Alexis Delafontaine with AFP / Photo credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP
The ban on wearing the abaya at school unsurprisingly divides the Nupes, elected officials from the PS and the PCF approving it in particular in the name of the principle of secularism, LFI denouncing an Islamophobic decision, and environmentalists a “stigmatization” . Barely out of the Medina controversy, and while relations were strained in the summer on the question of a common list for European women, the partners of the left union once again expressed their disagreements, this time on the secularism.
“It’s an eternal restart, the veil, the burkini, etc. Each time it replays all the divisions of the left”, with “three lines”: that called “republican spring” of a “closed secularism”, that of a slightly more open secularism and that known as “Islamo-leftist”, notes political scientist Rémi Lefebvre.
“The Garment Police”
“Sadness to see the start of the school year politically polarized by a new absurd entirely artificial religious war over a female outfit”, reacted the Insoumis leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Monday, calling for “civil peace” and “ true secularism that unites instead of exasperating”. Setting the tone on Sunday evening, the leader of the LFI deputies Mathilde Panot had mocked on X (ex-Twitter) “the obsession” of the Minister of Education Gabriel Attal: “Muslims. More precisely, Muslim women”.
Denouncing “the clothing police”, LFI deputy Clémentine Autain, judged this decision “unconstitutional, contrary to the founding principles of secularism” and “symptomatic of the obsessive rejection of Muslims”.
“Nothing to do with religion”
Last June, Jean-Luc Mélenchon claimed that the abaya had “nothing to do with religion”, joining the French Council for Muslim Worship, which claimed that this long traditional dress covering the body was “not “a Muslim religious symbol. Among environmentalists, Gabriel Attal’s decision is seen as “a rancid controversy to divert attention from Macron’s policy of dismantling public schools”, underlines Cyrielle Chatelain, leader of the group in the Assembly, denouncing “a logic of exclusion and stigmatization”.
MP Sandrine Rousseau, known for her feminist positions, compares this announcement to a new “social control over the bodies of women and young girls”. The Greens, often accused of “Islamo-leftists”, “have never been for the ban on the veil”, recalls Rémi Lefebvre. But the leader of the party Marine Tondelier, or the ex-presidential candidate Yannick Jadot, did not speak, perhaps scalded by the controversy over the coming to their summer days of the controversial rapper Medine.
“Compass”
Also at the PS, party leader Olivier Faure has for the moment refrained from commenting, just like Boris Vallaud, the boss of the deputies. Among the only ones to have reacted, the deputy Jérôme Guedj, actively pro-Nupes, recalls that “our compass is the prohibition of conspicuous signs at school. As soon as the abaya or the qamis (clothing long masculine, editor’s note) are worn in an ostentatious dimension, then they must be prohibited as the 2004 law allows, without major difficulties”. Support for the minister’s decision hardly appreciated by LFI MP Nadège Abomangoli, who highlights the fragility of the left alliance: “A list for the Europeans with that? No thank you”, she wrote.
The PS mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, also welcomed the government’s decision, as did the PS president of Occitanie Carole Delga. The right of the party, hostile to Nupes, is “logically rather on a closed secularism”, remarks Remi Lefevbre. For the political scientist, secularism is “a very identity question among militant circles”. There is “a generational boundary” and “a tension around secularism” in the traditional parties, which have older activists.
At LFI, if the old are “more secular”, among the young, as well as “at Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his relatives”, there is “by ideology and by electoralism, a more flexible conception of secularism”, adds the searcher. According to an Ifop poll after the first round of the 2022 presidential election, Muslims placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon very largely in the lead. Renowned for his sometimes contrarian positions within Nupes, PCF boss Fabien Roussel clearly welcomed the ban. “Because the heads of establishments needed clear instructions even if it concerns 150 establishments out of 60,000,” he said on Sud Radio.