President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the government “will not let anything pass” on the abaya and the qamis, now banned in schools in the name of secularism. This measure was announced by the Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal last week.
The government “will not let anything pass” on the abaya and the qamis, now banned in schools in the name of secularism, Emmanuel Macron said on Friday. “We know that there will be cases (…) by negligence perhaps, but a lot to try to challenge the republican system. We must be intractable”, declared the head of state during a trip in a professional high school in Orange (Vaucluse).
“Republic Hussars”
Thursday evening, the Minister of Education Gabriel Attal sent a memo to the heads of establishments specifying that the wearing of the abaya and the qamis, Muslim outfits, “conspicuously manifests in the school environment a religious affiliation (and) does not can be tolerated there. A clarification justified by Emmanuel Macron because “teachers, school heads must never be left alone in the face of the pressures they are subject to, or the challenges that exist on this subject”.
These “hussars of the Republic” are “right to defend secularism” and “we must support them when they are threatened, jostled”, he insisted, assuring that “the State, the Republic is behind them”. As proof, he promised that “in the high schools or colleges which are the most sensitive, specific staff will be seconded alongside the heads of establishments and teachers to support them and also to engage in the necessary dialogue with families and students”.