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Women protest as French cabinet approves veil ban
Experts warn draft law could be thrown out by judges
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 May 20, 2010
- Image Credit: AP
- France's Kenza Drider, dressed in a niqab, speaks with reporters during a press conference in Montreuil, east of Paris, on Tuesday.
Paris: One runs her own company, another is a housewife and a third, a divorcee, raises her children by herself.
Like nearly 2,000 other Muslim women who freely wear face-covering veils anywhere in France, their lives will soon change and they are worried.
Yesterday, the French cabinet approved a draft law to ban the Muslim full-face veil from public spaces, opening the way for the text to go before parliament in July.
It calls for $150 (Dh550.5) fines and, in some cases, citizenship classes for women who run afoul of the law. Anyone who forces someone through threats, violence or misuse of a position of authority to cover her face because of her sex will be jailed for a year and fined 15,000 euros, the law says.
"In this matter the government is taking a path it knows to be difficult, but a path it knows to be just," President Nicolas Sarkozy told the assembled ministers, according to his office.
European law
While Sarkozy's right-wing majority is expected to be able to push the law through parliament, constitutional experts have warned that it could be thrown out by judges and might fall foul of European law. "We are an old nation united around a certain idea of human dignity, and in particular of a woman's dignity, around a certain idea of how to live together," Sarkozy insisted.
Although the Interior Ministry estimates there are only 1,900 women who cover their faces with veils, the planned law would be another defining moment for Islam in France as the nation tries to bring its Muslim population — at least 5 million, the largest in western Europe — into the mainstream, even by force of law.
"If the law is voted, I won't take off my veil ... No one will dictate my way of life" but God, said Najat, a divorcee, who gave her age as "45 plus." She was one of a half-dozen women who, in a rare move, met with reporters on Tuesday to express their worries about changes they say will impact their lives.
"They are giving people the right to attack us," said Kenza Drider, of Avignon in the south, who is married with four children. She was the only fully veiled woman to be interviewed by a parliamentary panel during a six-month inquiry.
The women predicted that their "sisters," other women who veil themselves, would hide out in their homes so as not to get caught breaking the law. Several said they would take their case to the European Court of Human Rights if arrested.
Key figures
- Fine for wearing full face veil in public: $150
- Number of women who cover their faces with veils in France: 1,900
- Muslim population in France: 5 million
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