I'm not very comfortable with these type of bans.
People say women shouldn't be forced to wear certain items of clothing and deal with it by forcing them to wear different items of clothing.
Doesn't seem very productive.
I always think of that meme with a women in full body coverings and a women wearing a bikini and they're both thinking about how awful it is that society pressures women to dress like the other.
Playing the advocate of the devil: the reason given is clearly stated as not being about being forced to wear anything, but about a general ban on religious signs in state schools. For example I imagine wearing a Christian cross around your neck is also banned.
A consistently enforced bad law is still a bad law. All consistently means is that everyone has to suffer.
It’s difficult to say whether someone is wearing what they are wearing through choice or because it is demanded of them.
I agree with you, demanding that they wear something else is not the answer.
Especially when they're kids. People should be able to wear whatever they want. But kids don't often get to choose what they want. They're often at the mercy of what their parents want and that's it.
There's also something to be said about pressure from family members. Even if the kid chose to wear something, did they really do so out of their own free will? Or because their parents said they'll burn in hell for all eternity if they don't?
And it's not like we're talking about something like simple taste in clothing or mild culture differences. We're talking about clothes that are drenched in misogyny. It's not about literal clothing in a vacuum, but rather what those clothes imply about women as a whole.
I get this completely. This is nothing new for France, they have been blocking Christians from wearing crosses and Jews from wearing kippah's for a very long time, it's only reasonable that the Muslim population gets treated equally. Schools should remain completely secular, I am in complete agreement with France there.
Except abayas are basically just some loose-fitting clothes that can be worn by anyone regardless their religion. It's like banning kimono or sari.
If it's just an outfit and not religious clothes than there should be no problem, right?
It’s still targeting ethnicities. There’s no denying that these bans have a racial component to it.
How people dress is none of the government's business. This is just authoritarism.
Except when you want it, because you like it when you don't see other people's genitalia. Then it suddenly is the governments bussiness. In this case it's even just for during your attendance at a public school.
I'm not sure I like this. I sort of get not allowing religious symbols to be worn, but you're forcing people to dress in a certain way. I don't think the government should be able to do that
This is where I landed. They should simply continue to permit children to remove it at school if they choose, while they are under the guardianship of the state.
I feel like conflicted is the "correct" way to feel. On one hand, the government is literally enforcing clothing laws. On the other hand, this may prevent children from being forced into something they did not choose. I feel like a religion wrapping up your child in cloth so they lose their individually as a human being is cult-like behavior.
It would be better if the religion just wasn't allowed to make them do this, but then they would just "suggest" women do this. This "suggestion" of course is actually coercion at best.
The especially dumb part of this is that abayas aren't specifically Muslim or religious in nature, they're cultural. They are a long flowing dress, without even a head covering. A bunch of non-Islamic women wear them in a variety of countries.
So this is more attempting to ban entire cultural outfits, which is ridiculous.
For context, the French are very strict about any form of symbol on what students wear. I couldn't even wear a baseball cap with a team logo and that's not religious.
You forgot to mention that the abaya is compulsory in Saudi Arabia (except for tourists) and Qatar.
And that's bad. Can we agree that making a dress compulsory and making a dress banned are both bad, because they both restrict choice?
I am mildly in favor of that. Kids can't decide what to wear it's their parents who do.
This will simply reduce the artificial divide between those wear that type of stuff and who doesn't.
I also don't believe it's a freedom endangering, because they're aren't spontaneously people wearing abayas or burka or whatever just for the pleasure of it, I interpret the fact of wearing it as religious propaganda and artificial separation.
For a 200 year old law, it's pretty straight forward. And for all it's flaws, the Nth revolution didn't like the Catholic church for ... reasons, so they wanted to make a law to get them out of politics and make them liable for their shenanigans. Thankfully they didn't discriminate when they wrote the law.
- PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”
The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State1
No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.
Religious freedom is a human right. Self determination is a human right. As long as whatever you do does not cause a negative impact on other people (see the second right) or society at large, then gtfo.
