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Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said.
The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.
France may be good for not respecting a religion and disallowing abuse of religious systems that would attack the freedom of non-religious/minority-religious citizens, but are going to the opposite side of this problem. Abayas don’t hurt anyone and, from what I can tell/correct me if wrong, are used as a religious observation. France is going out of their way to impose restrictions on elements that are generally harmless that these people may see as a religious necessity, attacking the freedom of religious citizens. There has to be a balance and they’re off on the other arc of the pendulum swing here.
Enforcing Muslim girls and women to hide their hair does definitely hurt someone: those who want to leave religion. It is a very common problem for ex-Muslim women and teenagers to suffer harassment both at home and elsewhere from bigoted Muslims who think they do not have the right to apostate. As soon as you stop complying with an enforced form of clothing, you’re signalling those people that you’re a sinner.
old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/9cnyvl/help_muslim_security_guard_at_work_told_my/
It’s obvious that the “we should give women from oppressive backgrounds the choice to volunteer to oppress themselves in public schools” folks didn’t grow up in an oppressive religion. It is actually quite easier to understand if one thinks of ALL religions as cults for a moment, to remove the veneer of the sacred.
What technically could be called a “choice” is often far from it. On the mild side, maybe your momma or daddy isn’t “forcing” you to wear an abaya/floor length jean dress/bonnet/whatever, but if you choose NOT to wear it, you face disapproval and pushback from co-religionists. On the harsh side, choosing not to wear whatever garb can lead you to being harshly punished, ostracized, even beaten.
Giving the kids half a chance to form a self-concept that is larger than their family’s own religiocultural worldview is a kind of freedom, and yes, it diverges greatly from the US view of “religious freedom,” which is includes the freedom to try and indoctrinate one’s kids to ensure that there will be a future generation of primitive baptists/mainstream evangelicals/US anglicans/muslims/etc. that continue to teach that women are subserviant to men.
So surely forcing them to take it off while at school is exacerbating that problem. They either comply with the state and be seen as a sinner by their religion, or stick to their religious belief (forced or not) and are at odds with the state.
The point is that by banning it, they remove agency from the kid. So the parents will be WAY less likely to take out their displeasure of their kid not wearing religiocultural garb on the kid, since the kid has no choice. Far better than the beatings and other less physical abuse that will rain down on a substantial minority of kids if they voluntarily opted out of the garb.
I get the idea that it’s freeing children from having to follow their parental oppression, but it would be nice to see some honest statistics on how many kids this actually is.
I would be inclined to think the more rabid fundamentalist types would simply seek a move to a school which allows their kid to wear it. Thereby not really reducing fundamentalism as is the supposed goal, instead segregating and entrenching it.
And it’s not even a niqab of hijab we are talking about here, its just a type of traditional dress.
Too bad the thing you want hard data on is virtually impossible to accurately gather with any reliability. What I do know is that as a former fundamentalist evangelical xtian examining my own former in-group, there was a ton of active coordination to poison the well of our young minds against “the world,” which meant science, evolution, sex, role of women, higher education, and anyone who was not our flavor of christian. Most kids willfully mimicked their parents opinions, like I did. And of my then in-group, it seemed that for every handful of families, half of them had insane parents (domineering fathers and submissive mothers) that were very happy that the Bible gave a divine mandate/suggestion to beat their children to enforce compliance with the dictates of their faith.