Paris: France is moving towards outlawing full Islamic veils in certain public buildings, stopping short of a broader ban that could violate religious freedom and deepen a rift in the government, media reported on Wednesday.
A French parliamentary inquiry into the all-covering niqab and burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has described as unwelcome in France, is due to publish its recommendations next month and a compromise looks likely.
"Permanently masking one's face in public spaces is not an expression of individual liberty," Jean-Francois Cope, the parliamentary party leader of Sarkozy's UMP party, said in an opinion piece in newspaper Le Figaro.
"It's a negation of oneself, a negation of others, a negation of social life," he said.
But a complete ban could meet legal obstacles. Switzerland's ban on minarets, for example, has been challenged before the European Court of Human Rights.
And with France's government already facing internal dissent over a campaign to discuss national identity that has attracted accusations of racism, a burqa law could be a difficult sell.
Right to wear veil
Labour Minister Xavier Darcos said he opposed the idea of a "clothes police handing out fines to women wearing the burqa", newspaper Le Monde reported. Only a few hundred women are estimated to wear the full veil in France.
Instead, the ban could be limited to public buildings such as town halls and police headquarters and be justified with security concerns, newspapers said.
To some, the whole idea of a law on garments is ludicrous.
"Everyone has the right to wear whatever they want to," a French woman of Moroccan descent named only as Kenza said.
Wearing a black niqab that left only her eyes exposed, she said she had felt an increase in insults and verbal attacks since public debate over the ban boiled up this summer.
The issue has fed into a European spat over visible Islamic symbols, be they veils or minarets, as well as a domestic debate over what it means to be French.
That campaign has spiralled into public brawls at town hall meetings and vitriolic comments in government-sponsored Internet forums on Islam's role in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim community.
In his opinion piece, Cope tried to separate the possible burqa ban from the ill-fated national identity project, saying it was not a question of immigration or religion.
"Our principles are at stake: extremists are testing the Republic by encouraging a practice that they know to be against the essential principles of our country," he wrote.
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