French President says Burqas Symbolize Servitude and Humiliation

'It is not a religious symbol' Sarkozy said in reference to the Muslim garb designed to conceal a woman's head and body.

PARIS (CNS) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a stinging attack against the burqa, just weeks after he fended off implied criticism by President Obama on the subject of France's attitude towards traditional women's attire in Islam.

"It is not a religious symbol," Sarkozy said Monday in reference to the Muslim garb designed to conceal a woman's head and body. "It is a symbol of servitude and humiliation."

The burqa, he told a special session of the country's National Assembly at the Palace of Versailles, would not be welcome on French soil.

Six years after Sarkozy's predecessor outlawed the wearing of religious paraphernalia - a ban covering Muslim hijabs or headscarves - in public schools and government offices, calls for a total ban on burqas are on the political agenda.

The president said Monday that he supported proposals, backed by more than 80 cross-party lawmakers, for a parliamentary inquiry on the subject. But his own views on the matter were clear.

"We cannot accept, in our country, women imprisoned behind a mesh, cut off from society, deprived of all identity," he said. "That is not the French republic's idea of women's dignity."

France has the biggest Muslim community in Europe, an estimated five million-strong.

The lawmakers calling for an inquiry - ranging from communists to more than 60 from Sarkozy's center-right UMP party - want to establish the motivation of those who wear the burqa and also to examine whether it contravenes French secular norms.

They are taking issue both with the burqa and the niqab. The two terms are often used interchangeably - the former is the head-to-toe covering, usually black, while the niqab is a head covering and veil designed to enable the wearer to expose only her eyes - or to conceal them if she wishes.

"The vision of these imprisoned women is already intolerable when it comes from Iran, from Afghanistan, from Saudi Arabia or certain other Arab countries," said communist lawmaker Andre Gurin in a motion last week. "It is totally unacceptable on the territory of the French Republic."

Gurin, the mayor of a southern city with a large Muslim immigrant community, told the French news agency AFP the sight of fully-covered women was becoming commonplace.

The French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM) rejected the lawmakers' call, saying in a statement wearing of the burqa was "extremely marginal" in France, and calling the proposal an attempt to stigmatize Islam and Muslims.

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Council president Mohammed Moussaoui, speaking before Sarkozy's address to parliament, appealed to the president for support on the matter.

The CFCM was set up in 2002 after Sarkozy - then interior minister - persuaded three Islamic organizations to work together as an official representative body.

Some Muslims consider it obligatory for women to cover their heads and bodies from the age of puberty or earlier. Burqas and niqabs are seen most frequently in Iran, Afghanistan and the Gulf states - but also on occasion on the streets of Western cities.

On the Web site Islam Online, fatwa scholars cite a leading cleric as saying covering the entire body, including the face and hands, is a "condition" in one school of Islamic jurisprudence, and "recommended" in other schools.

"If the law governing a given country requires uncovering the face of the woman for genuine reasons, such as identification, the Muslim woman, like all other women, abides by the law," the scholars wrote.

Some campaigners for women rights in Islam have argued that enforcing a ban could lead to fundamentalists forcing their wives and other female relatives to stop all public interaction, thus setting back the modest gains made by such women.

France's hijab ban in 2004 drew strong reactions from mainstream Muslim organizations. Extremists also weighed in, with al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri calling the decision a sign of "the Crusaders' rancor harbored by Westerners toward Muslims."

Two years later, Osama bin Laden was still talking about it, saying in an April 2006 statement released through al-Jazeera that France's stance on the hijab was part of "a Zionist-Crusader war" against Muslims.

France is not the only country where the issue has caused political and legal controversy. Even Turkey, a majority Muslim but official secular country, has grappled with the issue for years. A ban on wearing the hijab in universities was lifted early last year, but the country's constitutional court overturned the move four months later.

While Iran enforces strict dress code on women, these Iranians protesting in Paris against the recent disputed election and post-election violence are evidently comfortable in Western attire. (AP Photo)'Religious hostility disguised as liberalism'

In 2003, a Muslim schoolgirl in Oklahoma was suspended from school for refusing a directive to remove her hijab. The Justice Department intervened and the following year the department, the public school district and lawyers for the girl reached a consent agreement allowing Nashala Hearn to wear the head covering.

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In his speech to the "Muslim world" in Cairo early this month, Obama appeared to reference the case: "freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion ... that's why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it."

Elsewhere in the address, Obama said it was important that Western countries not prevent Muslim citizens "from practicing religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism."

The comments drew some criticism at the time.

"Three different times Obama defended the right of Muslim women to cover up their bodies," Hudson Institute senior fellow Anne Bayefsky wrote on National Review Online. "Never once did he mention the right of Muslim women to refuse to cover up their bodies - a right denied on pain of arrest and death by many of the very communities he was addressing."

Obama's remarks were widely seen as directed at France. When he and Sarkozy held a joint press conference in Caen two days later, both were asked about the issue.

Obama replied, "In the United States our basic attitude is, is that we're not going to tell people what to wear ... my general view is, is that the most effective way to integrate people of all faiths is to not try to suppress their customs or traditions; rather to open up opportunities and give them a chance for full participation in the life of their country."

For his part, Sarkozy said that anyone in France wishing to wear a veil or scarf could do so, but that limits were set in certain cases "because we are a secular state."

There should also be no coercion, he said.

"The fact that young girls may choose to wear a veil or a headscarf is not a problem as long as they have actually chosen to do so, as opposed to this being imposed upon them, be it by their families or by their environment."

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