The coordinator of La France insoumise Manuel Bompard announced Tuesday his intention to seize the Council of State to attack the “cruel” decision of the Minister of National Education to ban the wearing of the abaya in schools.
“I will propose to our parliamentary group to attack the Council of State this regulation because I think that it will be contrary to the Constitution, that in my opinion it is dangerous, it is cruel”, declared on France 2 the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône.
According to him, this ban will “result in once again discrimination against young women and in particular young women of the Muslim faith and I think that we do not need that in our country”.
“The religious authorities of the Muslim faith say that the abayas are not a religious outfit and therefore I am attached to the defense of secularism, (…) I do not see why it should be banned”, a- he argued, emphasizing expecting “something else from the Minister of National Education than going to stir up fears and fantasies”.
“When you start regulating outfits, especially women’s outfits, you open a Pandora’s box that you can’t get out of,” he warned.
The abaya is the new symbol of the frictions which cross the left, between on the one hand the Insoumis, like Manuel Bompard, who denounce an “Islamophobic” decision, the ecologists who condemn a “stigmatization”, and the On the other, certain elected officials from the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, who approve of Gabriel Attal’s decision, in the name of secularism.
“There is a risk, through the words they (LFI, editor’s note) use there, to question the law of 2004, and that would be disastrous”, warned on franceinfo the PS deputy from Essonne Jérôme Guedj on the position of the Insoumis and environmentalists.
The 2004 text, which prohibits conspicuous religious signs at school, had at the time made it possible “to appease, to pacify situations”, and this, “without major difficulty” according to Jérôme Guedj, very attached to the school as “a space of neutrality, construction of free will and judgment to emancipate young people in training”.
At the PS, which had voted almost unanimously for the 2004 text, neither the party leader, Olivier Faure, nor the boss of the deputies, Boris Vallaud, have so far commented on Gabriel Attal’s decision.
08/29/2023 09:22:31 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
