France

France’s top administrative court has upheld a government ban on girls in state schools wearing abayas, rejecting complaints that it was discriminatory and could incite hatred.

The government announced just before schools reopened this week that the abaya, a long, flowing dress worn by some Muslim women, would no longer be allowed because it violated the French principle of secularism, or laïcité.

An association representing Muslims – Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM) – had filed an urgent motion with the state council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities. They called for an injunction against the ban, saying it was discriminatory and could incite hatred against Muslims, as well as racial profiling.

Dozens of girls who turned up for school in France on Monday wearing abayas in defiance of a ban on the Muslim garment were sent home when they refused to remove them, a government minister told French broadcaster BFM on Tuesday.

The abaya, an over-garment covering the body from shoulders to feet that some Muslim women wear, was banned in schools by the French government last month.

The government says the abaya constitutes a display of religious affiliation, banned at schools under a 2004 law.

… My wife, a teacher in a state school in a deprived suburb of northern Paris, tells me that until the start of this year she had never seen an abaya in her classroom. Within weeks they became commonplace. In some cases they were worn by body-conscious girls, a way of concealing anxieties about their weight.

But religion is the main reason the abaya has taken off. Its popularity spread on TikTok, as part of a campaign aimed at challenging the Republic’s secularism. Jean-Éric Schoettl, secretary general of France’s constitutional council from 1997 to 2007, wrote in Tuesday’s Le Figaro: ‘To dismiss the abaya as a mere ‘cultural’ fad, or to put it down to an adolescent crisis, is to deny that it is an expression of adherence to a political Islam that pursues a hegemonic goal.’

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Students will be banned from wearing abaya, a loose-fitting full-length robe 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 in 2004 in state-run schools.

Left-liberal leaders express concern the crime could be ‘exploited’ by the Right.

A migrant known to French authorities for a litany of criminal acts, including incestuous sexual assault, is sitting in pre-trial detention after having been arrested and charged with committing an unspeakably barbaric rape against a 29-year-old woman in the city of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin.

Talk of war is emerging from the right and the left

Is France at war? Alain Finkielkraut, one of the most popular and respected — if controversial — intellectuals in France, appears to think so. Finkielkraut recently made further enemies by joining a growing set of French intellectuals, writers and politicians who say that France is in the midst of a desperate battle. To Finkielkraut, the rioting and looting that ripped across France earlier this summer was part of an ongoing conflict between two groups: those who respect Republican values and those who hate the French Republic.

MARSEILLE, France—It is 10 a.m. but the squalid streets beneath the stained tower blocks of the Rosiers neighbourhood are deserted. A few young men armed with Kalashnikovs stand guard near a playground where torn garbage bags and rusted-out shopping carts perch in place of children.

At the edge of the housing project, a dumpster blocks the way in. Beside it, three stern-faced teenagers search vehicles and admit only residents or drug associates. They haul back the dumpster and guide cars past concrete barriers, broken furniture and craters in the pavement toward the next group of sentries deeper in the compound.

Interesting snapshot that unfortunately fails to address the role Islam plays in the No-Go Zones of France.

A mother quoted in the Star piece also turns up in this City-Journal entry citing a Guardian article:

The vacuum of effective policing . . . allowed a twisted cycle of brutality to fester; ferocious violence that Amine knows too well. On 29 December 2020 his brother disappeared. For six days his mother scoured the city until tipped off that the 21-year-old would not be coming home. Brahim Kessaci was found beside another body in the boot [trunk] of a burned-out car on a road heading out of the city. A third body had been sliced into pieces with a chain saw and images sent to his traumatised father.

There was no widespread rioting in response to these horrible crimes.

The country’s riots cannot be explained away by socio-economic woes alone.

The most destructive, spectacular and costly riots in France’s recent history, surpassing even the infamous unrest of 2005, are over. To the Anglophone media and its audiences they were an expression of the anger felt among the children of France’s former overseas possessions – a generational resentment fuelled by experiences of poverty, discrimination and painful colonial legacies.

Others have noted the opportunistic, even recreational quality of rioting, but the anger – the rage – against France among parts of its youth is real and goes deeper than one specific event.

Women in the southern French city of Lyon are reportedly facing sexual harassment from men on a near-daily basis. They go without make-up, change their preferred attire, and even avoid certain areas of the city to live their daily lives in peace.

Several women have shared their experiences living in the city and having their mobility hampered, whether travelling by public transport or simply walking down the street. They told the news platform Actu about their day-to-day lives in Lyon.

Officers across France are performing minimum duties in a nationwide action against the detention of an officer for beating a protester

On a typical day Olivier patrols a mid-sized town in the Champagne region of France on the look-out for dangerous drivers.

But recently, the 44-year-old police officer has either been driving around aimlessly or sitting idle in the police station.

If he sees a minor offence, he turns a blind eye. The only part of his job he fully complies with are emergency calls.