A government official said on Tuesday that scores of girls were expelled from French schools for refusing to take off their abayas on the first day of the school year, a covering worn by Muslim women from the shoulders to the feet.
Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up Monday morning wearing an abaya, Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster.
Most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said.
Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that “secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty.”
If they showed up at school again wearing the dress there would be a “new dialogue,” the minister said.
The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.
The move gladdened the political right but the hard-left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties.
Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up Monday morning wearing an abaya, Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster.
Most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said.
Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that “secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty.”
If they showed up at school again wearing the dress there would be a “new dialogue,” the minister said.
The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.
The move gladdened the political right but the hard-left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties.
