others that they are”
A tough line to set
The ostentation of the dress is underlined if it is worn regularly and if the person he refuses to take it off if requested. Sure, if it’s a traditional dress worn during religious holidays, nor is it considered as such “secular”. At this time, it is not permitted to wear the garment in a Public establishment.
In national education letter addressing the rectors, the institution indicated that “students and sometimes their families frequently deny any religious dimension to wearing these clothes which highlight their cultural character”. The abaya has been described as less adonid dress than it appeared, because it was used evading the ban on wearing the veil.
The principals ask for firmness and clarity
The rectors reacted to this instruction, which could lead to arbitrary decisions about wearing the abaya. “We would like a clear rule that we don’t have to to interpret. We can’t make him wear it responsibility principals and principals who are on the front line every morning in front of the gates of their factory” worries Didier Georges, principal of a Parisian high school interviewed by The world.
The Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye she had decked out this dress, inviting to show vigilancewhile pledging to monitor wear “in particular reports of wearing dresses, the famous abayas, which seem to multiply” he indicated during a trip to a college in September.
In Montauban, the abaya business
At Montauban shortly before All Saints Holidaysthe wearing of an abaya by a first grader it triggered a wave of backlash in a high school. A petition had even been launched by the high school student.
The young woman had filmed her teacher and posted the video in which we heard her blame her choice of dress to the teenager. “As soon as I got back to class, the teacher really said to me: ‘but what is this dressing gown’, since I had a dress of this style, it’s called an abaya” she tells the Depeche.
In the face of the outcry caused by the case, the Spanish teacher was put under fire police protection. Of the police were deployed around the school on November 9, the day of a scheduled event in order to avoid excesses or abuses.
