The decision taken by the Minister of National Education to put the abaya in the category of "conspicuous religious symbols" is a response to the army of self-proclaimed Islamist preachers, who explained to young Muslim girls on Tik Tok how to obey Allah by subverting the 2004 school law. It is hypocritical in these conditions to maintain that it is not a religious garment.
The controversy and violent political reactions that have not failed to arise, and which will once again lead to France being condemned at the UN for discrimination – which will end up becoming a mark of recognition – target the supposed anti-Muslim obsession of the French authorities. The Islamists and their clients have in fact almost succeeded in France and Europe in monopolizing the public expression of Islam and its believers. Thus, the French government and the French people who support it at 82% on this point, would be anti-Muslim by attacking a garment that has nothing to do with Islam.
One blind spot in this controversy between "secularists" and "Islamists" must nevertheless be constantly recalled: the fate of women - and young women in particular - that the Islamists have in store for them. It is astonishing that the secular quarrel obscures the question of the veil and its purposes, as if it only concerned Islamic display and the marking of territories. Because behind the veil, the intentionality is different: to remove a portion of young French women - or young foreign women living in France - from the free market of relations between individuals, sexes and groups.
Veiling (in the form of the veil, the abaya or other) is a covering of women's bodies that aims not only to hide their bodies, the object of desire, but above all to reserve these same women for men who are in some way the natural "owners", Muslims of solid Islamic conviction. It is a question of veiling, of setting aside from society - judged permissive and corrupting - the group of pious young Muslim girls, thus reserved for their future husbands, while waiting for their virgin marriage, the procreation assigned to them, and a possible cloistering, the ideal of the Salafist path for wives - even if the Muslim Brotherhood does not hesitate to resort to the most seasoned sisters in the public space or debate. This allows to endorse the thesis of "Islamic feminism".
The Islamist display through clothing therefore aims to remove Muslim women from the market of social interactions, seduction and the marriage market as soon as they announce their puberty. The veiled young girl is supposed to be respected by her coreligionists, and will be defended against any attempt at approach or seduction from outside the group. Conversely, unveiled women are objects of desire for all men, including the most pious of the Brotherhood, attracted by so much shamelessness, without despairing of converting the most extroverted (like the rapper Diam's). Faced with this archaism that takes us back to the mythological stories of Antiquity, all the feminists in France (archaeo or neo) should rise up as one woman. Against all expectations, the protest in the face of the unspeakable is paralyzing, and it is the supposed "free choice of clothing" of young girls that attracts the attention of the passionarias of sexual indifference.
Claiming that the abaya is not a religious marker while castigating the "anti-Muslim hatred" of its opponents, claiming to defend women's freedom while supporting the maneuvers of those who are trying to erase generations of struggles for their rights: through naivety or clientelism, the ideologues of a misguided progressivism are definitely not above a contradiction!
