French Muslim girl banned from school over long skirt

A 15-year-old French Muslim girl has been banned from her classroom for wearing a long black skirt, seen as going against France’s law guaranteeing secularism

A 15-year-old French Muslim girl has been banned from her classroom for wearing a long black skirt, seen as going against France’s law guaranteeing secularism.

She missed two days this month in a dispute over her skirt, French education officials said, and the issue remains unresolved.

A popular Twitter hashtag #I wear my skirt as I like popped up on after the dispute was made public in the girl’s local newspaper in Charleville-Mezieres, in northeast France.

School officials say the skirt itself was not the issue. Rather, the problem was that the student had worn it specifically as a sign of her faith – contravening the 2004 law barring religious symbols in classrooms below university level.

Unlike most European countries, France prohibits “ostentatious” religious symbols in classrooms. The 2004 law, which Muslims groups said at the time stigmatized them, was complemented with a 2010 law banning head-covering face veils in streets and other public places.

Scores of Muslim girls who refuse to remove their headscarves have left schools due to enforcement of the 2004 law.