Religion and Law Consortium

May 2010 - Europe, Canada, and Australia

As a bill restricting wearing of the full veil for identification purposes and when receiving public services has been passed in Quebec and similar legislation is awaiting final approval in Belgium, "burqa bills" are being prepared in France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy, with public demands for such legislation being heard in Denmark and Switzerland. Germany for the time being has seen such bans as "unnecessary," though German MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin has called for a Europe-wide ban on full-body covering, calling the burqa "a mobile prison" and asserting that its wearing "openly supports values that we do not share in Europe." 

In defense of the French legislation in process Pierre Vimont, French Ambassador to the United States, makes the following observations:

"France just held a long and earnest debate, led by a bipartisan commission of members of Parliament over the issue. This debate raised three specific concerns that deserve a fair analysis:

•   Human dignity and fundamental rights. By entirely covering a person's body and face, the niqab and burqa tend to jeopardize the recognition and respect of one's identity as an individual.
•  Integration. The issue is whether wearing the burqa ends up cutting women off from all contacts that give rise to the creation of social ties, undermining their integration into society.
•   Public order and security. Hiding one's face and body represents a security challenge.

It is now up to the French Parliament to decide on the kind of legislation it wants to adopt to protect those fundamental rights."

Australian senator Cori Bernardi argues that "the burqa has no place in Australian society," denouncing the full veil as "the preferred disguise of bandits and ne'er-do-wells." Put simply, says Bernardi, "the burqa separates and distances the wearer from the normal interactions with broader society."

Calling such developments "depressing," Mairead Enright of the blog Human Rights in Ireland asserts that the "shift away from the religion question to ones of (incontestable) equalities and public order," such as those seen in the discussions in France, "may foreshadow the approach that the government will take in the inevitable event of a legal battle, perhaps even before the European Court of Human Rights."

The Muslim writer Wajahat Ali speaks in stronger language: "Like the Taliban and the Saudi government, France is selfishly using women as silent chess pawns in the greater game of cultural domination and control, and using the canard of protecting women's rights and national security as a means of rationalizing its bigotry."