THE TELEGRAPH: The French parliament has approved a ban on wearing a full-face veil in public.
The law will come into force early next year if it is not overturned by senior judges. The bill had already cleared the lower house in July and was passed by the Senate with 246 votes to one.
The text makes no mention of Islam, but President Nicolas Sarkozy's government promoted the law as a means to protect women from being forced to wear Muslim full-face veils such as the burqa or the niqab.
France's five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe's largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil. Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it. >>> | Tuesday, September 14, 2010
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THE TIMES: President Sarkozy's proposed ban may be pure politicking, but it does expose a fundamental cross-Channel difference
"The burka is not a religious problem, it's a question of liberty and women's dignity. It's not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement. I want to say solemnly, the burka is not welcome in France. In our country, we can't accept women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That is not our idea of freedom.”
So spoke Nicolas Sarkozy in Versailles during his first state of the nation address to France's two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate. He won rapturous applause and there is little doubt that an overwhelming majority of the French agreed with his every word. I say an overwhelming majority because this issue crosses all party lines in France. Republican principles of equality and secularism are so deeply grounded in the French mind that they belong as much to the Left as to the Right.
For someone like me, firmly on the Left, the defence of secularism is the only way to guarantee cultural diversity and national cohesion. One cannot go without the other. However, when I get on Eurostar to London, I feel totally alien. To my horror, my liberal-left British friends find such a position closer to that of the hard Right.
So does Mr Sarkozy's speech mean France is about to forbid its citizens to wear the burka on the streets? Unlikely. Mr Sarkozy's speech should be seen as piece of politics; he wants to reassure his party of his allegiance to the ideals of the French Republic and to undermine even further the awkward position of the Left.
The resurgence of a public debate on religious symbols in France is not innocent on Mr Sarkozy's part. It is another instance of his extraordinary ability to fill the public agenda with new debates and new ideas for yet more reforms to maintain a state of frenzied agitation, which leaves the French feeling both weary and wary. Despite good results at the European election, Mr Sarkozy and his Government are not popular. >>> Agnès Poirier | Wednesday, June 24, 2009
