French applaud decision to deny woman citizenship over veil
SUSAN SACHS From Thursday's Globe and Mail July 16, 2008 at 6:52 PM EDT
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PARIS — Politicians, feminists and some Muslim leaders here are applauding a court decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco whose French husband requires her to completely cover her face and body.
The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, said the woman's acquiescence to the veil showed her failure to assimilate and demonstrated behaviour “incompatible with the essential values of the French community and, notably, the principle of equality of the sexes.”
The decision was hailed across the political spectrum, from the leftist Socialists to the far-right National Front, despite their long-standing divisions over whether the state should get involved in regulating private religious or cultural practices.
One of the strongest endorsements came from Fadéla Amara, the Algerian-born junior minister for urban affairs and a founder of a Muslim women's group, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (with translates as the provocative Neither Whores Nor Submissives), that fought successfully to ban the veil in French public schools four years ago.
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The ruling was “a springboard for the emancipation and freedom of women,” Ms. Amara said in an interview published Wednesday in the newspape Le Parisien.
Like the veil, the niqab is a coercive means to oppress women, she added. “It's not a sign of religiosity, but the visible expression of a totalitarian position.”
The case of “Madame M,” as the woman was identified in court papers, was decided on June 27, but gained notice only last week when it was reported in the press.
The 32-year-old woman first applied for French nationality in 2004, four years after marrying a Frenchman in southern Morocco and moving with him to a western Paris suburb. The couple subsequently had three children, all of them born in France and, consequently, French citizens.
Her application was denied in 2005 and she appealed to the Council of State on the grounds of religious freedom.
According to an account of the case in the newspaper Le Monde, the woman came to several interviews with government officials wearing a floor-length robe, a scarf covering her hair and a mask-like cloth over her face with just a slit for the eyes.
She and her husband were said to have described themselves “spontaneously” as Salafists, a fundamentalist movement that claims to practise the only pure Islam of the sixth-century Prophet Mohammed.
Some of the most active terrorist groups in Iraq and North Africa in the past 20 years have also called themselves Salafists. But there was no suggestion in the French court ruling that Madame M and her husband had any links to those militants.
Rather, it was the woman's apparently passive acceptance of her cloistered life in France and her “total submission to the men of her husband's family” that drew the most criticism in court documents that were cited by the newspaper.
“According to her own statements, she leads a life that is … cut off from French society,” according to a government lawyer's report to the court. “She has no idea about secularism or the right to vote.”
In her appeal, Madame M argued that she has never disputed French values.
The appearance of women in face-concealing veils in immigrant neighbourhoods has alarmed some French Muslim leaders.
Abdelalai Mamoun, an imam in the suburb where the Moroccan woman lived, told a Paris newspaper that women who voluntarily veil themselves “are rejecting the system” and should emigrate to Muslim countries.
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SUSAN SACHS From Thursday's Globe and Mail July 16, 2008 at 6:52 PM EDT
Article Link
PARIS — Politicians, feminists and some Muslim leaders here are applauding a court decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco whose French husband requires her to completely cover her face and body.
The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, said the woman's acquiescence to the veil showed her failure to assimilate and demonstrated behaviour “incompatible with the essential values of the French community and, notably, the principle of equality of the sexes.”
The decision was hailed across the political spectrum, from the leftist Socialists to the far-right National Front, despite their long-standing divisions over whether the state should get involved in regulating private religious or cultural practices.
One of the strongest endorsements came from Fadéla Amara, the Algerian-born junior minister for urban affairs and a founder of a Muslim women's group, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (with translates as the provocative Neither Whores Nor Submissives), that fought successfully to ban the veil in French public schools four years ago.
Related Articles
From the archives
French minister under fire in virgin marriage case
Sarkozy reaches out to French minorities
Why the fear of a 'Muslim tide' makes too much of a splash
The ruling was “a springboard for the emancipation and freedom of women,” Ms. Amara said in an interview published Wednesday in the newspape Le Parisien.
Like the veil, the niqab is a coercive means to oppress women, she added. “It's not a sign of religiosity, but the visible expression of a totalitarian position.”
The case of “Madame M,” as the woman was identified in court papers, was decided on June 27, but gained notice only last week when it was reported in the press.
The 32-year-old woman first applied for French nationality in 2004, four years after marrying a Frenchman in southern Morocco and moving with him to a western Paris suburb. The couple subsequently had three children, all of them born in France and, consequently, French citizens.
Her application was denied in 2005 and she appealed to the Council of State on the grounds of religious freedom.
According to an account of the case in the newspaper Le Monde, the woman came to several interviews with government officials wearing a floor-length robe, a scarf covering her hair and a mask-like cloth over her face with just a slit for the eyes.
She and her husband were said to have described themselves “spontaneously” as Salafists, a fundamentalist movement that claims to practise the only pure Islam of the sixth-century Prophet Mohammed.
Some of the most active terrorist groups in Iraq and North Africa in the past 20 years have also called themselves Salafists. But there was no suggestion in the French court ruling that Madame M and her husband had any links to those militants.
Rather, it was the woman's apparently passive acceptance of her cloistered life in France and her “total submission to the men of her husband's family” that drew the most criticism in court documents that were cited by the newspaper.
“According to her own statements, she leads a life that is … cut off from French society,” according to a government lawyer's report to the court. “She has no idea about secularism or the right to vote.”
In her appeal, Madame M argued that she has never disputed French values.
The appearance of women in face-concealing veils in immigrant neighbourhoods has alarmed some French Muslim leaders.
Abdelalai Mamoun, an imam in the suburb where the Moroccan woman lived, told a Paris newspaper that women who voluntarily veil themselves “are rejecting the system” and should emigrate to Muslim countries.
More on link
