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Ban the burqa? France votes yes

By Alliance Alert

Benjamin Ismail writing in The Middle East Quarterly: "Does the vehemence of some media criticism imply that the banning of the niqab and the burqa is too sensitive and too complex an issue to be determined by law? Quite the reverse in fact. The question of whether France should legally ban the wearing of the full-face cover on its territory was answered in the affirmative, resoundingly and unequivocally, during parliamentary debates held over the past two years. The only remaining problems for its enactment are more a matter of form over substance, namely, what will be the best rationale for this legislation? . . . An EU decision to invalidate the French ban would have to be based on the unlawfulness of the government's bill or some of its provisions. Yet this possibility has been fully anticipated by the government which, by changing the bill's rationale from the principles of secularism or the dignity of women to public order, has greatly reduced the likelihood of invalidation."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on November 22, 2010 (boomark / email).