Category Archives: Hijab

French veil bill criminalises ‘incitement to hide the face’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French passportA bill to ban Muslim veils covering the face to be presented to France’s Cabinet on Wednesday calls for fines and, in some cases, citizenship classes.

The bill turns on the “dignity of the person,” rather than security issues as many speculated would be the case, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press. Article 1 of the bill stipulates that “no one can wear a garment intended to hide the face in the public space.” The ban covers streets.

The divisive legislation proposed by the conservative government of President Nicolas Sarkozy is to go to the lower house of parliament for debate in July and to the Senate in September. There is little doubt the bill will pass despite opposition.

The bill calls for a fine of €150 ($185) for those breaking the law and eventual citizenship classes. The measure creates a new crime – inciting to hide the face – and anyone convicted of forcing a woman to wear such a veil would risk a year in prison and a €15,000 ($18,555) fine.

Associated Press, 18 May 2010

Update:  See also “Women protest as French Cabinet gets veil ban bill”, Associated Press, 19 May 2010

French government adopts veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The French government on Wednesday approved a draft law to ban garments which cover the face in public. The bill, which targets the burka and niqab worn by some Muslim women, will now go to parliament.

“On this question, the government is taking, in all conscience, a path which is difficult but just,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told the ministers at the cabinet meeting. “We are an old nation assembled around a certain idea of personal dignity, in particular the dignity of women, and around a certain idea of married life.”

A veil which covers the face contradicts values which are fundamental to the French republic, he said.

RFI, 19 May 2010

French lawyer abuses and attacks veiled Muslim woman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 60-year-old lawyer ripped a Muslim woman’s Islamic veil off in a row in a clothing shop in what police say is France’s first case of “burka rage”.

The astonishing scene unfolded during a weekend shopping trip after the woman lawyer took offence at the attire of a fellow shopper resulting in argument during which the pair came to blows before being arrested. It came as racial tensions grow in the country as it prepares to introduce a total ban on burkas and other forms of religious dress which cover the face.

A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow shopper wearing a veil and wanted the ban introduced as soon as possible.”

At one point the lawyer, who was out with her daughter, is said to have likened the Muslim woman to Belphegor, a horror demon character well known to French TV viewers. Belphegor is said to haunt the Louvre museum in Paris and frequently covers up his hideous features using a mask.

An argument started before the older woman is said to have ripped the other woman’s veil off. As they came to blows, the lawyer’s daughter joined in.

Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2010

Catalan town council to debate veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish town is to debate calls for a ban on wearing the full-face Islamic veil in public amid growing cross-party opposition to the burqa in the country, a local party said Tuesday.

The moderate Catalan nationalists of the Convergence and Union (CiU) party proposed the ban, calling the veil “an obstacle to the dignity and integration of women in our society,” they said in a statement.

The presence in the town Lerida “of Salafist representatives (hardline Islamists) has facilitated the spread of practices incompatible with the values of sexual equality and respect for women.”

El Pais daily said the town’s socialist mayor Angel Ros has also expressed his opposition to the Islamic veil in the past.

Spain’s Labour and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho said Monday he was in favour of a ban on the full veil in work spaces. “Totally covering women with a piece of clothing, whatever the symbolism, completely goes against our society and stops the move towards equality between men and women,” he said.

The council debate in Lerida, a town of some 140,000 inhabitants in north east Catalonia, will take place on May 28.

Expatica, 18 May 2010

Ban on veil would breach French constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, Council of State insists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France veilFrance’s top legal advisory body has once again raised questions over the legal viability of a bill to ban full Muslim veils in public, just days before it is put before the cabinet.

The Council of State, which advises on the preparation of new laws and orders, earlier this year said introducing such a ban would threaten rights guaranteed under both the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Paris daily Le Figaro reported on Friday the advisory body had again come to the same conclusion after a meeting with government officials on Wednesday. “A comprehensive and absolute ban on wearing the full veil could not have any legally unchallengeable justification and (it would) be exposed to great constitutional uncertainty,” the paper reported.

