.EVERY FEW years the French acquire worked up about an item of spiritual apparel that they regard as unsuitable in the class. This time a controversy has actually burst out at la rentru00e9e, the beginning of the new academic year, over a government choice to disallow coming from state universities the abaya, a whole bathrobe worn through some Muslim ladies for quietness. To people in countries along with a custom of liberal multiculturalism, the ban seems like an undesirable infringement of the right to religious expression.
To defenders of a meticulous version of French secularism, it is a procedure essential to protect the republic from religious obstruction. Why is France therefore anxious regarding Muslim wear its own institutions?