France Bans Muslim Veils

It's a band-aid, but clearly they are attempting to discourage immigration. If they are the only country with such a ban, the devout will go elsewhere.

Those who violate the ban will pay the reverse jiyza. That's what it is.

French Senate passes ban of full Muslim veils Yahoo hat tip Daved

PARIS – The French Senate has voted overwhelmingly for a bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil everywhere from post offices to streets, in a final step toward a making it law.

The Senate voted 246 to 1 Tuesday in favor of the bill, which has already passed in the lower chamber, the National Assembly.

Any dissenters have 10 days to challenge the measure in the Constitutional Council watchdog, but that is considered unlikely.

Eiffel Tower Abandoned from Bomb Threat

Was this a response to the Muslim veil ban?

Eiffel Tower evacuated in bomb scare Herald Sun (hat tip Armaros)

FRENCH police evacuated the Eiffel Tower and the park surrounding the Paris landmark today after a bomb alert.

A police officer said about 25,000 people were in the area at the time of the scare but added that they left calmly shortly before 9pm local time.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the alert was sounded either after a threat was phoned in or following the discovery of a suspicious package.

The people evacuated, mostly French and foreign tourists, were asked to stay on the nearby Seine river banks, and the tower area and Champ de Mars park were also declared off limits.

The scare happened just hours after the French parliament passed a law prohibiting wearing a full-face veil in public, meaning a ban will come into force early next year if it is not overturned by senior judges.

The bill makes no mention of Islam, but President Nicolas Sarkozy's government promoted it as a means to protect women from being forced to wear Muslim full-face veils such as the burqa or the niqab.

There has not been any suggestion so far that the two events are linked, however.

Burqa Ban Debate Becomes Violent in France

Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS – Neither Whores Nor Submissives), an international human rights organization that advocates on behalf of women’s rights as universal human rights without compromise, organized an open public meeting on the anticipated French burqa ban in Montreuil, a suburb of Paris, France, on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, at 7:30 pm. The meeting was held in an elementary school in Montreuil. Ni Putes Ni Soumises representatives had canvassed the city earlier in the day, to spread awareness of the event. The President of Ni Putes Ni Soumises, Ms. Sihem Habchi, was present, along with a number of local elected government officials and Ms. Lubna Al Hussein, the Sudanese journalist and women’s rights activist who risked 40 lashes of the whip for wearing pants in Khartoum. Approximately 150 persons attended the debate, including a number of Islamists who attempted to shout down anyone expressing support for the public burqa ban in France. A handful of veiled women were present and gave testimonials, including one woman in niqab (the face veil that will be included in the anticipated ban).

Hostilities began almost immediately. The gulf that exists between the pro and anti-burqa ban camps could not have been more apparent. When the women’s rights activists and elected officials spoke, they spoke of the creation of a safe, egalitarian and secular public space in which all citizens enjoy equal rights and equal protection under the law. They spoke of women’s rights and the importance of ensuring gender equality and gender desegregation in a secular, democratic republic.

When the anti-burqa ban contingent spoke, they spoke only of Islam amid accusations of anti-immigrant racism. They defended the burqa as a tenet of Islam, as indicated in the Quran and supported by the Sunnah in the Hadith.

The secularists refused to address the tenets of Islam as wholly irrelevant. The Islamists interpreted this refusal as bigotry. The heated debate erupted in violence, which resulted in only minor injuries, but which provided further evidence of the utter incompatibility of democratic governance and religion. The police arrived. They detained the remaining participants for some time, but the perpetrators had already fled the scene.

Many persons expressed that their participation in the truncated debate had served to increase their support for the ban on identity obscuring face coverings in public in France.