"The burqa is a prison, it's a straightjacket," Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, herself a practising Muslim who was born in France to Algerian parents, said in an interview to Le Parisien newspaper.
"It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy."
France's top administrative court, the state council, on June 27 rejected the citizenship request on the grounds that the woman's Muslim practices were incompatible with French laws on secularism and gender equality.
Amara said the ruling might "dissuade certain fanatics from imposing the burqa on their wives".
The Moroccan woman, identified only as 32-year-old Faiza M, turned up for interviews with French authorities to discuss her application accompanied by her husband and wearing the long veil "with only her eyes visible through an opening", according to government officials quoted by the newspaper.
Faiza M, who has been living in France since 2000 and has three children, admitted to leading a reclusive life in a Paris suburb "living in a state of total submission to the men in her family", according to the newspaper.
Amara, a prominent women's rights campaigner who joined President Nicolas Sarkozy's government last year, said she made no distinction between the veil and the burqa.
"It's just a question of centimetres of fabric," she said, describing both as symbols of oppression for women.
The decision to deny citizenship to Faiza M has been applauded by left- and right-wing politicians in France, which is home to Europe's largest Muslim community of five million.
A court in the northern city of Lille in April granted a Muslim man's request to annul his marriage to a woman because she had lied about being a virgin, sparking an uproar in France.
The state is appealing that decision.
In 2000, France passed a law forbidding girls from wearing veils and other religious symbols in state schools as part of the government's drive to defend secularism.
Source: News24 (English)
See also: France: Woman denied citizenship for wearing a burqa, France: An Angry minister for the angry margins, France: The perpetual stranger
1 comment:
That's awesome that they're appealing the decision to nullify that marriage on the basis of the bride not being a virgin. That was so Shariah. I don't have a problem with nullifying a marriage based on fraud, but nowhere in a marriage contract should the word "virginity" or any synonym be allowed, as this suggests that women are property, commodities, and just vaginas rather than actual human beings, and it reinforces that unbelievably creepy pedophilic obsession with virginity. If these women are allowed to have sex before marriage, mark my word: there will be fewer Arabs. We've all seen the Abu Ghraib pics. You know what I'm talking about. Plus it places their lives in danger, and the fact is that these women are not having consentual sex with boyfriends; they're getting raped by their brothers and fathers.
I also agree that there is no difference between the moderate Iranian headscarf which shows some hair and a burka, except that any head covering which restricts one's vision is grounds for arrest when driving. The point is that it's a dehumanizing symbol of slavery, designed to deprive women of all of their dignity, identity, and power, as well as being a symbol of pride in one's abominable genocidal beliefs. If you can't walk down the street in a big swastika you shouldn't be allowed to wear one of those disgusting things on your head. Period. I have a visceral hatred of them. It also constantly reminds me, not just of the perpetual psychological, emotional, and physical abuse of Muslim women, but also of the increasing radicalization of the Muslim population, since nobody wore those things 30 years ago. Muslims saw those things the way they saw 90-year-old Russian biddies in babushkas, to paraphrase Mark Steyn. Gross. France did the right thing, albeit way too little, way too late.
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