France Enforces Ban on Full-Face Veils in Public

„The Interior Ministry estimates that only about 2,000 women wear the niqab in France, while Mr. Gérin, who helped write a long parliamentary report on the issue, believes that the number is higher. But with an estimated six million Muslims in France, the action taken seems large compared with the problem, critics say, and they accuse President Nicolas Sarkozy and his center-right party of playing politics with a generalized and unjustified fear of Islam and immigrants. Mr. Sarkozy has responded that Islam is not the problem, only radical Islam, which does not respect French values and separation of church and state.

Naima Bouteldja interviewed 32 women who wear the niqab for the Open Society Foundation, a nongovernmental organization. She found none who said they had been forced to wear the veil, and 10 said they started wearing the niqab as a response to the political controversy. Eight of the 32 were French converts to Islam; a third said they did not wear the niqab all the time.

»Some were angry, and some said that many ‘niqabis’ had already left France, and many of them talked about leaving France«, she said. »Most of the women confront verbal abuse on a daily basis, with a lot of the abuse coming from Muslims.” Her report, “Unveiling the Truth: Why 32 Muslim Women Wear the Full-Face Veil in France«, was released Monday. In Paris, a protest over the ban near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, organized by a Muslim property developer, resulted in the arrest of two men and three women for an illegal gathering, the police said — not for the women’s wearing of the full veil.”