Word: burqa
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...ground from underneath the far right by taking a tough stance on issues such as integration and immigration, while presiding over the most ethnically diverse Cabinet that France has ever seen. Sarkozy set an annual target for deportations of illegal immigrants; last month he criticized the burqa as "a sign of subservience" that he said is not welcome in France. That has helped him reclaim turf that the FN has long monopolized. "He speaks unapologetically of battling illegal immigration ... He talks about national identity and French tradition," says Reynié. (Read: "Will France Impose a Ban on the Burqa...
...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...
Obama avoided any sense that American values and Islamic ones were in conflict. Instead, he offered a more porous vision of both Islam and the West, one in which "Islam has always been a part of America's story." Where Sarkozy rushed to define what the burqa meant ("subservience ... debasement"), Obama just cast the hijab as a personal choice, protected...
...Read "Will France Impose a Ban on the Burqa...