One year on from the survey he conducted for our monthly Screen Watch (Observatory of teachers faced with the expression of religious beliefs in schools, October 2022), in which the issues surrounding the wearing of the Abaya and the Qamis in schools were probed for the first time, François Kraus, director of Ifop’s Politics / News division, conducted a large-scale survey (representative national sample of 2,145 people aged 18 and over) for our Charlie Hebdo colleagues, following the ban on these outfits in state schools.
In this interview, he discusses the main findings of this two-part study: a survey carried out on 30 and 31 August and documentary research on the religious nature of the Abaya and Qamis and the way in which these outfits are presented to French buyers by the retailers and brands that sell them.
The decision by the French new Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, to ban the wearing of the ‘Abaya’ (and its male equivalent, the ‘Qamis’) in schools has sparked a heated controversy. Several voices, especially from the left, have risen to denounce the establishment of a “clothing police” and La France Insoumise (LFI) has announced its intention to challenge this decision in the Council of State. However, the ban on Abayas and Qamis is not a subject of much debate within the teaching profession, as shown by a survey conducted by IFOP for our monthly magazine “Screen Watch” last November.
