The government “will not let anything pass”, assured Emmanuel Macron on Friday. From Monday, the day of the new school year, the abaya and the qamis will be prohibited in schools. The measure, taken by the Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal, aims to fight against attacks on secularism in schools. Guest of Europe 1, Sonia Backès, the Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship, returned to this subject, and affirmed that “the law is not a religious sign at school therefore [les jeunes filles qui portent l’abaya] won’t come back.”
However, the Secretary of State for Citizenship recognizes that the implementation of this measure will be more or less difficult to enforce depending on the establishments. “We will have to organize ourselves so that it is not possible for these religious symbols to return” to school. “We have places where it’s not a problem and others where we have up to 150 young girls going to school every day in abaya,” says Sonia Backès.
A “test of the Republic”
“So there are establishments where principals can easily open up a dialogue to explain to young girls that they can no longer fit in their abayas and to young boys that they can no longer fit in qamis, and other places where we will have dozens of young people who will arrive in abayas or qamis.” Aid will therefore be offered to heads of establishments to help them enforce this measure. “The Minister of National Education has set up teams in schools in difficulty, teams that are called ‘value of the Republic’. These are teams that provide training in secularism, to enable ensure this dialogue”, she explains.
Especially since, according to the Secretary of State, the start of the school year could be disrupted in certain establishments. “There have been intelligence notes which show that on social networks, Islamist networks are pushing to force their way through, sometimes even offering money.” For Sonia Backès, this is a “test of the Republic”: “These networks are trying to demonstrate that the laws of religion are superior to those of the Republic” but “the President of the Republic said it, we ‘will not let anything pass’: the laws of the Republic are secularism at school”, she concludes at the microphone of Europe 1.