Word: burqa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...speech at Versailles, Sarkozy denounced the burqa, the all-enveloping garment worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women as "not welcome on French territory." Obama's speech in Cairo took a different tack. His concern was not the hijab - the Muslim woman's head covering - so much as a woman's right to wear it if she so chose. Western countries, Obama said, cannot dictate the dress of Muslim women. "We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism." (See pictures of the women of Cairo...
...clutch of Western countries have put curbs on burqas and niqabs, the full-face veils that leave only a slit for the eyes. The Irish have banned the burqa from classrooms, and in June, the Michigan Supreme Court gave judges the power to direct how witnesses dress for court, after a Muslim woman refused to take off her niqab while testifying. The French, however, have gone beyond practical arguments, saying that face veils don't just gum up processes in courts, surgeries and schools, but are an affront to the republic itself and its traditions of secularism. In 2004, France...
...headscarf in what has been painted as a landscape of cruel, racist taunting. Her death has also become the latest weapon in the controversy over remarks made last month by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he equated the most conservative style of Islamic women's dress, the burqa, with subservience. "This is cowardly act supported by many western politicians like Sarkozy ... We should stand against such an inhumane act," wrote one man on the message board of a Facebook group titled Defending the Rights of the Late Marwa El-Sherbini, which claims more than 1,000 members...
...this point, no Muslim defenders of the rare French burqa have emerged. Indeed, Dounia Bouzar, a specialist on Muslim affairs, notes that while she and many fellow Muslims opposed the headscarf ban as meddling in private matters of choice, she is relieved at action taken on the burqa. "Imposition of this garment on women is one manner Salafists get individuals to renounce their individuality and submit to the extremist cult thinking that masquerades as Islam - but which is an abomination of it," Bouzar says. "That Salafist influence and activity is spreading, and if it takes political action to prevent their...
France isn't the first nation to consider a burqa ban. In 2006, Dutch officials caused a storm of protest from its Muslim populace by proposing a burqa interdiction. A law imposing a ban may soon be passed. France is not that far yet. The parliamentary motion to form an investigating committee must be approved before that body can be formed. If it is, it must study the burqa and reasons why those women who wear it do so, and consider recommendations whether to ban it. Drafting and voting legislation to that end would take months. Before then, public debate...