Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said.

The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September.

France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.

Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.

  • MildPudding@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Wow. As a religious minority it’s incredibly depressing to see how many people on here support this violation of religious liberty.

    • TheGoodKall@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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

          • セリャスト@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            It is less about religious freedom but more about the fact that no religion should exist in state run places like school. It is quite complicated, you might want to google it. For example american stuff like swearing on a bible thing, even if there is a non religious alternative, would be extremely controversial in france

            • Lakija@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The US over here was supposed to be that way, with the separation of church and state.

              As you have likely seen—due to the ceaseless amount of news about the US everywhere—that is a fucking joke now. Our country is overridden by the devils evangelical spawn.

              • セリャスト@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                I guess, but it feels like your state aknowledges religions with speciak tax regimes and stuff like that. The whole religious freedom thing is kinda cringe to me

                • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The idea was that they stay out of politics, the government stays out of religion, because that’s mutually beneficial.

                  Now they’re on the cusp of reaping what they’ve sowed with the unholy evangelical alliance. People aren’t interested in churches anymore and young people especially. Republicans are one election away from nonviability for president (knock on wood, and please let it be the election in 2024). Young people fucking loathe Republicans and evangelicals.

                  Are there young people still casting their lot with them? Absolutely. But the proportional difference is disastrous in politics. Even a 45-55 split is massive, and millennials and Zoomers are certainly more than that on Republicans.

            • finkrat@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So what is the solution for religious families then? Are they forced to private institutions/homeschool?

                • Guntrigger@feddit.ch
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m interested to know if there’s any kind of religious education in the French school system?

                  In the UK I was in a CofE school (Christian) but our Religious Education classes taught about all religions pretty equally.

                  • セリャスト@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    1 year ago

                    My middle school did too but I was in a private school, I don’t know if it is part of public school. Most of it was me arguing with my religious teacher tho

    • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s been part of France’s political culture that religious signification has no place in public institutions. Given that Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Britain offer ways to religious groups to punish others through the legal system for not accepting their criteria regarding what constitutes legitimate criticism [*], but France doesn’t, I’d argue that France is doing something right.

      In 2018, a youth in Spain was condemned to pay 480€ for publishing an edited photograph of a Christ image with his own face.

      This event emboldened fanatic religious organizations, which sought charges against an actor for saying “I shit on God and Virgin Mary!” in a restaurant. Fortunately he wasn’t declared guilty, but he suffered a judicial process of 2 years. This doesn’t mean they didn’t achieve their goal: they sent everyone the message that you should think twice the next time you consider you have freedom of expression.

      If you let religious people think their beliefs must be protected from any criticism, many of them will start to see their privilege as the norm, and eventually encroach the freedoms of everyone else.

      • Leer10@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Yeah honestly. As much as we’ve struggled with developing and even enforcing it today, I think America has a good balance between freedom to practice and freedom from state sponsored religion

        • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Probably not the best moment in that country’s history to make that claim

          https://web.archive.org/web/20230719103441/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/supreme-court-religion.html

          This term, the Supreme Court decided two cases involving religion: Groff v. DeJoy was a relatively low-profile case about religious accommodations at work; 303 Creative v. Elenis was a blockbuster case about the clash between religious exercise and principles of equal treatment. (The legal question was technically about speech, but religion was at the core of the dispute.)

          In both cases, plaintiffs asserted religiously grounded objections to complying with longstanding and well-settled laws or rules that would otherwise apply to them. And in both, the court handed the plaintiff a resounding victory.

          These cases are the latest examples of a striking long-term trend: Especially since Amy Coney Barrett became a justice in 2020, the court has taken a sledgehammer to a set of practices and compromises that have been carefully forged over decades to balance religious freedom with other important — and sometimes countervailing — principles.

      • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And the real reason is unmasked. This isn’t “freedom,” this is pushing atheism. There’s a reason the US Supreme Court has struck down similar policies for nearly a century, because it privileges atheism over any religion.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The US Supreme Court has struck down similar policies because US population are religious zealots.

        • Vespair@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You say that as if atheism is just another religion, which is missing the point. It’s not an unreasonable bias if the government agrees with me that 2+2=4 and that those trying to convince you 2+2=3 are doing you intellectual harm. I know religious people love the “but atheism is just another kind of religion!” adage, but it doesn’t hold water. Nobody is being denied human rights in the name of just atheism, nobody is being oppressed by just atheism.

          Remember when we were kids and we were told not to judge people by how they look or other factors they can’t control, but rather to judge them by the things they say, do, and think? Yeah somewhere religious people started this lie that religion is some intrinsic part of being, like sexuality/sexual identity, but this isn’t the case. Religion is a choice. Religion is a belief. Exactly the kind of thing you should judge people for, same as any of their other beliefs or opinions.

          The idea that a government shouldn’t endorse atheism, or at least legislate from an atheistic point of view, is insane to me, tbh.

          • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Religion isn’t a choice - you can’t choose to believe something. I used to be obsessed with my religion and my relationship to god. Then I had a nervous breakdown, saw a shrink, and was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. Two weeks into taking wellbutrin, ALL CARES about my immortal soul and god and whatever just turned off entirely, like a giant breaker being thrown. It was amazing, and made me realize that people’s brain chemistry has as much to do with them being religious as cultural factors.

            • Vespair@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I don’t agree with your interpretation of constitutes an intrinsic quality. I do agree elements within organized religion exist to prey on various vulnerabilities, including those related to brain chemistry, but I don’t think those pressures or vulnerabilities absolve you the responsibility of thoughtfulness and choice. I have suffered from a genuine mental illness my whole life, and that fact does contribute to my choices and and may explain some of my behavior, but it never absolves me or excuses my behavior. Religion may arguably be a difficult or loaded choice, but it is absolutely a choice. A person isn’t a Baptist in the way that they might be inherently and intrinsically gay; a person chooses to be Baptist, even if that choice is one of passive cultural acceptance.

                • Vespair@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  Whether a person believes they have divine inspiration or not, it is still their choice to follow it. In fact, that’s a key tenant of the faith in question. A deluded person is deluded; we don’t have to and shouldn’t indulge their delusion as if it was reality. And to be clear I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about genuinely mentally ill people as you describe. If a mentally ill person truly believes they are a duck it does not mean they are a duck, even if they choose to behave like one. When a mentally ill person believes they know the holy spirit Spirit it does not mean they know the holy spirit, even when they choose to behave as such.

                  • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    I wholeheartedly agree with you that the real world should not indulge delusion. The fact that major world faiths rely on encouraging and fostering mental illness for their very existence is a horror. On the other hand, there’s research showing that religious integration is correlated with better outcomes for schizophrenic folks, if you discount the research that suggests a higher incidence of suicide in religiously-involved schitzophrenics. But maybe we don’t need more Joan of Arcs. I once read that Ireland’s secular interventions for folks with schizophrenia (focused on normalization etc.) led to a massive decrease in violent content in the voices folks were hearing. I’m not schizophrenic myself, but I hooked up with a girl who was, and who was extremely well adjusted considering the fact that she was frequently hearing shit that only existed in her world.

                    Sorry, went off on a major tangent. At the end of the day, I don’t particularly care if it’s a choice or if people are just wired different. What I do care about is protecting secularism where it can be found. France’s secularism was hard won, and I don’t blame them for being protective of it.

    • Guntrigger@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      I honestly don’t understand the contradicting argument of “there should be no religious symbol in a state school, if you want that go to a religious school” and “no religious symbols allowed will set them free”.

      Surely if you are funneling all of these kids into religious schools and away from the state system, you’re going to entrench them in that religion further, not “set them free”. It just serves to divide kids even more than if you allowed them all the freedom to mingle in the same school with all their religious garb.

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah its why I’m downvoting people, they seem to think Christianity is the only religon in existence and that anyone who follows religon ends up like those domestic terrorists in america

      It reminds me of athiest reddit

      • tord@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        The same law applies to Christians, too. For instance, you also wouldn’t be allowed to wear a cross at school.

        • x4740N@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m not against freedom of expression as long as it doesn’t bring harm to anyone

          Wearing symbols of a religon or faith someone subscribes to doesn’t harm anyone just like dressing with a person’s own preference of clothing does not harm anyone

          People should be free to express themselves and not be forced to hide parts of themselves away in public because someone in government thinks dressing a certain way or wearing a symbol of faith or religon inherently leads to something bad happening for example americas domestic terrorists

          And just to he clear I’m not supporting right wing bigotry with my comment, I will never be tolerant of bigotry and intolerance

          And I’ve seen a lot of people in this posts comment section being in support of this being rude & inflammatory

          YOU NEVER TAKE AWAY THE RIGHTS / EQUALITY OF PEOPLE WITH GOOD INTENTIONS IN MIND

    • howsetheraven@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In a way I get it, your way of life is being discriminated against. But with thousands of years of history and present day to go off of, I still feel it’s a good thing.

      I kinda compare it to smoking cigarettes. There are a ton of people who do it, but it’s so obviously unhealthy. I won’t go on with the analogy, but you can get pretty grim with it.

      You can have a fulfilling and culture filled life without blind hope for a greater power and possibly being negatively influenced by that belief; either through authority figures in your church or you’re own interpretations of religious teachings.

      Another thing I saw mentioned was that it’s a state run school. Separation of church and state is something I vehemently agree with. So while it might suck for you, your grandchildren will be better off because they’re not losing anything.

    • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Protecting the society’s Overton window concerning women from being shifted toward any religious group’s preferred direction (let alone a minority group that has a terrible present tract record insofar as female equality is concerned) is a real hard thing to get right. Quite honestly, having grown up as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian and having spent years deprogramming myself from my childhood indoctrination, I would have zero issue seeing the same laws equally enforced against public expressions of religion in this country as well. Any space children have from their family to form their own opinions, without being forced to “other” themselves through religiocultural garb, is good space.