Top French Court Approves Ban on Arab Headscarf in Schools After Challenge by Muslim Group

France has banned abayas and qamis, its highest administrative court confirms, the order of the nation’s education minister that the rule should be in force for the new school term having been thrown into question by a last-minute challenge from a Muslim-interest pressure group.

The Conseil d’État (Council of State), France’s supreme administrative court, has rejected an emergency appeal by the Action Droits des Musulmans (Action for Muslim Rights, ADM) to stop the implementation of new rules banning some garments in French schools. The French minister for education Gabriel Attal had said, in his reasoning for the ban, that: “When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them”.

The French state is, by the terms of its constitution, totally blind to race, religion, and other factors, officially seeing all French citizens as equally French no matter their heritage. Preserving this neutral approach has seen the government crackdown on outward signs of faith in the classroom — like robes and head scarves — but the ADM challenged this interpretation of the constitution arguing instead it means the state should permit individuals to wear what they like at school without interference.

The ADM argued, Le Figaro reports, that the ban on abayas “infringes on the rights of children, because it mainly targets children assumed to be Muslims”. They also argued, CNEWS reports, that the ban’s wording was too vague and presented an “unjustified interference in the exercise of Muslim worship”. The court did not agree with the claim and ruled that dress codes at school did not constitute a “serious… illegal attack on a fundamental freedom”.

The French Prime Minister has previously spoken out on that view, saying: “there is no stigmatisation. Every one of our fellow citizens, whatever their religion, has their place in our country… There is one principle: secularism. And there’s a law prohibiting the wearing of any sign or garment by which a student manifests his or her religious affiliation. This law must be applied to everyone, and we’ll make sure that it is properly applied.”

The ban and its confirmation in the courts has, of course, generated controversy. An essay in a top French newspaper on Friday blasts the abaya as an imposition on French society by Saudi Arabian “wahhabists”, intended to “transform women into ghosts”. On the other side, a whole school in the diverse Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris has gone on strike, with teachers and students protesting the government’s ban.

A statement by the protest committee, reports Al Jazeera, reads: “We want to distance ourselves from the government’s Islamophobic policy… we do not have to police the clothing. We refuse to stigmatise students who wear an abaya or a qamis”.

Another school, the Lycée Maurice Utrillo in Stains, Paris has seen a strike, with teachers walking out over what they call “Islamophobic” and “racist policies”. One teacher quoted by FranceTVInfo said they did not want to have to be “the clothing police”.

STAINS, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 6: A woman wearing a headscarf gives an interview to the Arab press in front of the Lycée Maurice-Utrillo on September 6, 2023 in Stains, France. In a recent televised interview, France’s education minister Gabriel Attal announced that France is to ban Islamic garments known as abayas in schools from September. (Photo by Remon Haazen/Getty Images)

More seriously, Figaro reports that one headmaster has already been threatened with death because he enforced the rule, an alarming callback to the death of French teacher Samuel Paty which started with death threats after he showed a cartoon of Mohammad in a class teaching freedom of expression. Paty was beheaded in the street outside his school by an Islamist.

It is reported the father of a schoolgirl threatened to kill the headmaster of the Ambroise Brugières high school, in Clermont-Ferrand (80 miles west of Lyon) because the headmaster refused to allow the girl into school on account of her dress not conforming with the law. The father made death threats and was arrested and remains in custody as of Friday morning.

The ban on abayas and qamis, which are robed garments that typically are worn with a head-scarf for women but which are not necessarily religious garments, was originally brought in to coincide with the start of the new school year. It is not the first such move in France, which has banned “conspicuous” religious symbols such as a visible Christian cross or an Islamic headscarf since 2004.

As reported, when the new school term began this week French schools turned away 298 girls who had decided to defy the ban, or were not aware of it. Most, according to the French government, agreed to remove the garment and then be admitted, but a minority of 67 refused to comply. Per a BBC report, if they continue to refuse and therefore are unable to attend school, they will be excluded.

It is stated the French government asserts the contrast of 67 refusals out of a school cohort of millions shows the ban has basically succeeded and been accepted.