France conservative leader to introduce bill to ban burqas in public

The leader of France's conservative party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) announced Wednesday that he will introduce legislation banning the burqa in public. Jean-Francois Cope's announcement comes at the end of a six-month investigation by a special commission into the causes, effects, and ramifications of Muslim women wearing the burqa in France. Also Wednesday, French Immigration Minister Eric Besson announced that he would seek to deny French citizenship to any woman choosing to wear the burqa in public, saying that it showed a lack of commitment to integrate in France. Besson has also called for a public debate on the definition of French culture, to be wrapped up in January.

Cope's announcement is in direct opposition to the National Assembly's November decision not to push for specific legislation banning the burqa. The commission began its hearings in July after being established a month earlier to address the issue. The controversy between the Muslim community and the secular French government has gone on for several years.

In December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) unanimously ruled that there was no human rights violation when a French school expelled two Muslim students for refusing to remove their headscarves. Last July, a Muslim woman's citizenship application was denied because she failed to assimilate to French culture and practiced a type of Islam found incompatible with French values. In 2004, France passed a law banning students from conspicuous religious items, including Muslim headscarves, in schools.

(Published by Jurist - December 17, 2009)