SEPARATE INCIDENTS yesterday in France and the Netherlands underscored the strained relations between Muslims and the majority community in which they live in western Europe.
In France two women were fined for wearing veils in public, while in the Netherlands, extreme right-wing politician Geert Wilders proposed a ban on minarets such as was introduced controversially by referendum in Switzerland in 2009.
The fine in France was the first time a judge has imposed punishment for breaches of the veil ban, introduced five months ago.
Hind Ahmas (32) and Najat Naït Ali (36) were fined €120 and €80, respectively, having initially refused to pay fines at their local police station. Instead, they had turned up at the town hall in their niqabs with a mock birthday cake for mayor Jean-François Copé, who is head of Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party and helped pushed the ban through parliament.
The veil law, which President Nicolas Sarkozy says is designed to reaffirm French secular values and women’s rights, makes it illegal for women to cover their faces in all public places, though police are under orders not to enforce it near mosques. The measure was passed comfortably in parliament and has generated relatively little domestic controversy, though Amnesty International condemned it for violating some women’s liberty of expression.
The interior ministry estimates that fewer than 2,000 women wear full face veils in France, and the law has rarely been used.
Speaking after yesterday’s court hearing in the town of Meaux, near Paris, Ms Ahmas said she would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the ban. “For us, the question is not the amount of the fine, but the principle. We cannot accept that women are prosecuted for freely expressing their religious beliefs,” she said.
“We can talk of victory when the law is definitively scrapped. This sentencing was our goal.”
In the Netherlands, Wilders called for a referendum on the building of new minarets – describing them as “the towers of an advancing desert ideology”.
The leader of the anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV) said he wanted the Netherlands to follow the Swiss lead. He told the Dutch parliament he planned to introduce draft legislation which he hoped would form the basis for the referendum, giving politicians in The Hague an opportunity to test the opinion of the electorate directly.
“Minarets have nothing to do with religion,” he said. “They are intended to be an imperialist and ideological sign of domination – and that is what they are.” He added: “For Dutch people, minarets are a painful sight. They are the towers of an advancing desert ideology.”
Last week the Dutch cabinet agreed the introduction of a ban on the burka, and sent the new legislation to the Council of State for sanction before it goes to a vote in parliament. It will be supported by both government parties and by the PVV, which ensures it will become law.