French authorities ban Abaya in schools

The CFCM, a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone were not "a religious sign"...

Wearing abaya are to ban by French authorities in school dresses by some Muslim women, on Sunday the education minister said, arguing the garment violated to France's strict secular laws in education.

"It will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school," Education Minister Gabriel Attal told TF1 television, saying he would give "clear rules at the national level" to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.

Ater months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools the move come, where women have long been banned from wearing the Islamic headscarf.

"Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school," Attal said, describing the abaya as "a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute."

You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them," he said.

A law of March 2004 banned "the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" in schools.

This includes large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

The debate has intensified since a radicalised Chechen refugee beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown students caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, near his school in a Paris suburb in 2020.

The announcement is the first big move by Attal, 34, since he was promoted this summer to handle the hugely contentious education portfolio.

Along with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, 40, he is seen as a rising star who could potentially play an important role after Macron steps down in 2027.