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France’s State Council backs abaya Muslim dress ban in schools

France's Conseil d'État on Thursday upheld a government ban on traditional over-garments worn by some Muslim women in schools and rejected complaints it was discriminatory and could incite hatred.

France's State Council backs abaya Muslim dress ban in schools
A woman wearing an abaya dress and a headscarf walks through the streets of Lille, northern France (Photo by Denis Charlet / AFP)

President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools as it broke the rules on secularism in education.

Muslim headscarves have already banned on the ground that they constitute a display of religious affiliation.

An association representing Muslims filed a motion with the State Council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities, for an injunction against the ban on the abaya and the qamis, its equivalent dress for men.

READ MORE: EXPLAINED: What is France’s State Council?

The association said the ban was discriminatory and could incite hatred against Muslims, as well as racial profiling.

But after examining the motion — filed by the Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM) — for two days, the State Council rejected the arguments.

It said wearing the abaya “follows the logic of religious affirmation”, adding that the decision was based on French law which did not allow anyone wearing visible signs of any religious affiliation in schools.

‘No serious harm’

The ban by the government did not, it said, cause “serious or obviously illegal harm to the respect for personal lives, freedom of religion, the right to education, the well-being of children or the principle of non-discrimination”.

Ahead of the ruling, France’s Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), established to represent Muslims before the government, had warned that banning the abaya could create “an elevated risk of discrimination” and said it was considering putting its own complaint before the State Council.

The absence of “a clear definition of this garment creates vagueness and legal uncertainty”, it said.

ADM’s lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, argued during the hearing that the abaya should be considered a traditional garment, not a religious one.

He also accused the government of seeking political advantage with the ban.

ADM president Sihem Zine said the rule was “sexist” because it singles out girls and “targets Arabs”.

But the education ministry said the abaya made its wearers “immediately recognisable as belonging to the Muslim religion”, and therefore ran counter to France’s secular culture.

French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas — a shoulder-to-toe over-garment — on the first day of the school year on Monday.

Nearly 300 schoolgirls defied the ban, Education Minister Gabriel Attal said.

Most agreed to change garments but 67 refused and were sent home, he said.

In 2016 the State Council overturned a ban in a French Riviera resort against the burkini, saying it failed to see any threat to public order from the long bathing suit worn by some Muslim women.

Around 10 percent of France’s 67 million inhabitants are Muslim, according to official estimates.

Most have origins in northern African countries Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, which were French colonies until the second half of the 20th century.

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POLITICS

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

New Caledonia's main international airport will reopen from Monday after being shut last month during a spate of deadly unrest, the high commission in the French Pacific territory said, adding a curfew would also be reduced.

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

The commission said Sunday that it had “decided to reopen the airport during the day” and to “push back to 8:00 pm (from 6:00 pm) the start of the curfew as of Monday”.

The measures had been introduced after violence broke out on May 13 over a controversial voting reform that would have allowed long-term residents to participate in local polls.

The archipelago’s Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their vote, putting hopes for eventually winning independence definitively out of reach.

READ ALSO: Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Barricades, skirmishes with the police and looting left nine dead and hundreds injured, and inflicted hundreds of millions of euros in damage.

The full resumption of flights at Tontouta airport was made possible by the reopening of an expressway linking it to the capital Noumea that had been blocked by demonstrators, the commission said.

Previously the airport was only handling a small number of flights with special exemptions.

Meanwhile, the curfew, which runs until 6:00 am, was reduced “in light of the improvement in the situation and in order to facilitate the gradual return to normal life”, the commission added.

French President Emmanuel Macron had announced on Wednesday that the voting reform that touched off the unrest would be “suspended” in light of snap parliamentary polls.

Instead he aimed to “give full voice to local dialogue and the restoration of order”, he told reporters.

Although approved by both France’s National Assembly and Senate, the reform had been waiting on a constitutional congress of both houses to become part of the basic law.

Caledonian pro-independence movements had already considered reform dead given Macron’s call for snap elections.

“This should be a time for rebuilding peace and social ties,” the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) said Wednesday before the announcement.

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