France on Tuesday took its first legislative step towards banning the full Islamic veil when parliament adopted a formal resolution branding the burka an affront to French values.
The non-binding measure, approved by all mainstream parties, will be followed in July by a law that will outlaw Muslim women from wearing the burka, which covers the face with a mesh, or the niqab, a full-body garment with eye slits.
France is set to be the second European country - after Belgium - to declare the full veil illegal in public places.
“This is an important day,” said Jean-François Copé, who heads the parliamentary group of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party.
“We have an important rendezvous with the values of the (French) republic. The resolution is to explain, the law is to decide.”
The resolution states that “radical practices which violate the dignity and equality between men and women, such as the wearing of the full veil, are contrary to the values of the republic.”
Next week, Mr Sarkozy’s cabinet will examine a draft bill that will impose fines on women who wear the full veil and up to a year in jail on men convicted of forcing women to wear it.
The law will also apply to tourists from the Middle East and the Gulf who turn up fully veiled in luxury shops on the Paris boulevards. This has sparked concern among some shop owners they will lose top customers.
Mr Sarkozy has declared the burka “not welcome” in France, a fiercely secular state, and favours it being outlawed.
But while the opposition Socialists backed the resolution, they are against a law on a total ban. “We think that banning (the veil) in all public spaces will be unworkable (and) risks stigmatising (Muslims),” said Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader. She wants to limit a ban to public services and extend it to all face-covering garments Islamic or otherwise, as suggested by France’s Council of State.
Supporters of the ban say it is not a matter of religion but of security and women’s rights.
But France’s Council of the Muslim Faith has warned it risks making French Muslims feel like outcasts; according to the interior ministry, fewer than 2,000 women wear the full veil in a country with around two million Muslim women.
A commission from the Council of Europe, the EU’s top human rights watchdog, on Tuesday said it opposed a blanket ban on full-face coverings.
In a statement it said a ban on the full Islamic veil would rob women of their freedom of expression and could violate their religious freedoms.
Right-wing MPs hope the law will be adopted in September and in force by early 2011.