“But in the end, why not leave young girls free to dress as they wish?”, we regularly hear in public opinion when it comes to enforcing the 2004 law, which prohibits the wearing of conspicuous religious signs at school. A seemingly innocuous remark but in reality dangerous… Because this text, the aim of which is to protect students from all religious, social and political pressures, appears more essential than ever.
Since last spring, state services have denounced an Islamist offensive on social networks, aimed in particular at convincing young girls to come to school in abayas, these long dresses worn in Muslim countries, or to cover their tracks. to surreptitiously wear their headscarves. Last illustration in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) where, a few weeks after the start of the school year, an exchange between a high school student who wore an abaya and her teacher began to circulate on TikTok. The student, saying she was discriminated against by her choice, would have warned: “She will see what Allah will do to her.”
Since then, the teacher has been under police protection and the police regularly pass by her home and in front of the school. On October 16, the same day as the commemoration of the death of Samuel Paty, another teacher from Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne) was also threatened by students after commenting on a Muslim prayer on the same social network. . Investigations have been opened to shed light on these two cases. At the Joliot-Curie high school in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), the reasons for claiming appear more diverse, but some students do mention the lifting of the ban on abayas. “For me, it just becomes discrimination, and they don’t even hide their racism and Islamophobia anymore,” said a high school student recently interviewed by BFMTV. On October 11, clashes with the police led to the placement in custody of fourteen teenagers, not all high school students.
These recent events demonstrate, once again, the need to support our teachers in their fight for respect for secularism. In such a context, the fact that the institution can rely on the 2004 law when this principle is called into question serves as an essential bulwark. Those who denigrate it or fight it are, alas, definitely on the wrong track.