PARIS – France will issue recommendations against full face veils but will not pass a law barring Muslim women from wearing them, a leading backer of a legal ban said yesterday.
André Gerin, chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into the use of full face veils in France, reluctantly ruled out a ban one day after French president Nicolas Sarkozy repeated his conviction that “France is a country that has no place for the burka”.
France banned Muslim headscarves in state schools in 2004 following a similar inquiry and looked set to bring in an outright ban on veils covering the entire face, such as burkas or niqabs, when it launched the panel last June at the request of Mr Gerin, a Communist deputy from Lyon.
However, at its weekly hearings, legal experts, local officials, Muslim leaders and even some militant secularists have told the deputies on the panel that a ban could be anti-constitutional, counterproductive and impossible to enforce.
Mr Gerin, who denounces the head-to-toe veils as “walking coffins”, told Europe 1 radio: “We’ll end up with recommendations . . . not a law in itself against the burka, maybe a symbolic law, a law of liberation [of women].”
Backing off from a complete ban, he said the panel might propose “radical measures” to ban full-face veils in public institutions, but gave no details.
France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe’s largest Islamic minority, has been criticised in the Muslim world for considering a burka ban. French Islamic community leaders have warned against passing a law that would stigmatise Muslims.
Scepticism about a ban grew after a police report said only 367 women in France wore such veils, which are common in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia but not in the North African countries where most Muslim immigrants to France came from. Another estimate spoke of about 1,000 such veils. – (Reuters)