French Clamp down on the Burqa
Unhindered by political correctness, French officials have denied citizenship to a man who forced his French wife to wear the Islamic full-face veil known as the burqa. The authorities cited the rejection of national values such as secularism and gender equality, as reasons for the move.
In 2008, the French rejected the application of a fully veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that she was not sufficiently assimilated into French society. French law allows for the rejection of applicants if they fail to respect national values. No equivalent legislation is available to the British Border Agency.
This move follows tough words from the French government over potentially banning the full head-to-foot veils, with French ministers concerned about the corrosion of national identity in a country with a 5 million strong Muslim population and ever-growing areas of inner cities becoming Dar al-Islam – literally Islamic ghettos where the French police fear to tread.
During the application procedure, the Moroccan man had alarmed officials by claiming that his ‘wife will never be able to go out without the full veil.”
He added: “I don’t believe in gender equality; women have inferior status; I will not respect the principles of the secular society.”
The applicant is believed to be a member of the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat, 100,000 of whom reside in France. Tablighi Jamaat has recently focussed its resources on the United Kingdom. The organisation has embedded itself into at least 600 of Britain’s 1350 mosques.
President Nicholas Sarkozy has been cornered into defending French national identity having won his election by usurping the Front National’s defensive stance on French culture and simultaneously shoring up the ruling party’s right-flank. The proposal was finally put into action last week, when French Prime Minister François Fillon asked the Council of State to help draft a law banning the Islamic veil.
British ministers were said to be contemplating a ban on the burqa, however, this remains unlikely given the extent of the Islamic colonisation within some of their constituencies and Labour’s dependence upon the Muslim bloc vote, particularly Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s Blackburn seat.
Typically, French women’s rights groups have greeted this latest development with silence, much like their British counterparts.
* The British National Party is committed to banning the burqa from public buildings and schools.
* The full-face veil is not specifically mentioned in any Islamic holy text, but it is said to have a twofold practical use in Islamic tradition; to act as a sand mask; to confuse enemy tribes whilst they are selecting which women to kidnap and rape during a raid – they may well end up with an elderly woman. Europe has a temperate climate and no desert, rendering the Burqa obsolete in that respect. I was about to say that we don’t have marauding tribes raping people on our streets, but then I realised I would be wrong.