There is no "second right" in France. The law is simple : Don't wear visible religious sign at school. There are private religious schools if you disagree with the public system.
Is it so insane to think there could be a school with both religious and areligious people at the same time? A secular school that doesn't support a religion, but allows students to express themselves how they choose? When did that become a radical idea?
"Self determination is a human right" There's nothing I agree more on. Unfortunately some muslim communities do not agree, and the men and the women aren't on the same level. Many women are forced to port the abaya and other vests that cover their figure in entirety, and I don't think they should be forced to if they don't want to. 85% of the muslim women in France that I know do not want to port it, but they're obligated by their family. Banning it entirely is not the perfect solution, but it's a step in the the direction of eradicating religions in France. The time of Christianity and Islam is way beyond us.
i like the slow stumble from "self-determination is a human right" to "eradicating religions in france"
"85% of the muslim women in france ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᶦ ᵏⁿᵒʷ" really adds to the experience too, thank you
Wow. As a religious minority it's incredibly depressing to see how many people on here support this violation of religious liberty.
Yeah I agree with you. It's one thing to say the school can't promote a religious creed to the pupils, it is another to limit self-expression of dress when it doesn't impact other students
I get the reasoning, but really it feels like papering over cracks rather than addressing the root cause.
Set up proper support structures to prevent people from being coerced into things they don't want to, make sure people are given places to get away from controlling people and exposed to the fact that things don't have to be like that.
Reading all the anti-privacy and self expression things that France are pushing...wouldn't understand why anyone would want to move to france in this day and age.
If I agree with some anti-privacy woes, France (and more broadly Europe) is way more privacy friendly than the US. We have to fight for it from time to time, but for now it goes mostly in the right direction.
As for religious stuff, to understand that you have to understand France. We are, due to our history, mostly irreligious (50% of the whole population in 2017), with most religious people being non-practicing. Like every country we have our religious nutjobs, but they are mostly irrevelant compared to the US ones.
As such, we as a whole generally consider that religion should not impact public life and public places nor be displayed in there, with some specific exception (nuns and priests, as it is considered as being an uniform mandated by their trade).
School is a public space, as such public display of religion are forbidden. This is not specifically agains Muslim, the same would apply to a nun when going to school as a student. Other less ostensible religious sign, like crucifixes, are also banned.
All that is (mostly) to fight communitarianism, which is viewed here as a threat to society.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Students will be banned from wearing abaya, a loose-fitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim women, in France's state-run schools, the education minister has said.
"When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn't be able to identify the pupils' religion just by looking at them," Education Minister Gabriel Attal told France's TF1 TV, adding: "I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools."
The garment has being increasingly worn in schools, leading to a political divide over them, with right-wing parties pushing for a ban while those on the left have voiced concerns for the rights of Muslim women and girls.
France has enforced a strict ban on religious signs at schools since the 19th Century, including Christian symbols such as large crosses, in an effort to curb any Catholic influence from public education.
The debate on Islamic symbols has intensified since a 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 major policy decision by Mr Attal, who was appointed France's education minister by President Emmanuel Macron this summer at the age of 34.
The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Is this a case of being lost in translation or something? I wouldn't consider religious garb to be a "sign."
The same "I know what's best for them" and "the law applies equally to everyone" arguments in favor of bans on drugs that many in liberal spaces will detest, they will happily use when supporting shit like this. We all know that everyone doesn't suffer equally under laws like this. Religion may be the opium of the people, but does that mean we should be the narcs? You don't eradicate religion by banning it. You eradicate it by having secular institutions provide the things people go to religion for, like a sense of purpose, assistance, and community.
Banning something is as opressive as making it mandatory.
Nope. You aren't allowed to have religious shit on you in general public in france.
I think some are forgetting, these bans are in schools, outside these schools you can wear whatever you want
I totally support that. https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/little-hijabi-a-little-girls-love-for-her-hijab/9781504319508.html Kids wearing hijabs, abayas (put any religious symbol here) must be considered as a form of child abuse. It is crucial to refrain from imposing outdated and fantastical beliefs onto young minds.
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