Given France’s secularism and its rules, why would Muslim women try to circumvent them? It isn’t only Muslims who are subject to them. Christians and Jews are also affected, yet the whole focus has become about Muslims.

An abaya a full length outer garment warn by Muslim women; it clearly shows religious affiliation, so wearing it was a violation of that law. The Muslims were evidently trying to defy the ban.

“France banning Islamic abaya robes in schools, calling them an attempt to convert others to Islam,” CBS News, August 28, 2023:

France is to ban Islamic garments known as abayas in schools from September, the government announced Sunday, with a top official calling them a “political attack” and an attempt to convert people to Islam.

In an interview on French TV channel TF1, education minister Gabriel Attal said the ban aligned with “laicité,” France’s hard-line version of secularism, which prohibits outward signs of religion in schools.

Critics argue the broad policy has been weaponized to target French Muslims…..

…. “You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them,” he said.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran said Monday that the abaya was “obviously” religious and “a political attack, a political sign,” and that he deemed the wearing of it to be an act of “proselytizing.”

Attal said he would give “clear rules at the national level” to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.

The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools, where women and girls have long been barred from wearing the Islamic headscarf or face coverings.

A March 2004 law banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation”…….

Source: Jihad Watch