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All Quiet On The Burqa
Front
On April 11 of this year, France’s
controversial ban on face coverings came into effect. Whilst the “visage
decouvert” (uncovered
faces) law doesn’t specifically mention religious garb, it is widely recognised
to be targeting the face veils worn by female adherents to ultra-conservative
Islam.
That same day, French police arrested
two Muslim women for covering their faces, with many others also stating they
would flout the ban.
Moroccan-born French businessman Rachid Neekaz even set up a fund to the tune of
one million euros to pay for the fines of Muslim women caught covering their
faces.
Meanwhile, conservative president
Nicolas Sarkozy declared France would not stand for a custom which “imprisons
women and is an affront to French Republican principles of equality and
secularism”, whilst immigration minister Eric Besson simply called it a “walking coffin”.
The stage looked set for a showdown between defiant Muslim women determined to
adhere to their religion whatever the cost and an equally defiant state
determined to eliminate the burqa from the fiercely secular country. The battle, it seemed, was only just beginning.
Except it wasn’t. Just one month later, in
an article in Britain’s Guardian
newspaper, dated May 5, writer Colin Randall asked whether France was "dithering over (the) burqa ban”. The story cited Rachid Neekaz who said
that no fines had been imposed. This directly contradicts government claims that
up to 28 women had been fined, including an American citizen living in France
who was fined upon arrival at the airport. Neekaz even stated he had been
deliberately “trying to goad the authorities into imposing fines in
circumstances that can be captured by the media”, to no
avail.
For their part, French police had
already expressed doubts about the ban, complaining they will be forced to go
“burqa-chasing” despite having, as Denis Jacob of the Alliance police union
states, “more important matters to be dealing
with."
Has
the steam gone out of the French burqa-banning bandwagon already? The
unwillingness to actually enforce the ban, after such a high profile campaign to
have it banned, appears to lend credence to claims that the whole exercise was
little more than a shameless grab for rightwing, anti-immigrant votes. Those
critical of the burqa law and Sarkozy, say it is simply the latest in a long
line of government policies designed to milk “the issue of immigration to gain
political capital”, including the creation of the Ministry of Immigration and
National Identity which, among other things, was responsible for the forced
eviction of Roma people last year. Last year, the ministry also launched a
public debate on the role of Islam in French society, under the banner of the
protection of France's constitutionally enshrined secularist traditions.
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