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Sarkozy drops burqa bomb,
saysveil unacceptable, panel to study it
WSN Network
 VERSAILLES:
Even as
the Sikh community ontinues to reason with he French government
tolift the ban on wearing turbans,the country has now decided to set
up a commission to study the extent of burqa-wearing in the country,
after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the veils reduced dignity.
Sarkozy had said
that the burqa deprived women of identity. In a speech, Sarkozy said
it was unacceptable to have women in
France who were
“prisoners behind netting.” He said it was not a sign of religion
but a “sign of subservience”. However, he also called for respect
for Muslims.
Sarkozy’s
comments came like a bombshell at a time when identity issues are
keeping minority communities tied up in many an energy sapping
struggles across the globe. There is no bar whatsoever on women
wearing burqa or hijab (veil) in the
US or anywhere
and most experts saw this as a failure to recognize a minority’s
rights to conduct itself.
Experts are of
the view that a compulsory ban on the veil is just as bad as the
Taliban’s ban on moving about without the veil and Sarkozy’s
comments will only exhort more Muslim women to rush to assert
themselves and their individuality by wearing burqas.
The French
National Assembly has appointed 32 lawmakers on a fact-finding
mission to look at ways of restricting use of the veil.
France is home
to Western Europe’s largest population of Muslims. Assembly Speaker
Bernard Accoyer said the lawmakers from right and left-wing parties
would have six months to examine the issue before making
recommendations. In March 2004, France banned the Islamic
headscarves in its state schools. About five million Muslims live in
France. The law also impacted France’s small Sikh population as the
law bans wearing of conspicuous religious signs, including the Sikh
turban, in public schools in
France.
Jasvir Singh, 14
and Ranjit Singh, 17 were expelled from their school in Bobigny for
wearing a Keski following the 2004 French law.
Sarkozy told a
special session of Parliament he was in favour of holding the
inquiry sought by some French lawmakers into whether Muslim women
who cover themselves fully in public undermine French secularism and
women’s rights. But the President added “we must not fight the wrong
battle, in the republic the Muslim religion must be respected as
much as other religions” in
France,
which has Europe’s biggest Muslim population estimated at several
million.
24
June 2009
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