With regards to France’s recent niqab ban, respecting the rights of citizens should include their right to dress themselves from head to toe.
A government that dictates the meaning of its citizens’ personal choices then governs on the basis of such assumptions is both condescending and, well, dictatorial.
When the pursuit of state secularism becomes so dogmatic that it requires dress codes for the people, the only difference between secularism and theocracy is aesthetic.
Is that a naive concern?
By banning the niqab and burka, or “face veils,” supposedly to assert women’s rights and secularism, French President Nicolas Sarkozy roused nationalist fervour by exploiting unfavourable popular opinion against as alienated a group as could be found.
For libertarians, limits on personal freedoms — not face veils — are at the heart of this issue.
While many Saudi women do not have the right to show their face, French women no longer possess the right to hide theirs.
Offenders may be escorted to a police station for identification and face a €150 fine as well as lessons in French citizenship.
On the surface, the ban may affect 2000 niqab wearers in a country of 64 million.
As legislation in a republic, the ban sets a precedent.
Restrictions on civil liberties are, by the very nature of democracy, easier to implement on minorities.
When the ban came into effect April 11, the only potential opposition to Sarkozy bigger than Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front was Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Strauss-Kahn has since been accused of sexual assault by a housekeeper who entered his New York hotel room.
He faces up to 25 years if convicted in a trial scheduled to begin July 18.
That leaves Sarkozy’s centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), the far-right National Front and the stale question of what satisfies ideologues [seeking] freedom of expression for themselves and assimilation for those who exercise freedom differently.
Contradictions in popular perception breed contradictory appeasements.
It’s simple: the government of France banned face veils because they encroach on a woman’s right to choose not to wear a face veil.
—Bardia Sinaee
third-year English
