A parliamentary panel convened six months ago by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday issued a much-anticipated, 200-page report recommending that women be banned from wearing the full-face veil in public office buildings, schools, hospitals and while using mass transit. The full-face veil is viewed by many in France as a sign of extremism and a threat to gender equality and secularism.
Sarkozy began the debate in June when he said that the full-face veil was "not welcome" in France, currently home to more than 5 million Muslims, the largest such population in Europe. At present, fewer than 2,000 Muslim women wear the full-face veil in France, according to Interior Ministry statistics.
Christophe Ena, AP
Faiza Silmi, 32, a woman of Moroccan origin living in France, could face sanctions if the country proceeds with its plans to ban full veils and burqas in public.
Lawmaker André Gerin, the president of the 32-person, multiparty parliamentary panel, has called the full-face veil in France "the visible part of the iceberg" and warned that "behind the iceberg is a black tide of fundamentalism."
A group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives), which represents French women of North African origin, agrees. On Monday night in Paris, members demonstrated in support of the burqa ban by donning full veils and maintaining silence to indicate suppression.
"We must say no to the burqa," said Sihem Habchi, the group's president. "Women's rights are not merely a matter of a few inches of fabric, but the burqa is a symbol of oppression against women."
But some members of the Muslim establishment in France say Sarkozy has pushed for the burqa ban because it's an attention-getting move designed to win over women voters and the left.
Mohammed Moussaoui, leader of the government-sponsored Muslim Religion Council, has said that while Islam does not require women to wear full-face veils, banning them would "stigmatize" Muslim women, as he claims they were by a 2004 law forbidding headscarves and other expressions of religious allegiance in French public schools.
"It's a false debate," said Mohamed Iboudaaten, a regional president of the Muslim Religion Council, said Tuesday. "It's a political strategy by Sarkozy. The full-face veil is not an issue in France."
But Iboudaaten warned that the panel's report could cause trouble. "It's not good because it will provoke Muslims not only here in France but in the world," he said.
Hassen Chalghoumi, a controversial imam who supports the burka ban, claimed that about 80 men burst into his mosque in the Paris suburb of Drancy on Monday night. He contended that some of them grabbed a microphone and told the 200 worshippers inside the mosque that he was a "nonbeliever" and an "apostate" and threatened to "liquidate" him. The incident could not be independently confirmed.
French television broadcast debates and reports on the controversy all day Tuesday and featured a number of interviews with French Muslims wearing full burqas.
One woman, identified only as "Nelly," who said she was a gym teacher in a public school, defended her right to wear the full-face veil.
"I teach my students, I travel all over the country and do everything any other woman does," she told French TV. "Wearing a burqa is my choice, and it doesn't prevent me from living my life like anyone else."
The panel's recommendation for the ban will not lead immediately to a new law. Any action on the report would not come before March regional elections and may first take the form of a resolution simply denouncing the veil.
