Is the burqa ban a symbol of discrimination or liberation?

By Ann Cahill, Europe Correspondent

Monday, May 03, 2010

IS it discrimination to ban women covering their face in public?

Or is it a liberation and attempt to move them from the cultural requirement that they be subservient to men?

The question is gathering pace rapidly around Europe. Last week the Belgian government, despite being on its last legs, passed legislation in its lower house to ban the burqa – the face covering that leaves only the eyes visible.

Last week France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy announced he too will ban the burqa. A poll showed the vast majority of the public agree with his move. A police officer in the French city of Nantes who fined a woman for driving with the burqa has helped propel the debate further.

She agreed to remove it to prove she was the person photographed on her driving licence. But he said it obscured her view of the road and imposed the €20 fine.

Later it was reported that she was one of four wives of an Algerian-born butcher who became a French citizen when he married a French woman in 1999. The man has since denied this and said he has one wife and a number of mistresses.

But the authorities are now investigating if his is a case of polygamy and also whether the four women who are mother to his 12 children are all illegally claiming to be single parents.

He could be stripped of his French citizenship and deported if the case is proved against him.

Two years ago the French refused citizenship to a woman wearing a burqa. A French government minister who is a practicing Muslim defended the decision saying the burqa was not a religious symbol but one of inequality between the sexes.

France banned girls from wearing the scarf in school a few years ago on the grounds that it was a religious symbol and violated the strict divide between state and Church in their country.

The latest announcement that they will ban the face-covering burqa by the summer is seen as part of the growing hostility to Muslims in France, the country with the biggest Islamic population in Europe.

Another country that has seen its Muslim population grow quickly is Spain following a huge influx from north Africa in the last 15 years.

The head dress issue has surfaced there too but not as a result of any government plans but because of individual school regulations.

Two weeks ago a second level school in Madrid banned a 16-year-old girl from attending classes in a headscarf.

Muslim organisations say they will take the issue to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that the ban interferes with her right to education.

Amnesty International condemned the Belgian move to ban the burqa and disagreed that it was a threat to public safety as it hid people’s true identity. However, in February two men disguised in a burqa robbed a post office outside Paris with a gun hidden under their veil.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, May 03, 2010