Sarkozy calls for legislation to ban Islamic Face veils

[Zethren]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/64470

French President Sarkozy to Submit Bill Banning Islamic Face Veils
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
By Sylvie Corbet, Associated Press

Paris (AP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered legislation that would ban women from wearing Islamic veils that fully cover the face and body in public places, the government said Wednesday.

It is Sarkozy's first political action toward an outright ban, though he has repeatedly said such outfits oppress women and are not welcome in France, home to a firmly secular government.

Government spokesman Luc Chatel said after a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the president decided the government should submit a bill to parliament in May on an overall ban on such veils "in all public places."

That ups the stakes in Sarkozy's push against veils such as the burqa and niqab and chador. Some in his own party have bristled at a full-out ban, and France's highest administrative body has questioned whether it would be constitutional.

Sarkozy insisted that "everything should be done so that no one feels stigmatized," according to Chatel. Sarkozy said the veils "do not pose a problem in a religious sense, but threaten the dignity of women."

Chatel did not say how the new bill would affect a resolution already slated for discussion in parliament May 11 on ways of limiting the full veils.

France, nominally Roman Catholic, but also home to western Europe's largest Muslim population of at least 5 million. Very few French Muslim women wear face-hiding veils, but the issue has become a flashpoint of debate on national identity, the rights of religious groups in France's secular society and integration of France's immigrant populations.

Legislators and members of the government have been discussing ways to limit veils such as the burqa and niqab and chador for months. France banned Muslim head scarves and other "ostentatious" religious symbols from classrooms in 2004.

[Kirb]

French xenophobia reaching epic levels.

[ZarakiKujata]

It's a secular society, they are as bitchy towards other religions, just nobody complains quite as loud as Muslims.

[Zethren]

It's a secular society, they are as bitchy towards other religions, just nobody complains quite as loud as Muslims.

They really are, as that 2004 ban effected Sikhs and Jews as well.

[sruon]

Good riddance, fuck religions.

[Elvis]

It's a secular society, they are as bitchy towards other religions, just nobody complains quite as loud as Muslims.

In France – where out of 5 million Muslims, 367 wear the niqab (as counted by the domestic intelligence service, no less) – a parliamentary panel has pondered the issue for a year and suggested a ban from schools and hospitals but nowhere else. In Denmark – where out of 100,000 Muslims, there are less than 200 niqabis (as estimated by the ministry of social affairs), the government is still mulling a ban.

In Quebec, less than 25 women are said to wear the niqab – of whom only 10 turned up last year at the Montreal office of the provincial health board out of 118,000 visitors. Yet the obsession with the niqab continues. On the day Jean Charest tabled his anti-niqab bill, Hydro Quebec's $3.2 billion deal to take over NB Power and gain access to the lucrative U.S. market collapsed – with nary a public concern.

Hi.

[Mayareira]

lol even we banned it in schools and government offices.

[Kirb]

Nobody else is perturbed by the religious and racial discrimination under the guise of secularization? I mean, even I am, and I'm atheist as hell.

[Lucavi]

^
Everyone's got an agenda. Human is human.

[Cadsuane]

Nobody else is perturbed by the religious and racial discrimination under the guise of secularization? I mean, even I am, and I'm atheist as hell.

It's not demonstrably discriminatory.

[Kirb]

It's not demonstrably discriminatory.

Banning a religious piece of clothing used exclusively by middle eastern minority in an otherwise largely unaffected majority? It's not like France (and Quebec) aren't already notorious for xenophobic practices.

[Blarg]

If they want to wear it they should be allowed to do so.

[ZarakiKujata]

Banning a religious piece of clothing used exclusively by middle eastern minority in an otherwise largely unaffected majority? It's not like France (and Quebec) aren't already notorious for xenophobic practices.

As mentioned earlier in the thread this would effect Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, and any other religion where your head is covered?

[Correction]

Yeah let's make jews shave off their beards and those gay-ass curly sideburns, too.

[Pirian]

Yeah let's make jews shave off their beards and those gay-ass curly sideburns, too.

Can still identify them with those, though I don't support this ban whatsoever

[Kirb]

As mentioned earlier in the thread this would effect Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, and any other religion where your head is covered?

Does discriminating against more minorities at a time make it better somehow?

[sruon]

I haven't seen a Sikh turban in 20 years, let alone a Kippah, that's part of the republic values.

Muslims just want it their own way.

[Correction]

Muslims just want it their own way.

Yeah, damn those fuckers and their desires to make decisions for themselves. What horrible people they must be.

[Falcon]

They're not really people, so its ok.

[Cadsuane]

Banning a religious piece of clothing used exclusively by middle eastern minority in an otherwise largely unaffected majority? It's not like France (and Quebec) aren't already notorious for xenophobic practices.

As ZK said, the spirit of the injunction is (ostensibly) one against any such religious attire; the fact that such attire is used almost exclusively by muslim women is completely irrelevant and shouldn't affect the principles of the discussion, especially if it's simply to appease pluralists and weak kneed cultural relativists. Ignoring that, this is still hardly discrimination in practice, since only the most backwards fringe muslim women go beyond wearing the hijab or something similar, which would still be allowed. Your position on this matter amounts to a straw man.