Muslim scholar berates France over burqa debate

PARIS - One of Europe’s leading Muslim scholars, Tariq Ramadan, told French lawmakers Wednesday they were failing to address the real problems facing French Muslims by debating whether to ban the burqa.

Swiss-born Ramadan told a parliamentary inquiry holding hearings on the wearing of the full Islamic veil that a law banning the practice would simply force Muslim women who cover themselves to “stay at home.”

“This debate surrounding the burqa bothers me,” Ramadan told the panel.

“Because in the end, this is not the question that needs to be raised.”

“The real problem is that when you have a name that is a bit Arab-sounding, or Muslim by affiliation, you are not going to get a job or you are not going to get an apartment,” he said.

Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, France set up the special panel six months ago to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the full veil, known as a burqa or niqab.

The 32 lawmakers are winding up hearings in the coming two weeks and are to formulate recommendations in a much-awaited report to be presented next month.

The decision to invite Ramadan to testify before the panel had stirred much controversy with some of the lawmakers opposed to his appearance and accusing him of promoting hardline Islam.

Defending the inquiry, Communist MP Andre Gerin who presides the panel said lawmakers were legitimately addressing concerns over “growing fundamentalism” in France and described the full veil as “the tree that hides the forest.”

“There is an explosion of radicalism in our suburbs,” said Daniele-Hoffman Rispal, a Socialist MP on the panel. “Ten years ago I never came across a veiled woman in my district. Now I see them every day.”

A French intelligence services report earlier this year said fewer than 400 women were wearing the full veil in France, but a separate study by the interior ministry put the figure at a few thousand.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has proclaimed the burqa “not welcome” in secular France but he has not waded into the debate on whether the full veil should be banned.

A professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, Ramadan warned lawmakers that a law banning the burqa would be counter-productive and urged them to instead work with French Muslim leaders for change.

“All of this commotion over the burqa does tell ordinary citizens that there is something wrong with Islam and leads to stigmatisation,” he said.

France has had a long-running debate on how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam without undermining the tradition of separating church and state, enshrined in a flagship 1905 law.

In 2004, it passed a law banning headscarves or any other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools to defend secularism.

France’s “burqa debate” came back to the fore this week after Switzerland voted in a referendum to ban minarets, putting Islam’s place in Europe again in the headlines.

Ramadan said the Swiss vote showed that “we under-estimated the level of fear and distrust (of Islam) among the general population.” 

Khaleej Times