“I decided that we could no longer wear the abaya at schoolannounced Gabriel Attal during the “20 hours” of TF1, Sunday August 27. When you walk into a classroom, you should not be able to identify the students’ religion by looking at them. » The Minister of National Education had already issued a firm instruction to the rectors, whom he had brought together on Thursday: “Where the Republic is tested, we must unite. »
What is the abaya?
The abaya (Arabic word which means “toga”, “cloak”) is a covering garment, often loose and light, which is worn from the shoulders to the feet, similar to the djellaba in North Africa or the qamis in West Africa. the West.
You can add a scarf or a veil, the abaya does not cover the face, unlike the burqa. Feminine clothing, it can be worn by men, even if the cut differs.
Often neutral in hue, it also developed as a more vibrantly colored fashion garment.
How to differentiate it from other neighboring garments?
It is very difficult to distinguish an abaya from other similar clothes.
The djellaba, of Berber origin, is distinguished by usually brighter colors and richer ornamental patterns. The qamis, often considered the male equivalent of the abaya, has notably straighter and tighter lines.
On X (ex-Twitter), the former Minister of Equality of Territories and Housing Cécile Duflot had so much fun to ask if a long covering dress was a “attack on secularism”, sharing a photo of a luxury Gucci-branded piece. It can be difficult to distinguish a full-coverage robe from an abaya.
Why is this garment at the center of a controversy?
According to a note from the State services whose The world had a copy, reports of attacks on secularism in schools have been increasing for a year (4,710 in 2022-2023, compared to 2,167 the previous year), and more than 40% of monthly reports now concern outfits which can be both cultural and religious – like the qamis or the djellaba for men or the abaya for women. These reports concern approximately 150 establishments, out of several thousand colleges and high schools.
Some see it as a departure from the law of 2004which prohibits “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation”. The former education minister, Pap Ndiaye, had published a circular in November 2022, while leaving the freedom to the heads of establishment to decide on the religious character or not of these outfits. A position deemed too measured, even lax, by the right-wing and far-right opposition.
Is it a religious garment?
This is one of the main questions of the national education staff.
The abaya is first and foremost a traditional garment. In his Detailed dictionary of the names of clothes among the Arabs (1845), Dutch orientalist Reinhart Dozy defined her as “the characteristic Bedouin dress of almost all times”. Simple and rustic, it spread in the Persian Gulf and its surroundings.
Short or colorful abayas were accepted in Saudi society until the late 1970s. After a hostage-taking by fundamentalist rebels in Mecca in 1979, King Khal Aziz Al Saud gave these of one of the most literalist and rigorous visions of Islam. Among the landmark laws, the wearing of the black abaya becomes compulsory for women, who also lose many freedoms. The garment therefore imposed itself in Saudi Arabia, becoming a marker of Salafist Islam in the Western imagination.
Seen from France, where the Wahhabi current gained influence in the 2010s, the abaya can appear as a sign of religious affiliation. An interpretation that challenges the French Council of Muslim Worshipwhich, through the voice of its vice-president Abdallah Zekri, simply called her of“kind of fashion”.
As it stands, the assessment of the religious character of the abaya by the heads of establishments is based above all on the context and the intention attributed to the wearer. THE vade-mecum on secularism at schoolpublished in 2021 by the Ministry of National Education, specifies that“a sign or outfit which is not, strictly speaking, religious, may thus be prohibited if it is worn to ostensibly manifest a religious affiliation”. The provocative, repeated character or even the refusal to remove it are considered signs of religious value.
Have other countries already banned the abaya?
France is the first Western country to announce that it wants to ban the abaya at school. But the first country to have done so is… Saudi Arabia, which, under the impetus of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, has undertaken a liberal shift in recent years. Since 2022, the Wahhabi kingdom has banned the wearing of the abaya for women during exams. It is one of many measures aimed at modernizing the society of the oil monarchy, such as the lifting of the driving ban for Saudi women.