I always watch news about Islamic religious rights with interest, because limits on Muslim religious expression also serve as limits to Christian religious expression. Telling Muslim cab drivers that they are required to carry passengers with dogs or alcohol is more or less equivalent to telling a Christian pharmacist they must dispense abortifacients. There’s a movement to ban the niqab in France. Not because allowing people to run around with full face masks is a law and order issue, but because if offends their sense of national secularism.
Considering that there are many “no-go” areas in Paris where Islam holds sway to the point that the police are unsafe, the strange tradition of car-burning by “youths” of unknowable unreportable religious practice, and the fact that whole streets are aggressively taken over by Muslims for daily prayers, I can understand the pushback. Because of France’s tradition of secularism since the revolution – still enshrined in law today – orthodox Islam is a serious encroachment in a way that it is not in the United States. In France it’s much more “freedom from religion” than our “freedom of religion.” I can understand it, given their history and the political climate over there, and I’m glad they’re finally pushing back – while they still can. Still, this is disturbing to my American sensibilities:
A French parliamentary committee has recommended a partial ban on women wearing Islamic face veils.
The committee’s near 200-page report has proposed a ban in hospitals, schools, government offices and on public transport.
It also recommends that anyone showing visible signs of “radical religious practice” should be refused residence cards and citizenship.
The interior ministry says just 1,900 women in France wear the full veils.
In its report, the committee said requiring women to cover their faces was against the French republican principles of secularism and equality.
via BBC News – France MPs’ report backs Muslim face veil ban.
