Ban on Burqas: Promotion or Violation of Human Rights?

While vacationing in France recently, I saw a Muslim family pose by a monument in Nice. The woman was wearing a burqa. I could tell she was smiling for the camera by the ways her eyes squinted. Still, a wave of sadness flooded over me.

On Tuesday, July 13th, according to The New York Times, France's lower house of Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a ban on the wearing of a veil that covers the face in public. The bill would apply to both the burqa, which covers the eyes, and the niqab, which reveals only the eyes.

The draft bill states: "no one can, in the public space, wear clothing intended to hide the face.” Public space encompasses streets, markets, private businesses, public transportation, and all government buildings. A fine of $190 will be faced by any person with a veil. Plus, anyone who forces the veil on someone else will face a fine of up to $38,000 and a year in jail (or two years, if the victim is a minor).

According to Aljazeera, the ban would apply to Muslim tourists as well.

Senate is expected to vote on the bill in September. Beforehand, the Council of State will examine the potential law's constitutionality.

The French police estimate that approximately 2,000 women wear the full facial veil, out of a Muslim population of five million.

Though the Koran does not require women to wear the niqab or the burqa, "Mohammed Moussaoui, leader of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, a government advisory body, has favored discouraging women from wearing the full veil, but opposed a law," according to The Times.

The French have already banned head scarves in public schools. However, they banned all forms of religious identification as well, including turbans, crosses, and Jewish stars.

Yet, maybe there's something viscerally different about having one's face covered that doesn't makes this law an attempt to Frenchify the population.

The burqa and the niqab strike me as a gross violation of human rights--and of woman's rights in particular. We see, smell, taste, and communicate through our face. I can look at someone, and get a sense of who they are by looking at their face.

Then again, I'm an American. A liberal one at that, with Westernized values. How can I relate--or judge--someone who makes the choice to veil their face?

Let's say I moved to Genovia (a fictional country, but you might have heard of it via The Princess Diaries). And in Genovia, it is an anomaly to wear shirts. Would I appreciate a ban on shirts? Most certainly not.

Is it acceptable to impose our Western values on immigrants? Is it okay to ban someone's religious outerwear because we find it disconcerting?

And, why is the veil is disconcerting? Perhaps it reminds us of radical Islam, of 9/11, of suicide bombings. After all, I see people here in New York with face masks when there are below-zero temperatures. Though people with those masks might scare me in a park alone at night, I’m not afraid of them. I’m not bothered by them.

Then this issue must go beyond simply the cloaking of one’s face. Those women aren’t wearing veils to defend themselves from the cold. They are hiding their bodies and their faces from the eyes of onlookers in the name of Allah. No doubt, Westernized individuals cannot comprehend this type of extreme observance.

Still, I find the burqa and the niqab more than disconcerting. They are identity-concealers. They stigmatize the female gender. They hinder me from getting to know another individual.

They conceal the wearer's mechanism for experiencing life.