Human Rights in Ireland

Corancan by Nick Walker

We have written about France and the veil several times (see here) but, unfortunately, this issue is not going away. There seems to be a new development every week. Last Wednesday, the French government approved a draft law banning the wearing of garments which cover the face in public spaces. It is clear from the public discourse surrounding its development that the law is aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab and the burqa. Under the terms of the Bill, women punished for wearing such garments in public would be fined or compelled to undergo citizenship training. Penalties including a term of imprisonment would also be established for those convicted of forcing a woman to wear a veil (though compulsion would be difficult to prove). A six month grace period would apply before the law came into full force and the government aims to work with community and faith groups to ‘persuade’ individuals who support women’s wearing of face veils that a ban is legitimate. Some questions remain as to whether these provisions can be enforced. For example, the French police union Alliance has expressed skepticism about its members being required to enforce any new ban.

France is not alone in its engagement with this issue. The European burqa ban project grows at a depressing rate. In Belgium, where Flemish-Walloon nationalist tensions mark the upcoming election, time was found to begin the process of legislating for the burqa even in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the coalition government. Last month, the lower house of the Belgian parliament voted unanimously to prohibit individuals from ‘appearing in places accessible to the public with their faces masked’. The new offence – which must receive the approval of the upper house after the election before it can become law – would render recalcitrant individuals subject to penalties of up to 7 days imprisonment or a significant fine. Authorities in Brussels recently banned a protest against the new law led by the organization Sharia4Belgium on public order grounds. In other European countries where no national ban is in force, municipalities have imposed their own restrictions. For instance, at the beginning of this month, in the Italian city of Novara, Amel Salah, a Tunisian immigrant in her twenties, was fined 500 euro for wearing a veil which covered her face while out walking with her husband, under a new by-law which prohibits individuals from wearing clothing which prevents their immediate identification. The by-law is based on a 1975 national counter-terrorism statute. The local mayor, a Northern League politician, argued that “in a civilised community, people cannot walk around completely covered. How do they think they are going to integrate into our community with such habits?” He said further that ‘Husbands must acknowledge that in Italy, a woman is a man’s equal, freedom is fundamental and there must be mutual respect in a family.” Germany’s Interior Minister rubbished suggestions in early May that a German ban was on the cards, but the German MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin has called for a Europe-wide ban. She called the burqa ‘a mobile prison’ and said that ‘Freedom can not go so far as to take away the public faces of humans. At least not in Europe.’ Bills to restrict veiling in public are in preparation in Austria, Holland and Italy and there have been public demands for similar legislation in Denmark and Switzerland.

Appetite for regulation of the burqa and niqab extends beyond Europe. In Australia, the South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has strayed wildly from his party line to denounce the burqa as ” the preferred disguise of bandits and ne’er-do-wells” and has argued for a ban. He was responding to a news story about a man who had carried out a robbery while wearing a burqa. A recent UMR poll showed significant public support for a ban. However, the New South Wales parliament voted against such a ban last week and the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dismissed suggestions that a nationwide ban should be considered. In Quebec, a law is in preparation which aims to set guidelines on the scope of ‘reasonable accommodation’ of religion in provincial law and which would require Muslim women to keep their faces uncovered when delivering or receiving state services in the interests of identification and security. Last week saw public hearings on the so-called Bill 94. The women’s group No Bill 94 has complained that it was not permitted to make submissions during the public hearing. It, like other critics of the Bill, has argued that the Bill effectively targets one religious group, in violation of the religious freedom provisions of the Canadian charter. The ‘reasonable accommodation’ element of the Bill is of dubious value. Critics wonder whether it does anything to alter Quebec’s existing law – unless accompanied by other substantial reform in the areas of religious freedom and gender equality – or is intended rather as a smokescreen for the legislation’s targeted approach. It is unlikely that the Bill will become law before the end of the current legislative term in mid-June.

The French Bill will be reviewed by the National Assembly in July, moving to the Senate by September. It is likely to pass by the autumn. The Socialist Party will likely challenge any resulting new law before the Conseil Constitutionnel. In March the Conseil d’Etat held that a total ban on veiling the face in public spaces would not be immune from constitutional challenge. This position was reiterated at a meeting with government officials earlier this month, but senior government figures have expressed their willingness to depart from this advice. The Socialists, it must be noted, support a limited ban similar in effect to the Quebec proposal (and closer to the recommendations of the Gerin report). But the governing UMP seems content to argue that an unlimited ban is entirely constitutional. Several ministers have drawn analogies between the proposed ban on being entirely covered in the street and existing bans on being entirely naked in public.

The Bill follows the unanimous adoption in March of a parliamentary resolution condemning the full-face veil as an affront to the nation’s values. Nicolas Sarkozy set out those values this month when told his cabinet that the government was taking

‘a path which is difficult but just…We are an old nation united around a certain idea of personal dignity, particularly women’s dignity, and of life together. It’s the fruit of centuries of efforts. The full veil that fully conceals the face violates these values that are so fundamental for us, so essential to the republican contract. Dignity cannot be divided and in the public sphere, where we meet each other, where we are with others, citizenship should be lived with uncovered faces. So ultimately there can be no other solution than a ban in all public places.”

The French Minister for Justice has rejected the contention that a ban is incompatible with respect for women’s freedom of choice. She argues first that women do not freely choose to dress in this way: “As we see it, these women are victims. It would be ideal if these sanctions didn’t have to be imposed on them.” Second she denies that regard for women’s autonomy requires the state to roll back its proposed ban: ‘It is a difficult balance, precisely because it is at the intersection of several equally essential principles: individual freedom, equality between men and women, respect for the dignity of women and the rules of living in the society.” It is noteworthy that secularism has faded into the background as a source of justifications for a ban – the government seems to reject the argument that women veil their faces for ‘authentically’ religious reasons, though this is an argument that has been made by several French Muslim women over the past few weeks. So now, according to the dominant transcript, there are only two possible understandings of a French woman’s choice to veil her face: either she does not choose in any sense that can be recognized, since her choice is inevitably contrary to dignity or she chooses dangerously in a way that challenges the essentially ‘public’ nature of citizenship. The shift away from the religion question to ones of (incontestable) equalities and public order may foreshadow the approach that the government will take in the inevitable event of a legal battle, perhaps even before the European Court of Human Rights.

Related Posts

• April 11, 2011 -- French face-covering ban comes into force (4)
• March 31, 2010 -- We Want to See Your Face: The Burqa in France, Belgium and Quebec (8)