Amid heated debates, French lawmakers are wrestling with a compromise over a proposed ban on the wearing of face-veil by Muslim women. “We will talk about the idea of a law, about the need to take time to prepare it and to avoid stigmatization,” said MP André Gerin, head of the parliamentary commission on the…
Lawmaker Jean-Francois Cope, head of President Sarkozy’s UMP party suggested he would submit a bill to have the veil banned not just from public buildings but also in the streets of France. “We want a ban in public areas,” Cope said. However, the speaker of the lower chamber, Bernard Accoyer, said he felt his UMP…
Christophe Caresche, PS (Socialist Party) deputy of Paris, has positioned himself against a law banning headscarves in public places, seeing it as an arm which could accelerate “an already marginal phenomenon.” While claiming that wearing the burqa and niqab “call into question women’s dignity in the public sphere,” a ban being pushed by UMP deputies…
French ministers Eric Besson (minister of immigration), Brice Hortefeux (minister of the Interior) and Xavier Darcos (minister of work) were recently auditioned by the Parliamentary Mission on burqa and niqab use in the Republic. They did not share a common method of how to dispel the “radical and rare” phenomenon. According to Le Monde, they…
While French ministers like Eric Besson claim that a possible law against the burqa is a way to protect the dignity of women, others point to how it would remove practicing Muslim women’s dignity of choice. Denys de Bechillon points to how the notion of dignity is one of the most complicated to determine in…
