Norman Geras replies to Christopher Hitchens.
Update: See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs.
Category Archives: France
Ban on veil would breach French constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, Council of State insists
France’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.”
French parliament lays groundwork for veil ban
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.
French parliament adopts resolution condemning veil nem con
French 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.
Christopher Hitchens backs French ‘burqa’ ban, compares veiled women to Ku Klux Klan
“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
Muslim soldiers’ graves desecrated in France
Vandals have desecrated the graves of seven Muslim soldiers who died fighting for France in World War II, the defence minister announced, expressing “deep indignation.”
“I wish to express my deep indignation at this ignoble and cowardly act,” Herve Morin said in a statement Thursday after the tombstones were toppled at a military cemetery in the southern city of Tarascon.
“I bow before the memory of these soldiers with more emotion now that the ultimate outrage appears to have targeted them for their religious beliefs,” he said.
Morin said the soldiers had given their lives for a “free, just and generous” Europe and France.
The regional Muslim council said the tombstones had been toppled and three of them were smashed. There are 130 graves in the cemetery, of which 17 belong to Muslim soldiers.
France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, estimated at between five and six million.
What’s threatening about European attacks on Muslim veils
“The anti-burqa cause is sweeping Europe. In addition to Belgium and France, Italy and the Netherlands are considering bans. Yet the targets of these measures are virtually nonexistent. Mr. Bacquelaine estimates that a couple of hundred women in Belgium wear a full veil. In France, one study estimated that there are 1,900 burqa wearers in a Muslim population of 5 million.
“The idea that this poses a criminal or cultural threat is ludicrous. Those who say they are defending women’s rights have it exactly backward: They are violating fundamental rights to free expression and religious freedom…. Muslims, including the devoutly religious, are in Europe to stay. Banning their customs, their clothing or their places of worship will not make them more European. It will only make Europe less free.”
Editorial in the Washington Post, 1 May 2010
Veil ban is part of campaign to stigmatise French Muslims
Muslims in France say the government’s plan to fine women for wearing the Islamic veil is one in a string of political ploys that stigmatise them and pander to anti-Islamic prejudice.
Extracts from the law leaked on Friday propose to fine women 150 euros (200 dollars) for wearing a full-face veil in public, while anyone who forces a woman to wear one would face a year in jail and fine of 15,000 euros.
Some say giving police the power to fine Muslim women in the street is part of a worrying trend, after the government’s “national identity debate” and its targeting last week of a man accused of polygamy and radicalism.
Amid the polygamy controversy, bullets were fired at a mosque in Istres, southern France, and a halal butcher in Marseille. A French Muslim group, CFCM, said this signalled “a rise of racism and Islamophobia.”
“It’s getting tougher and tougher. It’s as if people have had something against us for a long time and now that the politicians are saying it, they are letting it all out,” said Mamadou Alpha Diallo, 73, outside a Paris mosque.
Muslims in France “have the impression that Islam is on trial,” added Dounia Bouzar, an anthropologist and high-profile commentator on Muslim affairs.
Poll: half of Europeans oppose headscarf in schools
Just over half of Europeans surveyed opposed allowing Islamic headscarves in schools but backed the presence of crucifixes in classrooms, according to a Spanish study obtained by AFP Wednesday.
A total 52.6 per cent of those polled in 12 European Union member states along were “opposed” or “totally opposed” to the use of the garment in schools, according to the study carried out by the research department of BBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank. Opposition to the veil was highest in Bulgaria with 84.3 per cent against and France with 68.7 per cent opposed and it was lowest in Poland with only 25.6 per cent against followed by Denmark with 28.1 per cent opposed.
By contrast 54.4 per cent of those polled were in favour of classrooms displaying crucifixes. In Spain and Italy, two nations with a strong Roman Catholic tradition, support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms stood at 69.9 per cent and 49.3 per cent respectively. Support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms shot up to 77 per cent in Britain and 78.8 per cent in Denmark.
IRR publishes briefing paper on the French move to ban the veil
As Belgium and France move to ban the burqa, the IRR European Race Audit (ERA) publishes today a briefing paper on ‘The background to the French parliamentary commission on the burqa and niqab’.
It examines how André Gerin, the Communist Party mayor of Vénissieux, ignited the debate on the voile intégral in a country where, it is estimated, that a total of 2,000 women wear the burqa. It describes the various arguments used to justify the ban from upholding laïcité to opposing the rise of Salafism and defending the freedom and dignity of women.
Institute of Race Relations news release, 28 April 2010
Download the briefing paper here.