Newsnomics AJAY ANGELINA reporter |

France is going to ban Abaya dress used by Muslim females in the state schools arguing the garment violated France’s strict secular laws in education.

Abaya is a loose-fitting, full-length robe worn by Muslim women to cover their whole body.

Gabriel Attal, France Educational Minister told TF1 television, “It will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at schools.”

He mentioned that, “he would give “clear rules at the national level” to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.

“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

added.

The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas increasingly worn in French schools creating tensions within school over the issue between teachers and parents.

In 2004, France strictly restricted “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools includes large Crosses, Jewish Kippas, Sikh turban, or head scarfs.

In 2010, the use of full-face veils in public was restricted by the French authorities which led to anger in

France's five million-strong Muslim community.

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

The announcement is the first major move by the French educational minister Attal (34), since he was appointed this summer to handle the hugely contentious education portfolio along with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin (40), seen as a rising star who could potentially play an important role after president Emmanuel Macron steps down in 2027.

Bruno Bobkiewicz, general secretary of the NPDEN-UNSA, which represents head teachers welcomed Minster Attal's announcement said, "Even the instructions are not clear yet but we welcome it." 

Bobkiewicz, Eric Ciotto, head of the opposition right-wing Republican party, also welcomed the move saying “we called for the ban on abayas in our schools several times," he said.

Items of clothing alone were not “a religious sign” said the French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations.

While, Clementine Autain of the left-wing opposition France Unbowed party denounced Attal’s statement and described it as the "policing of clothing".

It was "unconstitutional" and against the founding principles of France's secular values, she argued - and symptomatic of the government's "obsessive rejection of Muslims