France: Sarkozy backs off “burqa ban”, says that no one “can be stigmatised”

In the end, they are not at all “closely moving to ban the burqa”:

The French Government aims to outlaw the wearing of full veils on state premises and on public transport.President Sarkozy laid down future action on the burqa, as it is popularly known, on Wednesday in an attempt to end a feud in his centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and calm passions in and outside France’s large Muslim population. Following the controversy, France is backing away from an outright ban on Muslim women covering their faces.

Mr Sarkozy, all main parties and most of the public are opposed to women wearing full veils but, after six months of parliamentary hearings, it has become apparent that a blanket ban would be unworkable and likely to backfire.

In Wednesday’s New Year speech to MPs, the President sought to quash an attempt by Jean-Francois Cope, his party’s Parliamentary leader, to rush through an “anti-burka law”. Mr Cope, who is in dispute with the UMP leadership, has tabled a Bill under which women who wear full veils anywhere in public would face a £670 fine. Their husbands or other accompanying men would also face fines.

… “The full veil is not welcome in France because it is contrary to our values and contrary to the ideals we have of a woman’s dignity. No-one can doubt my firmness on this,” he told the MPs. “But it is vital to conduct ourselves in a way that no-one feels stigmatised. We must find a solution which enables us to win the widest support.”

via Sarkozy aims to outlaw niqab on public transport but outright ban is ‘unworkable’ – Times Online.

Is it so difficult to understand that anyone can carry anything inside a burqa, that there are serious difficulties when identifying people under the burqa? It seems it is.

Also that part about “stigmatising” always makes me laugh. Wearing a blanket is also a stigmatisation of the woman who wears it: it means that men can be attracted to her, so she is sinning, because she is not being modest enough (1, 2). Of course, normally, Islamic women do not think of this as insulting, they just consider they “feel respected“.

Before: Fadela Amara: The burqa is a prison, a straitjacket, “Allah’s revenge” on Sarkozy for proposing “burqa ban”?, Fadela Amara: more on the burqa ban, Sarkozy’s UMP studies burqa’s prohibition on public places, Curb on veil in Egypt, backed by Islamic clerics, French opposition takes stand against burqa ban,

France: moving closer to banning full Muslim veil

Marianne

An interesting piece which WaPo run some days ago about UMP’s project of banning full Muslim veil:

In a country whose national emblem is Marianne, a bare-chested woman, there is deepening concern over the all-encompassing garb, often black or brown and worn with gloves, attire typical in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Here, it is widely viewed as a gateway to radical Islam, an attack on gender equality and other French values, and a gnawing away at the nation’s secular foundation.President Nicolas Sarkozy opened the door to a possible ban in June, telling a parliament session in Versailles that such dress “is not welcome” in France. A parliamentary panel set to work in July on a six-month mission gathering information on the garments.

A Widow's Black burqa

On Tuesday, the head of Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party in parliament’s lower house, Jean-Francois Cope, jumped the gun before the panel’s report was finished, and filed draft legislation on a ban. “No one may, in spaces open to the public and on public streets, wear a garment or an accessory that has the effect of hiding the face,” the draft text reads.

The document cites public security concerns, thus includes all face-covering clothes, in a bid to head off challenges from those who might claim such a law would violate constitutional rules on individual rights – a major concern along with how such a law would be enforced. It foresees fines for those who break the law.

The initiative, unlikely to go to debate before spring, would be the second time France targets Muslim dress. A 2004 law born in acrimony bans Muslim headscarves and other “ostentatious” religious symbols in the classrooms of French public schools. Sarkozy’s party dominates parliament and the president reiterated Wednesday his wish for a law on full veils, though it’s too early to say whether it will pass.

Europe’s growing Muslim population has bred tension across the continent. Wariness is pervasive since deadly attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 by Islamic radicals living in Europe. And some non-Muslims sense a threat by a foreign culture to their way of life. It took only four minarets on Switzerland’s 200 mosques to push the Swiss to vote “no” to minarets in a November referendum.

via France moves closer to banning full Muslim veil – washingtonpost.com.

Before: Fadela Amara: The burqa is a prison, a straitjacket, “Allah’s revenge” on Sarkozy for proposing “burqa ban”?, Fadela Amara: more on the burqa ban, Sarkozy’s UMP studies burqa’s prohibition on public places, Curb on veil in Egypt, backed by Islamic clerics, French opposition takes stand against burqa ban.

Marianne | Detail from Delacroix’s Freedom Leading the People, 1830.

France: Sarkozy’s UMP studies burqa’s prohibition in public places

A Widow's Black burqa

They don’t want the Constitutional Council or the European Tribunal to modify the law. From Le Figaro (Translation T&P):

[The law] will be founded on the “need to being able to identify all the people in public places (hospitals, public transports…)“. This prohibition will have “the advantage of being applicable and will answer the problems facing public service agents“. The Minister, Hortefeux, has also suggested to make the integral veil a criterion of integration in the national community. “Nothing would be more normal than refusing residence status systematically to people wearing this garment and to her husband. Naturalization, that is, the entry in this national community, doesn’t look to me as desirable in that case“. Nowadays, around 1900 women wear the niqab and 3/4 of them are France. “But we must underline that we don’t support the radical communitarism“, the Minister insisted.

So leftist newspaper Publico writes:

France is nearer today to the prohibition law against burqa, hijab and all the forms of Islamic veil, confirming the obsessive moment it lives in its relastionship with the 8 million people of Arab culture or Muslim religion living in their soil.

Well, first, no one has spoken of a total prohibition of Islamic veils BUT of full veils. Secondly, some French Socialists are also  supportive of a total ban of burqa and niqab, seen as a absolutely against women’s basic rights. Thirdly, no one could ever consider than in a socially backward culture as these women are living, in which they can’t even walk alone in the streets, etc, etc, they are going to recognise they are using this garment because they are obliged to.