.EVERY FEW years the French obtain worked up about a product of spiritual apparel that they consider unacceptable in the classroom. This moment a conflict has burst out at la rentru00e9e, the start of the new school year, over a federal government choice to prohibit coming from condition colleges the abaya, a full-length robe used through some Muslim females for virtue. To people in countries with a custom of liberal multiculturalism, the ban appears like an undesirable breach of the right to spiritual look. To defenders of a stringent version of French secularism, it is actually a step important to shield the commonwealth coming from theological interference. Why is actually France thus anxious about Muslim dress in its own institutions?