France's education minister has banned the wearing of the popular long robe known as the abaya in schools. He says it is a symbol of Islam. As students in France return to school this week ...

Late last month, with France still in vacation mode, Gabriel Attal, 34, the newly appointed education minister and a favorite of President Emmanuel Macron, declared that “the abaya can no longer ...

France’s highest court on Thursday upheld the government’s ban on students in public schools from wearing the abaya, a long, robe-like garment often worn by Muslim women, in a decision that ...

France will bar children in public schools from wearing the abaya, a loosefitting, full-length robe worn by some Muslim women, the government said this week. It said the measure was necessary to ...

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 ...

On Monday, the State Council, France’s top administrative court, which oversees disputes concerning civil liberties, upheld the abaya ban. Gabriel Attal, France’s education minister ...

In Arab countries, the abaya is known by many names, such as Jalaba, Jalabiya, Omani and Qaftan, but it is basically a simple and loose garment - often black in colour - worn by women in the ...

Yara, a 15-year-old student at a school in Lyon, southwest France, told the Agence-France Presse news agency that she does not consider the abaya a form of religious dress. “They say that the ...

So this week, as outsiders looked on with a mixture of astonishment and outrage at the banning of the traditional Muslim abaya robe in schools, the French themselves gave the measure an ...

But one thing I didn’t see coming was my growing love for the abaya. Historians trace the abaya’s roots back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia. Some historians believe it entered Saudi ...