French Muslim girl kicked out of class because her skirt was too long

Hard to see how this kind of approach and inflexibility helps integration:

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 Wednesday, and the issue remains unresolved.

A popular Twitter hashtag #jeportemajupecommejeveux (I wear my skirt as I like) popped up on Wednesday after the dispute was made public in the girl’s local newspaper in Charleville-Mézières, 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.

The student, identified as Sarah, was among a group of at least five girls who arrived at the Leo Lagrange school in recent weeks with long skirts — and Islamic headscarves which they removed before entering school, the Reims Academy Services said.

The students were asked to change into “neutral clothing” before coming to class. Sarah complied, then stopped coming to class, the Academy Services said.

“It was a concerted action … with a will to put a (religious) identity on display,” Patrice Dutot, inspector of the Ardennes Academy, which oversees schools in the area, said by telephone.

French Muslim girl kicked out of class because her skirt was too long | Toronto Star.