French parliament to debate Islamic garments

President Nicolas Sarkozy has said such outfits oppress women and are “not welcome” in France. He reiterated that stance in March.

The National Assembly announced the resolution will be debated May 11.

Sarkozy is expected to address the issue “in the coming days,” deciding whether the government will propose a bill and whether the legislation would ban or partially ban face-covering veils,according to lawmaker Jean-Francois Cope,who heads the president’s conservative UMP party in the parliament’s lower chamber.

The question of legally forbidding such garments has been under review for months in France,which banned Muslim head scarves and other “ostentatious” religious symbols from classrooms in 2004.

However,there are sharp differences of opinion among the governing conservatives,who control parliament,on whether a global ban on face-covering veils is desirable or whether any ban should be

limited to public places.

France’s highest administrative body,the Council of State,warned last week that a total ban risks being found unconstitutional.

Cope,the leading UMP lawmaker,had filed a bill in January seeking a total ban on the burqa-like garments. However,Sarkozy said last month that the government would move ahead with its own bill because such veils are “against women’s dignity.”

Cope also proposed the nonbinding resolution that amounts to a political stand against the veil which serves as a recommendation.

A preface to the resolution says that the face marks an individual’s identity and covering it “is a negation of the fundamental basics of life in society” and “tests the republic.”

France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population,estimated at around 5 million. Only a very small percentage of French Muslim women cover their faces in public. The Interior Ministry has put the number of women who hide their faces behind veils at 1,900.

There has recently been a groundswell of criticism,however,against what is seen as a radical Muslim practice that offends secular France’s values of discretion regarding religion and equality of the sexes. Such veils are also seen by many as a gateway to radicalism.

Belgium,which neighbors France,is also moving toward putting the issue before lawmakers. A parliamentary committee there unanimously voted March 31 to ban the wearing of face-covering veils in public. The full House of Representatives is expected to vote on the issue in late April.

It was not immediately clear when such legislation could go before French lawmakers.