French schools sent dozens of girls home on the first day of the school year for refusing to remove their abayas, reported local news outlets.
French education minister Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster on Tuesday that nearly 300 girls showed up, as usual, Monday morning wearing the loose-fitting robe, and while most agreed to change out of the outfit, 67 of the girls refused and were sent home.
Attal threatened that if the students showed up at school again wearing the dress there would be a “new dialogue.”
The government announced the ban on wearing abayas in schools last month, claiming that it violated the regulations on secularism in education, which already prohibit headscarves and kippahs as a symbol of religious affiliation.
French President Emmanuel Macron defended the controversial measure on Monday, saying in an interview with YouTube channel HugoDecrypte that there was a “minority” in France who are “hijacking religion and challenging the republic and secularism,” leading to the “worst consequences.”
“Schools must remain neutral: I don’t know what your religion is, you don’t know what mine is,” Macron argued, noting that the Abaya is a religious symbol used by Muslims.
The president said that teachers and school principals could not be “abandoned” in the fight to preserve secularism.
He also warned that “we cannot pretend that the murder of Samuel Paty did not happen,” referring to a teacher who was killed in an act of Islamist terrorism three years ago during a civics education class on freedom of expression in which he showed a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.
When the ban was announced more than a week ago, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) spokesperson Marta Hurtado reminded France of its obligations under international law in regard to banning clothing.
“According to international human rights standards, limitations on manifestations of religion or belief, including choice of clothing, are only permitted in very limited circumstances,” Hurtado commented during a bi-weekly briefing session of the UN in Geneva.
She stated that under international human rights law, “measures adopted in the name of public order must be appropriate, necessary, and proportionate.”