News:

The case of a 15 year-old French Muslim student who was banned from attending school in wearing a long black skirt has caused outcry this week. The headteacher of the school in northeast France felt the skirt “conspicuously” showed religious affiliation, flouting the strict rules of secularity in the country.

“The girl was not excluded, she was asked to come back with a neutral outfit and it seems her father did not want the student to come back to school,” local education official Patrice Dutot told a reporter on Tuesday. He admitted that the student always removed her veil before entering school premises in the town of Charleville-Mezieres, as is specifically stipulated by law. But the regional education office hinted in a statement that wearing the skirt could have been part of a concerted “provocation.”

“When it comes to concerted protest actions by students, which follow other more visible incidents linked for instance to wearing the veil, the secular framework for education must be firmly reminded and guaranteed,” it said.

According to the CCIF Islamophobia watchdog, about 130 students were rejected from class last year for outfits deemed too openly religious.

Comment:

It is clear that judges, jurists and politicians in the West are ready to compromise all their principles of “freedom” and “democracy” to attack Islamic values. Behind the facade of “secularity” or “security”, France has completely marginalized women who uphold Islam in public. It is not the hijab or niqab – a six-inch cloth on a woman’s head – that keeps her out of society; rather it is the bars that she is threatened by that force her to stay home.

Legislation after legislation, case after case – this is truly the constant barricade that prevents the Muslim woman from engaging in society. They have criminalized the practice of Islam and all are guilty until they conform to society, insinuating all practice of a religion as a coordinated act of defiance against the state. This is just a part of the war waged on women to convince her that her worth is her appearance and the monetary value that she can gain by selling her body. It is the secular capitalist value of freedom that is the basis upon which businesses and the advertising, entertainment, and pornography industries are given license to expose, objectify, and sexualise the bodies of women for profit.

This apartheid piece of legislation is pure racism and coercive assimilation dressed up as security and women’s rights concern. It is clearly aimed at bullying Muslims into leaving their deeply held Islamic beliefs and to embrace secular liberal values.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Aisha Hasan