French Senate Approves Ban on Niqab

France’s Senate, on Tuesday, overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban wearing the Islamic veil (niqab) in public. The proposal also applies to all visitors to France so any Muslim woman who wears the niqab and wants to come to France to do some shopping in Paris will be forced by the French government to remove it.

The measure had already been backed by the National Assembly in July and will come in to force in six month’s time.

An editorial in The Guardian asks what is it about the niqab, which only a tiny minority of 2,000 Muslim women wear (out of a population of 64 million), that seemingly threatens so many people?

The Guardian editorial asks,

“So what is it about the niqab, worn by so few, that threatens so many? And what values, exactly, are being protected? One of the achievements of the European Enlightenment was to liberate the public space as a forum where different cultural identities could interact and negotiate free from the censure of the church. And yet France, Belgium or the Netherlands could shortly have laws which politicise and proscribe what clothing can be worn.”

The issue of the niqab has been continually framed around the narrative of liberating women who are forced to wear the garment and yet the very freedoms of women who choose of their own accord to wear the niqab are being taken away. The hypocrisy of the liberation narrative is exposed when we consider that at a time when we, as a public, are made to believe that we are conducting wars to liberate women from oppressive regimes abroad, France chooses to oppress them at home. In the midst of this action, the voices of those it affects is lost. Democracy gives people the power to make a choice and, on Tuesday, France took away that right. Bloody revolutions have been conducted to break away from the imposition of repressive measures from higher authorities. How quick and easy it is for those gains to be taken away. Is that the kind of democratic example that should be set for the rest of the world?

The bill will now be sent to France’s Constitutional Council, which will confirm whether the bill is constitutionally legal or not.