the secularism law in schools celebrates its 20th anniversary

In February 2004, the law banning conspicuous religious symbols in public schools, colleges and high schools was adopted by Parliament, before being promulgated on March 15. It was the result of lively debates, particularly on the wearing of the veil. A few days before, in Paris, during a demonstration to defend women’s rights, Muslim women demonstrated against the law. But four months after the law was put in place, Jacques Chirac, then President of the Republic, set the tone: “We cannot accept that this or that organization, which claims to be representative of something in France, can deliberately ignore or criticize the law”.

2023, end of wearing the abaya

In September 2013, the Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, traveling to a high school in Ile de France, unveiled the charter of secularism. 15 articles so that the school remains a place protected from all communitarianism. In recent years, the debate on the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols has been relaunched with abayas. Pap Ndiaye was in favor of a case-by-case response. His successor, Gabriel Attal, will be more firm. At the start of the 2023 school year, it prohibits the wearing of the abaya at school, under the 2004 law. 20 years after the adoption of the law on secularism, fault lines persist. Teachers are murdered, others are paralyzed by fear.