.EVERY FEW years the French acquire worked up regarding an item of theological clothes that they deem improper in the classroom. This time a debate has broken out at la rentru00e9e, the beginning of the new year, over a government choice to disallow from state schools the abaya, an uncut bathrobe worn by some Muslim females for virtue. To folks in nations with a custom of liberal multiculturalism, the ban seems like an improper breach of the right to spiritual expression.
To protectors of a stringent variation of French secularism, it is an action important to secure the commonwealth coming from religious obstruction. Why is actually France thus concerned regarding Muslim wear its own schools?