France to ban female students from wearing abayas in state schools

France’s Education Minister Gabriel Attal has announced pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in the country’s state-run schools. 

The new rule will come into effect at the beginning of the new school year on 4 September. 

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

Headscarfs have been banned since 2004 in French state-run schools. 

“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.”

There has been months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools. The garment is being increasingly worn in schools, leading to a political divide. 

“Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” Mr Attal told TF1, arguing the abaya is “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.”

He said that he would give clear rules at the national level before schools open after the summer break.