How an insecure France criminalises Muslim children

The end of August marks the beginning of the new French political season. It’s when government officials back from their summer break introduce their new policies. In that context, newly-appointed Minister of Education Gabriel Attal announced on live TV the banning of the abaya, a traditional long dress worn by Muslim women, in state schools. Attal is an ambitious and trusted right-hand man for President Emmanuel Macron. He justified the ban by framing the wearing of the abaya as an “attack on secularism”.

According to education officials, a significant number of Muslim girls have worn this garment during recent academic years. This is a natural expression of the girls’ Muslimness and attachment to their heritage, but has been met with moral panic in France. A series of polls indicated strong and overwhelming opposition to the wearing of traditional garments in state schools. One school teacher described the abaya as a “disturbing and threatening” phenomenon. A secretary of state accused “networks of radical Islam” of “weakening the Republic” through the promotion of the abaya. 

Moral panic and systemic Islamophobia ultimately ushered in this latest policy update. The ban will not require new legislation. The 2004 law banning any “religious ostentatious symbol” from state schools has already been chosen as the legal stick with which to beat Muslim girls. The law was originally used to target hijab. Its remit has now been expanded to include the abaya. 

France: 300 Muslim girls go to school in abaya despite ban

To foreign eyes, yet another Islamophobic French controversy looks preposterous; even incomprehensible. French Muslims, however, were not surprised. This widespread irrational fear of any expression of Muslimness, especially by children, is part and parcel of French governance and psyche. 

In the past 30 years, French schools have become a space for political conflict. Renewed practice of Islam and interest in Islamic education within the Muslim community, coupled with the advent of the Islamophobic securitisation narrative of the so-called “War on Terror”, have encouraged severe Republican repression in France. The state has identified Muslim children as important targets. With Islam depicted as an existential threat to French, even Western, civilisation, it became essential for younger generations of Muslims to be assimilated without delay by forcing them to abandon their religious identity. So, hijab was banned in state education facilities. This didn’t stop girls and women from wearing it, though. They continued to wear it outside the facilities and simply removed it once inside, in scenes reminiscent of the colonial “uncoverings”. The persecution of Muslims didn’t stop there. 

Grassroots community activists have collected numerous testimonies from Muslim girls questioned by their school principals about dresses deemed to be suspiciously long. At the request of the interior ministry, state schools in the south of France recorded the identity of Muslim children who attended Eid Al-Fitr celebrations. Since the implementation of the “systematic obstruction” policy and the adoption of the anti-Separatism Law, Islamic schools have either been closed or harassed by state officials who use indirect and artificial legal means to target them. Muslim children, like their parents before them, are now regarded as security threats in the making. Their very existence is therefore criminalised by a nation that historically regards Muslim identity and empowerment as catalysts of its own decline.  

This approach is not new; European colonial authorities used similar tactics. In Algeria under French occupation the teaching of Islam and of the Arabic language was curtailed severely. Muslim freedom fighters opposed this policy and established the foundations of their liberation struggle upon the spread of Islamic knowledge, which became the main source of Muslim political growth and success. Assimilative educational policy was nothing but a path to serfdom and political quietism. As a result, the indigenous code outlawed “public criticism of France and its government” by Muslims. France maintained a suspicious eye on Muslim empowerment, as this was equated with the state’s strategic downgrade. 

READ: UN criticises France for banning abaya in schools

Nowadays, the education system remains pivotal to the survival and success of the Republic. It is the ground where the seeds for its long-term purpose can be planted. For French children, education provides the environment where Republican supremacy can be rooted firmly. The state seeks to establish an education system that destroys the ability of the Muslim community to express legitimate political dissent rooted in their faith. It is intended to cut Muslims’ ties with their spiritual lineage and practice. The abaya ban has to be viewed within the context of this destructive, Islamophobic endeavour. 

The French nation is currently going through a strategic crisis. Its ongoing loss of international influence, especially in the Muslim world, has triggered a wave of anxiety and self-doubt. To protect its declining status, policymakers seek to emphasise the necessity to have a more united, resilient and, in the end, Republican France. To achieve this goal, Islamophobia is needed to silence the political growth of a dissenting minority. 

Despite its strenuous efforts, though, the results are poor. In the past three years alone, France has lost significant influence over some Muslim former colonies such as Mali, Niger and Gabon. Moreover, draconian Islamophobic policies have failed to deter Muslim children from maintaining a strong attachment to Islam. Some of them have prayed in their schools, challenging the official Islamophobic hatred directed at them. They have also observed a one-minute silence in commemoration of the memory of Prophet Muhammad, in stark opposition to the frequent blasphemous cartoons which target him.

It is unlikely that the abaya ban will remove the bond that young Muslims have with their faith. On the contrary, state injustice is only likely to breed its own future strongest rival.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.