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- cross-posted to:
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Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said.
The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.
I get the reasoning, but really it feels like papering over cracks rather than addressing the root cause.
Set up proper support structures to prevent people from being coerced into things they don’t want to, make sure people are given places to get away from controlling people and exposed to the fact that things don’t have to be like that.
The best cure for religion is Education and Opportunities to fully integrate in the wider society.
So France needs to invest into giving the kids in even the baundelieres (the poor neighbourhoods around the major cities) as much Education and as many Opportunities as possible and most will naturally drift away from the snake oil which is religion.
You see the single biggest mechanic of racial descrimination (not just in France) is poverty: those kids from low education hence low income immigrant parents - who lack the education (hence the income) because they hail from countries with worse Education systems - are stuck in high crime low opportunity ghettos with much lower lifetime opportunities than the rest, impacted by poverty every day of their lifes (outright racism comes as events, poverty is every waking hour of every day) for the “crime” of having popped out of the “wrong” vagina.
Some manage to come out of this, but theirs is a much taller ladder to climb so their chances of reaching a good life are less than most.
The thing is, genuinelly flattenning the playing field (which, beyond the massive boost to average quality of life, would have the minor side effect of most of the next generation leaving the claws of religion) would cost lots of money and there’s no will in France to have people like the wealthiest man and woman in Europe (both of which live there) and their circle of friends part with a small fractionof their wealth to make it possible: hard-right neoliberal with authoritarian streak Macron would never do even the mildest of wealth redistributions (as it would impact his mates and his clients) so instead out comes another “let’s force them to not look ‘wrong’” authoritarian “solution”.
If you pardon my french (hehe!), this shit is all related and all boils down to how society is structured to help a few prey on the many resulting in massive inequality in access to resources and opportunities and constant, relentless discrimination on the basis of wealth, all of which then causes all sorts of “secondary” issues which are then papered over using the cheapest method there is to cover it up: abusing the Law and Legal Violence to coerce the most powerless of all to “keep up appearances”.
Compared to the US, France has massive taxes and wealth redistribution. You actually have an estate/inheritance tax that captures tax not only from the inheritance but from gifts made during the lifetime of the deceased. You have universal healthcare. You also have a massive influx of immigrants, not all of them from former French colonies, many of whom don’t give a fuck about France’s highly valued secularism and other cultural values. You don’t come to a France looking for a better life and simultaneously demand that France make an exception for you to allow the offensive visible symbolic separation of women from society because your religion/culture demands it. It is entitled in the extreme that people want to make France like the country they fled.
It’s not about stopping people from being coerced, it’s about the state forbidding religious symbols on state property including schools. France is strictly secular and forbids religion in the public sphere, i.e. state property like schools, politics etc.
It just so happens to have the pleasant side effect that kids in state schools are free from the segregation, clothing and other religious bullshit they might have to endure in their private life. The government has no control over that other aspect however it might lead to kids growing into adults who are less orthodox in their own lives.