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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

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

President Emmanuel Macron warned that the policies of his far-right and hard-left opponents could lead to ‘civil war’, as France prepared for its most divisive election in decades.

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

French politics were plunged into turmoil when Macron called snap legislative elections after his centrist party was trounced by the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in a European vote earlier this month.

Weekend polls suggested the RN would win 35-36 percent in the first round on Sunday, ahead of a left-wing alliance on 27-29.5 percent and Macron’s centrists in third on 19.5-22 percent.

A second round of voting will follow on July 7th in constituencies where no candidate takes more than 50 percent in the first round.

Speaking on the podcast Generation Do It Yourself, Macron, 46, denounced both the RN as well as the hard-left France Unbowed party.

He said the far-right “divides and pushes towards civil war”, while the hard-left La France Insoumise, which is part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, proposes “a form of communitarianism”, adding that “civil war follows on from that, too”.

Reacting to Macron’s comments, far-right leader Jordan Bardella told French news outlet M6: “A President of the Republic should not say that. I want to re-establish security for all French people.”

Bardella, the RN’s 28-year-old president, earlier Monday said his party was ready to govern as he pledged to curb immigration and tackle cost-of-living issues.

“In three words: we are ready,” Bardella told a news conference as he unveiled the RN’s programme.

READ ALSO What would a far-right prime minister mean for foreigners in France?

Bardella has urged voters to give the eurosceptic party an outright majority to allow it to implement its anti-immigration, law-and-order programme.

“Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, vowing to boost purchasing power, “restore order” and change the law to make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.

He reiterated plans to tighten borders and make it harder for children born in France to foreign parents to gain citizenship.

Bardella added that the RN would focus on “realistic” measures to curb inflation, primarily by cutting energy taxes.

He also promised a disciplinary ‘big bang’ in schools, including a ban on mobile phones and trialling the introduction of school uniforms, a proposal previously put forward by Macron.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party poured scorn on the RN’s economic programme, telling Europe 1 radio the country was “headed straight for disaster” in the event of an RN victory.

On Tuesday, Attal will go head-to-head with Bardella and the leftist Manuel Bompard in a TV debate.

On foreign policy, Bardella said the RN opposed sending French troops and long-range missiles to Ukraine – as mooted by Macron – but would continue to provide logistical and material support.

He added that his party, which had close ties to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine, would be “extremely vigilant” in the face of Moscow’s attempts to interfere in French affairs.

Macron insisted that France would continue to support Ukraine over the long term as he met with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

“We will continue to mobilise to respond to Ukraine’s immediate needs,” he said alongside Stoltenberg at the Elysee Palace.

The election is shaping up as a showdown between the RN and the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire, which is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise.

Bardella claimed the RN, which mainstream parties have in the past united to block, was now the “patriotic and republican” choice faced with what he alleged was the anti-Semitism of Mélenchon’s party.

La France Insoumise, which opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and refused to label the October 7th Hamas attacks as ‘terrorism’, denies the charges of anti-Semitism.

In calling an election in just three weeks Macron hoped to trip up his opponents and catch them unprepared.

But analysts have warned the move could backfire if the deeply unpopular president is forced to share power with a prime minister from an opposing party.

RN powerhouse Marine Le Pen, who is bidding to succeed Macron as president, has called on him to step aside if he loses control of parliament.

Macron has insisted he will not resign before the end of his second term in 2027 but has vowed to heed voters’ concerns.

Speaking on Monday, Macron once again defended his choice to call snap elections.

“It’s very hard. I’m aware of it, and a lot of people are angry with me,” he said on the podcast. “But I did it because there is nothing greater and fairer in a democracy than trust in the people.”

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