Why dont the French like full-face veils?

Westerners became sensitive to the image of faceless Muslim women largely through the use of the burqa by the Taliban to oppress women in Afghanistan. That garment functions like a body tent,with an eye screen to allow some vision. Years before it became an issue in the US,French feminists fulminated against the burqa,and later against other radical interpretations of Islam in Afghanistan,including public stoning for adultery,the demolition of Buddhist shrines and the banning of music. And now,the French government has officially banned the wearing of full-face veils.

But the face-covering veils in France are different. Even though many here mistakenly call it a burqa,the garment worn by women here is a niqab,an improvised cover in black with no religious or traditional significance by itself. Frances ideal of a secularised republic theoretically leaves it blind to colour,ethnicity and religion,and makes everyone equal under the law.

So why all the fuss about a tiny minority of women who wear odd-looking dress in a country that is the worlds creative headquarters for odd-looking fashion? One explanation is cultural. In French culture,the eyes are supposed to meet in public,to invite a conversation or just to exchange a visual greeting with a stranger. Among Muslims,the eyes of men and women are not supposed to meet,even by chance,and especially not in public or between strangers.

In a book,Galanterie Française,Claude Habib,a specialist in 18th-century literature,argues that the centuries-old French tradition of gallantry presupposes a visibility of the feminine and a joy of being visiblethe very one that certain young Muslim girls cannot or do not want to show.

A more familiar explanation for French antagonism to the facial veil is historical and political: the deep-rooted French fear,resentment and rejection of the otherthe immigrant,the invader,the potential terrorist or abuser of human rights who eats,drinks,prays and dresses differently,and refuses to assimilate in the French way. Some of the French,particularly on the far right,still believe that Frances colonial civilising mission was a noble one,and that the people of former colonies,including the Arabs of North Africa,have clung to backward ways that they are now exporting to France. The veils presence reminds French people daily that that mission failed, said Rebecca Ruquist,an American scholar of race and religion in modern France.

Frances officials and legislators have used an amalgam of arguments to defend their new law. Interior Minister Claude Guéant said it defends two fundamental principles: secularism and the principle of equality between man and woman. A stronger argument is that any hidden face is a potential security risk,and it is on that basis that the law does not single out Islamic veils by name,but rather all facial coverings in public.

In theory,that means that anyone wearing a balaclava,a fencing mask or a motorcycle helmet with a full-face visor could be punished. But will they? The French might be shocked if they were. And there are exemptions,for Santa Clauses and carnivalgoers,for example.

Heres another question: Will lavish-spending female tourists from gulf Arab states be forced to bare their faces on the Champs-Elysées? In Switzerland,Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf wants to ban facial veils,but has said that gulf tourists will be exempt. Perhaps,as some have suggested,it will be rare for anyone to be penalised in France,given how difficult it is to enforce the law fairly and uniformly.

Meanwhile,France will remain Francethe land where the uncovered body is celebrated. Billboards and posters on Paris streets regularly feature naked breasts and buttocks. One of the most colorful images of protest against labour reform in 2006 was of a flag-waving student in Bordeaux dressed as Marianne,in a red Phrygian cap and white peasant blouse. As in the 19th-century painting by Eugène Delacroix that hangs in the Louvre,her breasts were exposed. Marianne remains,as she has always been,the French republics idealised national symbol.