.EVERY FEW years the French acquire worked up regarding a thing of spiritual clothing that they view as inappropriate in the classroom. This moment a conflict has actually broken out at la rentru00e9e, the beginning of the brand-new academic year, over a government decision to disallow from condition institutions the abaya, an unabridged bathrobe used through some Muslim women for virtue. To folks in nations with a practice of liberal multiculturalism, the restriction looks like an improper infringement of the right to theological expression.
To defenders of a strict variation of French secularism, it is a step essential to defend the state from theological obstruction. Why is actually France thus worried regarding Muslim wear its schools?