France to ban female students from wearing abayas in state schools

I'm not very comfortable with these type of bans.

People say women shouldn't be forced to wear certain items of clothing and deal with it by forcing them to wear different items of clothing.

Doesn't seem very productive.

I always think of that meme with a women in full body coverings and a women wearing a bikini and they're both thinking about how awful it is that society pressures women to dress like the other.

I get this completely. This is nothing new for France, they have been blocking Christians from wearing crosses and Jews from wearing kippah's for a very long time, it's only reasonable that the Muslim population gets treated equally. Schools should remain completely secular, I am in complete agreement with France there.

I'm not sure I like this. I sort of get not allowing religious symbols to be worn, but you're forcing people to dress in a certain way. I don't think the government should be able to do that

The especially dumb part of this is that abayas aren't specifically Muslim or religious in nature, they're cultural. They are a long flowing dress, without even a head covering. A bunch of non-Islamic women wear them in a variety of countries.

So this is more attempting to ban entire cultural outfits, which is ridiculous.

I am mildly in favor of that. Kids can't decide what to wear it's their parents who do.

This will simply reduce the artificial divide between those wear that type of stuff and who doesn't.

I also don't believe it's a freedom endangering, because they're aren't spontaneously people wearing abayas or burka or whatever just for the pleasure of it, I interpret the fact of wearing it as religious propaganda and artificial separation.

For a 200 year old law, it's pretty straight forward. And for all it's flaws, the Nth revolution didn't like the Catholic church for ... reasons, so they wanted to make a law to get them out of politics and make them liable for their shenanigans. Thankfully they didn't discriminate when they wrote the law.

https://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/contenu/piece-jointe/2017/02/libertes_et_interdits_eng.pdf

1. PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”

 The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State1

 No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.

Religious freedom is a human right. Self determination is a human right. As long as whatever you do does not cause a negative impact on other people (see the second right) or society at large, then gtfo.

This is not freedom.

I get the reasoning, but really it feels like papering over cracks rather than addressing the root cause.

Set up proper support structures to prevent people from being coerced into things they don't want to, make sure people are given places to get away from controlling people and exposed to the fact that things don't have to be like that.

Wow. As a religious minority it's incredibly depressing to see how many people on here support this violation of religious liberty.

Reading all the anti-privacy and self expression things that France are pushing...wouldn't understand why anyone would want to move to france in this day and age.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Students will be banned from wearing abaya, a loose-fitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim women, in France's state-run schools, the education minister has said.

"When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn't be able to identify the pupils' religion just by looking at them," Education Minister Gabriel Attal told France's TF1 TV, adding: "I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools."

The garment has being increasingly worn in schools, leading to a political divide over them, with right-wing parties pushing for a ban while those on the left have voiced concerns for the rights of Muslim women and girls.

France has enforced a strict ban on religious signs at schools since the 19th Century, including Christian symbols such as large crosses, in an effort to curb any Catholic influence from public education.

The debate on Islamic symbols has intensified since a Chechen refugee beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown students caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, near his school in a Paris suburb in 2020.

The announcement is the first major policy decision by Mr Attal, who was appointed France's education minister by President Emmanuel Macron this summer at the age of 34.

The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The same "I know what's best for them" and "the law applies equally to everyone" arguments in favor of bans on drugs that many in liberal spaces will detest, they will happily use when supporting shit like this. We all know that everyone doesn't suffer equally under laws like this. Religion may be the opium of the people, but does that mean we should be the narcs? You don't eradicate religion by banning it. You eradicate it by having secular institutions provide the things people go to religion for, like a sense of purpose, assistance, and community.

France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.

Is this a case of being lost in translation or something? I wouldn't consider religious garb to be a "sign."

Banning something is as opressive as making it mandatory.

I think some are forgetting, these bans are in schools, outside these schools you can wear whatever you want

The French state literally making laws governing fashion is the most French thing ever.

I totally support that. https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/little-hijabi-a-little-girls-love-for-her-hijab/9781504319508.html Kids wearing hijabs, abayas (put any religious symbol here) must be considered as a form of child abuse. It is crucial to refrain from imposing outdated and fantastical beliefs onto young minds.

Even if one despises religion above all, as one should, there is no sufficient reason to ban this type of stuff.

On the other side, it is time to give these morons back what they have brought upon others and thus deserve.

Can't just let women wear what they want. Clearly lacking a penis makes them incapable of deciding what clothes to wear.

I'm an atheist and consider all organized religion evil. But restricting what people can wear in school (apart from covering their genitals and not restricting movement or vision to the point that it hinders education) is indefensible.

Organized religion and their tools and symbols of opressiin have no place in modern society. The enlightenment is 300 years old now and we still have whackos like all the Americans in this thread talking about "religion is freedom". Its not freedom, its a fucking lie and it exists to control and oppress.

Vive La France, bring on more of this

To paraphrase: humanity be free when the last stone of the last church falls upon the last priest.

France has adopted laicite for years and frankly it's the right thing for secularism. It doesn't stop people worshiping whoever or whatever they like in their spare time, or wearing whatever religious garb they want. But not on government property including state schools.

I mean, wasn’t this the same government that was gassing it’s own citizens not too long ago because they were protesting for their rights?

I’m not surprised they are passing an idiotic ban like this so kudos for being even shittier I guess?

So men are allowed to?

My two cents, The ban is actually good. In school settings, religious headscarf/clothing makes you lot standout and people might get averse too it. This allows these people to actually mix in well with others.

The ban is good cause these kids are conditioned from birth to wear these. They haven't explored things out of the religious context and how f* up religions are at controlling people.

We are landing on moon and we have religions claiming everything revolves around earth. I would outright ban all these cults.

Ok, what the fuck is going on with the women in that video? I've seen more realistic alien makeup on Star Trek TOS.

What's wrong with your face?

France is not beating the racism (rather, l’racism) allegations

I can understand that, the intolerant culture attached to islam really detremental to integration effort and harmony in france, and by that they hope to remove that label in schools, which hopefully will make people interact more across cultural groups, and further integration.

There's rarely a good news nowadays let's enjoy this one

Great!

Hey Denmark, are you looking at this? This is how your treat religion. They are no better than anyone else and they do not deserve any kind of special treatment.

France, overall, has become a terrible country.

Good. Muslisms countries penalize homosexuality, women freedom between other things.

Western Europe should ban Muslisms religious things.

do we not see how it's different to ban crosses, the religious symbolism of the entrenched culture, the state, and the hegemonic culture - and the banning of headscarves and abayas, traditions associated with an oppressed minority? This is absolutely not just fair neutrality across the board on all religious expression, the kids will still be reading books by Christians, being taught by Christian teachers, following a curriculum decided by a Christian board and meeting education metrics voted on by Christian politicians so they can be part of the workforce in a Christian entrenched nation.

Any thoughts that this is good because they're just treating all religions equally is enlightened centrism.