The intellectual infirmity that has laid low much of Europe’s left this century had been painfully exposed this week in France. On Monday, the country’s new minister of education, Gabriel Attal, announced that when pupils return to the classroom next week none will be permitted to wear the abaya, a conservative form of Islamic dress that is worn to preserve one’s modesty. Justifying the interdiction, Attal said the abaya contravened France’s strict rules on the wearing of religious symbols to school.
‘Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,’ Attal explained. ‘You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the students’ religion by looking at them.’
France first took a stand against the growth of Islamic conservatism in 2004, when it banned the Islamic headscarf (along with other religions’ accoutrements), and it has been forced to act after thousands of pupils began arriving to school in the long and baggy abaya.
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