Father Arrested After Daughter’s Abaya Sparks School Controversy in France

It all started with the refusal to allow a student wearing an abaya to enter the Ambroise-Brugière high school in Clermont-Ferrand, in accordance with national directives. The principal of the establishment had received the father of the high school student at the beginning of the week, as reported by La Montagne. On Thursday, the school refused to admit the same student for the same reason. A few minutes later, a telephone conversation took place between her father and an agent and then a principal education advisor. According to his interlocutors, he would have made death threats against the principal. Alerted by the hierarchy of the National Education, a complaint was filed against the father of the young girl. He was arrested and placed in custody at the Clermont-Ferrand police station. He risks being prosecuted in court.

Before the start of the school year, Gabriel Attal, Minister of National Education, gave instructions to National Education personnel to prohibit the wearing of the abaya at school. His colleague from the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, asked the law enforcement to support these personnel who would feel "threatened" in wanting to enforce the ban. On Tuesday, the Keeper of the Seals Éric Dupond-Moretti, in a published directive, called for a "very reactive criminal response" in case of failure to comply with the principle of secularism in schools.

Urgently seized by the ADM (Action Droits des musulmans), an association that denounced the measure because it "infringes on the rights of the child, as it mainly targets children presumed to be Muslim, thus creating a risk of ethnic profiling at school," the Council of State handed down its decision on Thursday. The wearing of the abaya "is part of a logic of religious affirmation," the summary judge estimated. Its ban therefore "does not constitute a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the right to respect for private life, freedom of worship, the right to education and respect for the best interests of the child or the principle of non-discrimination," he added, thus validating the minister’s decision.