Legal showdown looms over French face veil ban

By Clare Byrne Sep 22, 2011, 15:24 GMT

Paris - A legal showdown loomed Thursday over France's ban on the Islamic face veil, after a court fined two women for refusing to comply with the ban, paving the way for constitutional challenges to the new law.

The court in the town of Meaux, about 40 kilometres east of Paris, fined Hind Ahmas 120 euros (164 dollars) and Najate Nait Ali 80 euros for appearing outside the local town hall wearing the niqab - a veil that covers the hair and face, leaving a slit for the eyes.

'It's a semi-victory,' Ahmas, a 32-year-old divorced mother-of-one, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'For me, total victory will be the scrapping of this law altogether,' she added.

France last year became the first European country to ban the wearing of the Islamic niqab and burqa, or full-body covering, in public. Wearers of the garment risk a fine of 150 euros and can be asked to take citizenship classes.

Ever since the ban came into effect in April, Ahmas and other high-profile wearers of the niqab - the more common of the two banned garments in France - have been itching to have their day in court.

Backed by groups that see the ban as an affront to civil liberties, Ahmas has strutted past police guarding the Elysee presidential palace in Paris and chatted with officers outside parliament, in the hope of incurring a fine.

But the authorities have adopted a largely hands-off approach.

Fearful of igniting tensions between police and youths in the high-rise suburbs of Paris and Marseille that are home to most of the women affected by the law, and wary of the law being challenged, they have mostly looked the other way.

Ahmas' persistence paid off when she and Ali were summoned to appear in court for turning up to Meaux mayor Jean-Francois Cope's office on May 5, with their faces covered.

Besides being mayor, Cope is also the leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative ruling Union for a Popular Majority (UMP).

The two women wanted to present him with a birthday cake made of almonds (which sounds like 'amendes,' the French word for fines), in a dig at the hitherto timid implementation of the ban.

Cope refused to accept the cake, but the stunt worked.

The women now have a ruling they can use to appeal the law. If their appeals fail in France, they plan to go to the European Court of Human Rights.

'Even if it takes three years, it will be worth it if leads to the scrapping of a law that robs us of our freedom,' Ahmas said.

Most French people have supported the ban, in the belief that it would help liberate women from what they see as subjugation by conservative Islam.

But Ahmas and other women say its effect has been to imprison them in their homes.

'These women are effectively under house arrest. That's the real punishment,' Ahmas' lawyer Gilles Devers told dpa.

Some of the women also say they have experienced increased verbal and physical attacks.

'I've been insulted, called a 'dirty Arab' and told 'carnival is over'. I've also been told to 'return to my country',' Marie Hassan, a young separated mother-of-two from Marseille, told dpa.

Like Ahmas, who was born and raised in France to Moroccan parents and only started to wear the veil in her mid-twenties, she says the decision to wear the veil was entirely her own.

The case could have repercussions throughout Europe.

Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland all have banned, or are planning to ban, Islamic face veils.

French businessman Rachid Nekkaz, founder of a group called Don't Touch my Constitution that is campaigning against the ban, has amassed a war chest of 1 million euros to pay fines given to wearers of the burqa or niqab in affected countries.

He is not a fan of the burqa or niqab but, he says: 'This law is all about creating fear.'