So Much for Liberté, Égalité: France Looking to Impose a Ban on the Niqab/Burqa

A women shops in a bookstore in Le Bourget near Paris. Image by JOEL ROBINE / AFP / Getty via time.com

SEE ALSO: HIJAB (Headscarf is Beautiful) The Hijaab (Headscarf) and Haya (Modesty) That Muslim Woman Could Be Happier Than You

First came the Hijab ban in French schools, and now the God-less-run country that you call France (yes, I said it), is looking to abolish the Niqab (face veil) or “Burqa” as it is known in the media world. It is absolutely baffling and ignorant on their part to think that wearing the niqab would even be considered a debasement of women, when clearly it is a freedom of choice they have made for themselves—and in a secular first world country no less. I personally find it to be an irrational argument that simply can’t be bought.

The French government prefer to be known as a democratic nation, a country that understands that one of their prime functions is to protect such basic human rights as freedom of speech and religion. But with their continuous and intentional social, cultural and religious stigma and alienation by choosing to keep the large Muslim community of 5 million outlawed, isolated and boxed in, it not only defeats their purpose of liberty and equality, but it also stands against the very moral concept of tolerance, cooperation, and compromise. Those are the basic values any democratic society is or should abide by and stay committed to.

I have a couple of articles from the Associated Press and Time Magazine pertaining to this, posted below.

Sarkozy says burqas are ‘not welcome’ in France

Associated Press via Yahoo! News

Mon Jun 22, 11:47 am ET

PARIS – President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the “debasement” of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France’s Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

“In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

“The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly,” he said. “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

Dozens of legislators have called for creating a commission to study a possible ban in France, where there is a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment despite a 2004 law forbidding it from being worn in public schools.

France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people, and the 2004 law sparked fierce debate both at home and abroad.

Even the French government has been divided over the issue, with Immigration Minister Eric Besson saying a full ban would only “create tensions,” while junior minister for human rights Rama Yade said she was open to a ban if it was aimed at protecting women forced to wear the burqa.

The terms “burqa” and “niqab” often are used interchangeably in France. The former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes, whereas the latter is a full-body veil, often in black, with slits for the eyes.

A leading French Muslim group, the French Council for the Muslim Religion, has warned against studying the burqa, saying it would “stigmatize” Muslims.

Sarkozy was due to host a state dinner Monday with Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani of Qatar, where women wear Islamic head coverings in public — whether while shopping or driving cars.

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Will France Impose a Ban on the Burqa?

By BRUCE CRUMLEY PARIS Friday, Jun. 19, 2009

Secularism is the religion of contemporary France. And the enforcers of that faith have a new target. “Today … we are confronted by certain Muslim women wearing the burqa, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head like a moving prison,” said Andre Gerin, a Communist Party legislator who joined 57 others on Wednesday in signing a motion for a parliamentary committee to study possible legislation to ban the wearing of the traditional costume in public. Despite the fervor of Gerin and his allies, however, the burqa remains sufficiently rare in France that even the legislators railing against it are unable to say how many Muslim women in the country actually wear one. All Gerin would say was, “There are more and more of them, not only in big cities, but in rural settings as well … We have to break the silence of this country’s political leaders on the matter.”

Silence is hardly the word to characterize the matter of France and professions of religious piety. Last year the country’s highest administrative court denied the naturalization request of an otherwise irreproachable Moroccan woman on the grounds that her wearing a burqa was incompatible with French secularist statutes. On Tuesday, French Scientologists raised complaints of religious intolerance when state prosecutors wrapped up their arguments against the church on charges of organized swindling by requesting that the organization be disbanded and barred in France. (Read an argument against the veil by Azadeh Moaveni.)

The champions of French secularism note that the Scientology trial is based on fraud accusations, not religious practice. Meanwhile, the burqa offensive is aimed at protecting the rights of women forced to efface themselves by covering their bodies entirely. “The rights of women isn’t an issue of a few centimeters of cloth, but the burqa is the symbol of the oppression women suffer, so this debate should be encouraged,” says Siham Habchi, president of the Neither Whores Nor Submissive women’s movement, referring to the parliamentary initiative. (Check out a story about Europe’s “veil wars.”)

But what about the rights of Muslim women who honestly feel faith-bound to voluntarily don a burka? Or those prohibited by law from attending public school with the headscarves they wear everywhere else? Why is no one ranting about nuns’ habits being “degrading” (as Gerin called the burqa), just as no one lashed out at creeping extremism when then–First Lady Bernadette Chirac covered her head during Vatican visits?

Probably because Catholicism has deep roots in French history and culture and is not viewed as a foreign faith the way Islam is, which, with about 6 million practitioners, is the second largest religion in France. Its practitioners are also growing at a faster rate than Catholics. Indeed, the expanding size of Islam and fears about spreading extremism seem to have emboldened pundits and policy-makers to wade in and legislate aspects of Muslim observance and life in ways that they would be wary of doing with Catholics, Protestants or Jews.

At this point, no Muslim defenders of the rare French burqa have emerged. Indeed, Dounia Bouzar, a specialist on Muslim affairs, notes that while she and many fellow Muslims opposed the headscarf ban as meddling in private matters of choice, she is relieved at action taken on the burqa. “Imposition of this garment on women is one manner Salafists get individuals to renounce their individuality and submit to the extremist cult thinking that masquerades as Islam — but which is an abomination of it,” Bouzar says. “That Salafist influence and activity is spreading, and if it takes political action to prevent their cult from leading Muslims astray of Islam, so be it.”

France isn’t the first nation to consider a burqa ban. In 2006, Dutch officials caused a storm of protest from its Muslim populace by proposing a burqa interdiction. A law imposing a ban may soon be passed. France is not that far yet. The parliamentary motion to form an investigating committee must be approved before that body can be formed. If it is, it must study the burqa and reasons why those women who wear it do so, and consider recommendations whether to ban it. Drafting and voting legislation to that end would take months. Before then, public debate would rage on whether the move is merited — or another example of intolerance toward Islam. “Tolerance of the burqa requires a colonial view of Islam as so backwards that forcing a woman to erase herself that way seems natural,” Bouzar argues. “The burqa debate isn’t secularity vs. Islam, but manipulation and oppression vs. dignity.”