FRANCE: French media say France to rush burqa ban/Veiled woman slams proposed bill

Record ID: 788800

  • Title: FRANCE: French media say France to rush burqa ban/Veiled woman slams proposed bill
  • Date: 24th April 2010
  • Summary: DRIDER SITTING ON SOFA WITH HER SON
  • Embargoed: 9th May 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA61US9RSK36H9MVLQS2CDIGW44
  • Story Text: French media report the government plans to rush through a ban on Islamic veils before the summer, woman of Algerian origin who wears the veil slams the ban as a violation of her rights.
    Several leading French newspapers on Friday (April 23) reported that the government intends to rush in a bill banning Islamic veils by the start of the summer, stepping up the tempo of the highly controversial move.
    Top daily Le Figaro said that the government was poised to issue a decree to avoid a bill getting bogged down in parliament.
    The move is likely to further inflame the debate surrounding the so-called burqa ban, a term used to cover all forms of Islamic veils that cover the full face and only leave space for the eyes.
    Kenza Drider is a law-abiding French citizen who is proud to call herself French. But like many other Muslim women in France, she may soon face fines of hundreds of euro under a proposed law that many say restricts Muslim women's freedom both to choose how they dress and to practise their religion.
    Of Algerian origin, Drider has four children and spends her time in her home town of Avignon in the south of France carrying out volunteer work. She has been wearing some sort of veil since the age of eleven, and the decision was her own.
    She says her husband was initially opposed to her wearing the niqab.
    But now, Drider could be in the French government's sights with the new bill that is expected to be reviewed by the cabinet next month.
    The government says the ban on full Islamic veils that only show the eyes is a defence of women's' rights and an essential step in preventing the ghettoisation of Islamic women.
    Drider believes that far from increasing the liberty of women, the proposed ban violates their human rights.
    "This obsession yet again with these women, this minority of women who have made the decision to wear the full veil... It's an extra law which really just targets a minority of women to make French citizens forget the real problems in France, quite simply. I'll keep wearing my full veil, I've been wearing it for eleven years and I won't give it up for anything in the world. It's a choice I made and even if this law passes I'll continue wearing it even if I face a fine. I'll cite human rights in my appeal, that's for certain, but I'd like to know what they're going to tell the Saudi women who come to shop on the Champs-Elysees, are they going to tell them to go home or fine them?" Kenza told Reuters Television in an interview late on Tuesday.
    Drider recently testified to the Burqa Commission in Parliament about the proposed ban on veils, which has been long-debated in France, a secular country which keeps the state and religion separate and bases itself on the three founding principles of the French Republic: liberty, equality and fraternity.
    But while Drider is prepared to comply with secular requirements in official buildings, she does not believe that the state should dictate to the individual how they should dress.
    "This law is already a stigmatisation of the Muslim religion here in France, the second biggest religion in France. People don't realise it because they think that Muslims are terrorists the minute they want to ostensibly practise their religion. It's a law which stigmatises the Muslim religion. For me, I'm a French citizen, I'm French and I'm going to stay in France and if this country is secular, secularity doesn't apply to the individual but to the Palace of the Republic, the town council and not to people," Drider said.
    "It's been ten years, eleven years now since all this controversy and I wear the full veil and each time I got into an administrative building I go in wearing my niqab and when I show my ID I lift my niqab up so that I can be identified, I'm attended to and then I go home. But administrative things and the outside, that has nothing to do with it, of course the town hall is a secular place so when I am asked to identify myself I do, I lift up my niqab and I pull it down again and there you go, I leave. And that's fine for the public sphere, but for my own private life, you can't affect that and tell me how I should dress," she added.
    Amnesty International on Thursday (April 22nd) issued a statement calling upon Belgium to reject a similar bill in a vote in the country's Chamber of Deputies. The equivalent vote in France is set to take place in mid-May.
    France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, but only a very tiny minority -- possibly as little as 200-300 women -- wear full veils. Critics have slammed the law saying it is an excessively cumbersome way of dealing with a tiny issue.
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