WUNRN
Website Link Includes Video.
FRANCE
- EUROPEAN COURT UPHOLDS FRENCH FULL VEIL BAN
The European Court of Human Rights
has upheld a ban by France on wearing the Muslim full-face veil - the niqab.
A case was
brought by a 24-year-old French woman, who argued that the ban on wearing the
veil in public violated her freedom of religion and expression.
French law
says nobody can wear in a public space clothing intended to conceal the face.
The penalty for doing so can be a 150-euro fine (£120; $205).
The 2010 law
came in under former conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A breach of
the ban can also mean a wearer having to undergo citizenship instruction.
France has
about five million Muslims - the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe -
but it is thought only about 2,000 women wear full veils.
The court
ruled that the ban "was not expressly based on the religious connotation
of the clothing in question but solely on the fact that it concealed the face".
The Strasbourg judges' decision is final - there is no appeal against it.
MUSLIM
HEADSCARVES
The
word hijab comes from the Arabic for veil and is used to describe the
headscarves worn by Muslim women. These scarves come in myriad styles and
colours. The type most commonly worn in the West is a square scarf that covers
the head and neck but leaves the face clear.
A
court statement said the ruling also "took into account the state's
submission that the face played a significant role in social interaction".
"The
Court was also able to understand the view that individuals might not wish to
see, in places open to all, practices or attitudes which would fundamentally
call into question the possibility of open interpersonal relationships, which,
by virtue of an established consensus, formed an indispensable element of
community life within the society in question."
Some face
coverings, including motorbike helmets, are exempted from the French ban.
The woman,
identified only by the initials SAS, took her case to the European Court in
2011. She said she was under no family pressure to wear the niqab, but chose to
do so as a matter of religious freedom, as a devout Muslim.
France was the first European
country in modern times to ban public wearing of the full-face veil. Belgium
adopted a similar ban in 2011.
In Spain,
the city of Barcelona and some other towns have brought in similar bans, as
have some towns in Italy.
No such
general ban applies in the UK, but institutions have discretion to impose their
own dress codes.
The French
government argues that the ban has wide public support. The authorities see the
full-face veil not only as an affront to French secular values but also as a
potential security risk, as it conceals a person's identity.
In the past,
the European Court has sided with French secularism - it also ruled in favour
of the government's ban on headscarves in schools.
But in 2010,
the judges did find against Turkey, ruling that religious garments were not in
themselves a threat to public order.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________