The head of the UMP parliamentary group Jean-Francois Cope, who is fighting for the broadest possible ban, said that the panel’s conclusions were not a surprise, but that other legal experts had opposing views. “I, like many, have a difference of opinion with the Council of State,” Cope told a news conference. “It’s an interpretation. But today there are comprehensive and absolute bans existing such as you can’t wander around naked in the road.”

Reuters, 14 May 2010

Fred Nile calls on NSW parliament to ban veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FredNileThe Reverend Fred Nile will introduce a Bill to parliament calling for a ban on the Islamic burqa head and body veil.

The Christian Democrats MP wants NSW to follow France and other European countries, which have moved to ban women from wearing the full head and body covering in public. The private member’s Bill will likely be introduced next Thursday.

“We should establish that in Australia we are an open society, that people don’t cover up their faces. If they are involved in criminal activity they do,” Mr Nile said yesterday. “They do it with the burqa, it is not part of our culture and tradition.”

Muslim spokesman Keysar Trad attacked the proposed law, and said it was an attack on women’s freedom. “Muslim women will be disgusted, especially that a man who is supposedly a man of God is telling them to remove items of clothing and telling them how to dress,” he said. “While I don’t advocate the face cover, I will defend the rights of any Muslim woman who wishes to wear it and if she doesn’t choose to wear it, I defend her as well.”

Mr Nile asked the State Government to ban the burqa eight years ago in a move that sparked a furore at the time. But his private member’s Bill will almost certainly not succeed because he lacks the required numbers.

Mr Nile told parliament on Wednesday night there were also security fears as terrorists in the Middle East and Russia had launched attacks while concealing their identity under a burqa.

Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2010

French parliament lays groundwork for veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France’s parliament will vote on a resolution aimed at reaffirming the nation’s values – and specifying that Muslim veils that cover the face are contrary to gender equality. The resolution lays the groundwork for a law forbidding face-covering veils everywhere in public.

The nonbinding resolution amounts to a policy statement and is widely expected to win approval in a vote Tuesday night in the National Assembly. The next step will be discussion of a draft law on banning burqa-like veils in public. The government is still drafting that bill, which is more divisive than Tuesday’s resolution. President Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing for a full ban.

Associated Press, 11 May 2010

French parliament adopts resolution condemning veil nem con

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Veil ban protestFrench lawmakers unanimously passed a resolution on Tuesday asserting that face-covering Muslim veils are contrary to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity on which France is founded.

The non-binding resolution, passed 434 to 0, lays the groundwork for a planned law forbidding face-covering veils in public, including in the streets.

One lawmaker compared women who fully cover themselves to “phantoms” and “walking coffins.”

The bill calling for a global ban on such garments goes before parliament in July. A draft text is to be reviewed by the Cabinet on May 19. A similar veil ban is in the works in neighboring Belgium.

Tuesday’s resolution, sponsored by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party, had been widely expected to win approval in the National Assembly with rival Socialists backing it despite concerns about the wording of an eventual law. Lawmakers in the 577-seat house who opposed the resolution abstained.

“The freedom of women is what brings us here … Have we the choice (to say no) when the symptoms of the regression of women are in the streets?” asked Nicole Ameline, a lawmaker from Sarkozy’s UMP party and former minister for women’s rights.

Associated Press, 11 May 2010

Christopher Hitchens backs French ‘burqa’ ban, compares veiled women to Ku Klux Klan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hitchens“The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa – whether the garment covers ‘only’ the face or the entire female body – are often described as seeking to impose a ‘ban’.

“To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and – no less important – equal in the face of one another….

“Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

“Let me ask a simple question to the pseudoliberals who take a soft line on the veil and the burqa. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Notorious for its hooded style and its reactionary history, this gang is and always was dedicated to upholding Protestant and Anglo-Saxon purity….

“Why should Europeans and Americans, seeking perhaps to accommodate Muslim immigrants, adopt the standard only of the most backward and primitive Muslim states? The burqa and the veil, surely, are the most aggressive sign of a refusal to integrate or accommodate….

“My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise. The law must be decisively on the side of transparency. The French are striking a blow not just for liberty and equality and fraternity, but for sorority too.”

Christopher Hitchens at Slate, 10 May 2010