The man she married is French, her four children were born in France and she speaks French with only a trace of her native Arabic tongue. Faiza Silmi contends her clothes, a head-to-toe robe and filmy tissue covering her face, are the reason France has denied her citizenship in her adopted land.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old Moroccan may soon be facing an even fiercer blow. A top French lawmaker submitted a draft law this week that would ban such Islamic dress anywhere in public, a measure that would set a European precedent and trap thousands of women between their religious convictions and the law of the land.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say I\u2019m too attached to my religion,\u201d Silmi told The Associated Press at an empty restaurant near her home southwest of Paris, her large eyes peering from a slit in her veil. \u201cLots of Christians live in Morocco and we don\u2019t make them wear scarves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike Muslim headscarves, full-body, face-covering robes are a rare sight in the streets of France, home to an estimated 5 million Muslims, the largest such population in western Europe. France\u2019s main Muslim leaders have declared that Islam does not require women to cover their faces with niqabs or burqas.<\/p>\n
In a country whose national emblem is Marianne, a bare-chested woman, there is deepening concern over the all-encompassing garb, often black or brown and worn with gloves, attire typical in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Here, it is widely viewed as a gateway to radical Islam, an attack on gender equality and other French values, and a gnawing away at the nation\u2019s secular foundation.<\/p>\n
President Nicolas Sarkozy opened the door to a possible ban in June, telling a parliament session in Versailles that such dress \u201cis not welcome\u201d in France. A parliamentary panel set to work in July on a six-month mission gathering information on the garments.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the head of Sarkozy\u2019s conservative UMP party in parliament\u2019s lower house, Jean-Francois Cope, jumped the gun before the panel\u2019s report was finished, and filed draft legislation on a ban. \u201cNo one may, in spaces open to the public and on public streets, wear a garment or an accessory that has the effect of hiding the face,\u201d the draft text reads.<\/p>\n
The document cites public security concerns, thus includes all face-covering clothes, in a bid to head off challenges from those who might claim such a law would violate constitutional rules on individual rights \u2014 a major concern along with how such a law would be enforced. It foresees fines for those who break the law.<\/p>\n
The initiative, unlikely to go to debate before spring, would be the second time France targets Muslim dress. A 2004 law born in acrimony bans Muslim headscarves and other \u201costentatious\u201d religious symbols in the classrooms of French public schools. Sarkozy\u2019s party dominates parliament and the president reiterated Wednesday his wish for a law on full veils, though it\u2019s too early to say whether it will pass.<\/p>\n
Europe\u2019s growing Muslim population has bred tension across the continent. Wariness is pervasive since deadly attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 by Islamic radicals living in Europe. And some non-Muslims sense a threat by a foreign culture to their way of life. It took only four minarets on Switzerland\u2019s 200 mosques to push the Swiss to vote \u201cno\u201d to minarets in a November referendum.<\/p>\n
However, France, which wants an Islam tailored to the West, would be the only western European country to target the all-enveloping robes and niqabs, the cloth hiding the lower face. \u201cWe\u2019re going to become the laughing stock of democracies\u201d should France ban the clothing, said Raphael Liogier, a sociology professor who runs the Observatory of the Religious in Aix-en-Provence.<\/p>\n
He is among critics who say a ban would be a violation of basic rights and \u201ctransgression of the fundamental principles of our republic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muslim leaders of all tendencies have warned that a ban risks stigmatizing all Muslims, and anti-terrorism judge Marc Trevidic told Sunday\u2019s Journal du Dimanche that a ban \u201cwill maybe push impulsive people to want to commit attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Andre Gerin, who heads the parliamentary panel, says the full-body veil is an \u201cattempt to instrumentalise Islam for political ends\u201d via a \u201cfundamentalist and barbaric ideology\u201d that oppresses women.<\/p>\n
Gerin, a communist who served for years as mayor of Venissieux, a suburb of Lyon known as a haunt for Muslim fundamentalists, insists the phenomenon is growing.<\/p>\n
But at Friday prayers recently at a mosque northwest of Paris in Argenteuil, considered a bastion for Salafists who adopt a literal reading of the Quran, only a handful of fully veiled women were seen. Some expressed fear of a ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won\u2019t be able to leave the house,\u201d said Oumeima Naceri, a 19-year-old convert draped in black garments, including a filmy \u201csitar\u201d veil covering even her eyes. \u201cThat frightens us enormously. It\u2019s like asking us to go naked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Official statistics on burqas are impossible to gather. A 2004 report by a French intelligence service put the number of women in full veils at some 4,000. More than a quarter had converted to Islam, some experts estimate.<\/p>\n
Silmi, the Moroccan woman seeking French citizenship, began veiling herself completely only after coming to France in 2000. She said she and her husband Karim, who was born in Paris to Moroccan parents and has French citizenship, discovered a deepening of their faith through books and cassette recordings not available in Morocco. She insists her partner did not impose the veil on her, and says she is in the process of divorcing him after 10 years of marriage.<\/p>\n
Silmi was refused French citizenship for what authorities said was her failure to assimilate into French culture. Assimilation is most often defined by a candidate\u2019s ability to speak French, though not in her case.<\/p>\n
In each of three reports following interviews with Silmi, officials described her clothing. Her pro bono lawyer, Ronald Sokol, an American living in France, said that is what kept her from becoming French.<\/p>\n
Silmi lost an appeal to the Council of State, in June 2008, which ruled that she \u201cadopted a radical religious practice incompatible with essential values of the French community.\u201d She has now turned to the European Court of Human Rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cA woman must cover herself. It\u2019s writtem in the Quran,\u201d Silmi told Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Lawmaker Daniele Hoffman-Rispal, member of the parliamentary panel, said she sees women clad in all-encompassing robes on market days in her district in eastern Paris and is bothered that \u201cthey have a right to look at me, see my eyes, my smile\u201d but she cannot look at them.<\/p>\n
But if a ban were passed, \u201cWill we hire dozens of police to put them on street corners?\u201d she asks. She worries, too, about women who could become shut-ins to avoid getting caught.<\/p>\n
As for Silmi, she said she will consult a Muslim sage on the Internet about what to do should a legal ban be passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he tells me not to remove my veil, I prefer to return to Morocco\u201d rather than break French law, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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