France: Why banning the burqa won’t work

Gilbert Collard

France Soir

Everyone’s suddenly calling for a ban on the burqa, said Gilbert Collard. A little-known Communist deputy spoke out last week of his disgust at seeing a burqa-clad woman on the streets of Paris, and he opened the floodgates. Now a parliamentary committee is going to study the feasibility of a ban on the all-enveloping garment, and nobody seems to mind. Even most French Muslim groups—including Muslim women’s groups—won’t defend the burqa, seeing it as a crazy fringe costume worn only by a few fundamentalist Salafists.

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But let’s just consider how such a ban would be enforced. What are police supposed to do when they see a woman in a burqa? “Strip her? Handcuff her? Point at her and denounce her?” And if that woman is brought to court, is she supposed to be sentenced by a judge “who is himself garbed head to toe in a black robe?” How’s that going to look?

I agree that the burqa is a symbol of fundamentalist oppression of women. But fundamentalists are always searching for “a provocation, an offense, an easy martyrdom, a spectacle.” Arresting their wives would give them a publicity coup they previously could only dream of. And it would be a further victimization of the women themselves.

Leave the burqas be. After all, who’s to say that “wearing a thong” or other uncomfortable lingerie isn’t a free choice for French women but “an example of bowing to men’s desires?”