.EVERY FEW years the French acquire developed regarding a product of religious clothes that they consider inappropriate in the classroom. This time around a dispute has burst out at la rentru00e9e, the start of the new academic year, over a federal government selection to outlaw coming from condition colleges the abaya, a full-length robe worn through some Muslim women for modesty. To people in nations with a heritage of liberal multiculturalism, the ban looks like an unwanted infraction of the right to theological expression. To defenders of a stringent variation of French secularism, it is an action necessary to protect the commonwealth coming from spiritual obstruction. Why is France therefore troubled concerning Muslim dress in its own colleges?