Paris:
A fractured panel of French legislators on Tuesday endorsed the idea of a ban on full facial veils in government offices, public hospitals and mass transit, but Parliament remains deeply divided over the effectiveness and constitutionality of such a law.
After six months of hearings, the panel of 32 legislators came up with a 644-page report covering proposals reinforcing republican ideas of secularism, but in the end barely a quarter of the members voted to submit their work to Parliament. They prevailed in part because the 11 members of the opposition Socialist Party boycotted the vote.
The result is far short of what inspired the creation of the panel: The demand for a ban on the full veil anywhere in public.
Parliament must now debate whether to adopt the nonbinding resolution suggested in the report, stating that the full veil was "contrary to the values of the republic" and asserting that "all of France is saying no" to the veil. Then Parliament will decide what if any legislation to pass.
No action is expected until after regional elections in March.
Since 2004, head scarves and other signs of religious affiliation have been banned from public schools by a government determined to enforce France's tradition of strict secularism amid fears of growing fundamentalism among France's 5 million Muslims. Veils must be removed or lifted to ascertain identity, for passport photos and airline security and at banks.
The Interior Ministry says only a small fraction of France's Muslim women wear the full veil - 1,900 - so a broader ban would mostly affect wealthy tourists from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, who help keep up the retail economy here. According to the police, most of the 1,900 are young, two-thirds are French citizens and a quarter are Muslim converts.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that the veil is "not welcome in France because it is contrary to our values and contrary to the ideals we have of a woman's dignity."But many who wear the veil say that they do so voluntarily as an expression of their faith. Their backers say that a ban would deny Muslim women freedom of expression and stigmatize them.