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Bern/Paris, 4th Sha'aban 1431 / 14th July 2010

(qi) So now it was made, as expected clearly - the verdict against the Islamic face veil in Paris, just in time for today's French National Day. Six years after the same chamber already enforced a nationwide ban on headscarves in public schools, it decided yesterday with 336:1 votes in first reading a law article, which generally is called "Ban on Burqa" and is going back to a correspondent impulse of the acting president Nicolas Sarkozy. The law will of course only be valid in autumn, when the second chamber will give its expected consent.

In March the Constitutional Council expressed concern at the proposed law. A total ban on Islamic face veil was in conflict with the freedom of religion and in a wider sense also with the ECHR. Undeterred by this the legislators walked straight toward the much-discussed second exceptional law for Muslims. The socialists indirectly denied their consent by not attending the vote. A full plenary chamber in the first chamber counts 557 seats. Thus, 220 deputies abstained.

The new law provides for fine of 150 Euro for women, who don't respect the law. Men, who force their wives or daughters to wear the veil, would have to expect a fine of up to 30.000 Euro and one year imprisonment.

Whether the totalitarian law of Paris endures will mostly be decided in Strasbourg, as the last instance. It is almost certain, that affected women, should the law be implemented, will apply to the Court of Human Rights.

Disillusioned Muslims

Several Muslim organizations and individuals have already in advance of the vote shown dismay at the new Paris law. Many have stressed, that the law is understood on the one hand as a violation of their constitutional rights and could further promote on the other hand the stigmatization of French Muslims. Even when the wearing of the face veil was usually among Muslims not understood as a duty in terms of a farida, it was not up to a society with non-Muslim majority to intervene in theological debates of a minority, as the Minister of Justice, Michelle Alliot-Marie, repeatedly exercised this in the last few weeks. Certainly the law also will have a polarizing effect on the relation between Muslims and non-Muslims and enhance the rampant distrust on both sides.

Source: French deputies pass face veil ban, al-Jazeera Online.