The new Minister of National Education has announced the ban on abayas at school. Gabriel Attal wanted to settle this case that his predecessor, Pap Ndiaye, had left to the discretion of the heads of establishments.
Gabriel Attal therefore decided even before the start of the school year. “We will no longer be able to wear the abaya at school”, announced the new Minister of National Education, guest of the 8 p.m. TF1 Sunday August 27. Abayas, long dresses from the Arab world worn over clothing, have sparked a lively debate in France since their proliferation in schools. If specialists on the subject do not agree on its religious meaning, Gabriel Attal responded to the request for clarification from many heads of schools.
Pap Ndiaye, the former tenant of the rue de Grenelle ministry, considered that “the interpretation of a sign as being religious or of religious clothing cannot be made from a circular. It is not the length of the dress or the color which alone make it possible to determine its religious nature. It is a set of signs which can point in this direction.” Gabriel Attal, judged that wearing the abaya at school is “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the Republic on the secular sanctuary that the School must constitute”. On TF1, he explained that when “you enter a classroom, you should not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them”. The controversy has swelled in recent months because according to AFP, via a note from the state services, “the wearing of signs and outfits has increased by more than 150% throughout the last school year”.
The start of the school year will allow us to see if this announcement will be followed by concrete effects in the schools. The abaya is not recognized as a religious symbol by the French Council for Muslim Worship. Anne-Laure Zwilling, anthropologist of religions at the CNRS, pointed out to France info that “if the abaya were a religious garment, all Muslim women should wear it”. However, no Muslim text cites this outfit and it does not appear systematically throughout the Muslim world. However, wearing it has crystallized tensions in schools, as some students wear it for religious reasons. This garment was positioned in a gray area of the 2004 law which prohibits “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation”. Some therefore argue that abayas such as qamis, a similar outfit reserved for men, “are religious markers”.
What is an abaya?
The abaya is also known by other names such as “chador” or “burqa”. It is a traditional clothing exclusively for women and from Islamic culture. This long dress is intended to cover the entire woman’s body except for the face, hands and feet. Camouflaging the shapes of the body, the abaya is a sign of modesty in Islamic culture. This garment can be considered as an extension of the veil which must cover the woman’s hair and is adopted by some Muslim women. Often black, abaya models have taken on color in recent years.
Wearing the abaya is not systematically compulsory for Muslim women, it depends on the legislation of each State. In Saudi Arabia, in other Gulf countries or in Iran, all Muslim women or not are forced to wear the abaya. But the countries where the wearing of this long dress is compulsory are not the majority; in the rest of the Middle East clothing is not compulsory, any more than in the Maghreb. The forced wearing of the abaya is often decided in countries where power is intimately linked to religion: where the Sharia governs the laws or in the Islamic Republics for example. Even in these countries, senior religious leaders are campaigning for the compulsory wearing of the abaya to be abolished and for the choice to be returned to women.
The qami, what is it?
The qami is in a way the male counterpart of the abaya. The garment also comes from Islamic culture but is reserved for men. It looks like a long tunic which, as for women, must camouflage the shapes of the body and respect modesty. The shape of the qami is reminiscent of other similar clothing, but named differently depending on the geographical area: the djellaba in North Africa or the boubou in West Africa, note that these clothes are also worn by both men and women.
Are the abaya and the qami religious clothing in Islam?
For Muslims who practice the strictest religious precepts, it is appropriate for men and women to cover the private parts of their bodies, especially during religious celebrations or prayers. Women are then required to cover their entire body and their hair except for the face, hands and feet, while men must cover themselves at least from the waist to the knees or from the upper body to the knees in the presence of women. Abayas and qamis make it possible to respect these religious principles. The religious character which is lent to these clothes is also linked to the tradition and practices of the Islamic prophet. Mohammed. The hadiths, prophetic stories, claim in particular that the prophet wore the qami. Clothing is therefore a means of approaching or imitating the example of Muhammad.
The origin of the abaya and the qami could also be more cultural than religious. The existence of similar clothing but yet without a direct link to Islam as seen above in this article feeds this thesis. It should also be noted that the Koran does not explicitly mention the wearing of the abaya or the qami as Muslim precepts and is content to request modesty and the absence of vanity from the faithful. Modesty can actually go through the way of dressing without requiring the wearing of a long dress as proven by Muslim women who have chosen not to wear the abaya.
Abaya and qami, religious signs or cultural habits?
Over time, wearing the abaya and qami in the Islamic world may have become a dress habit more than a religious symbol. These explanations are also found in the approaches of the professors contacted by the world and according to whom “students and sometimes their families frequently deny any religious dimension to the wearing of these outfits highlighting their cultural character”. The question then is how to recognize the worship practice or the cultural habit.
To decide, the “values of the Republic” cells of the Ministry of National Education explained in a letter that Le Monde consulted that it is necessary to distinguish ostensibly religious signs from those “which are not by nature signs of religious affiliation” but who can become so “in terms of behavior”. The abayas and the qamis belong to this second category, it is then necessary to know if they come under the cult or the culture to help several clues such as the regularity of the wearing of the outfit, “the persistence of the refusal to remove it or “the fact that these are traditional outfits worn on religious holidays,” the note clarifies. However, it is difficult to make an individual assessment of the wearing of the abaya or the qami for each student. Didier Georges, principal and national secretary of the SNPDEN-UNSA, estimated, with the World, that there “may be pitfalls but, most of the time, the heads of establishment know how to tell what is going on”. He welcomed that a decision is “finally made” by the ministry.