"When you wear the full veil, you don't have the right to work, you don't have the right to choose your husband, you don't have the right to love," said [Sihem] Habachi, a Muslim feminist. "You are totally in prison. What is the aim of our democracy? What is the aim of our republic? It is to protect. That is a new challenge for our republic today."
In France, as of today, Muslim women can no longer be forced to cover their whole bodies by their husbands or fathers under French law:
The law imposes a fine of 150 euros (currently about $215). The person breaking the law can be asked to carry out public service duty as part of the punishment or as an alternative to the fine.
Forcing a woman to wear a niqab or a burqa is punishable by a year in prison and a 30,000 euro fine (about $43,300). Forcing a minor to do the same thing is punishable by two years in prison and a fine of 60,000 euros.
The government has called such coercion "a new form of enslavement that the republic cannot accept on its soil."
Some have called this ban Islamophobic, but France has a long secular tradition, including not allowing children to wear religious symbols in school (including crucifixes and yarmulkes), and this ban seeks to uphold the country's secular identity in the public square. And France has done much to make sure its Muslim population feels welcome:
As its Muslim population has risen over the past decade France has gone to great lengths to ensure accommodations for Muslims. A council on Islamic faith helped guide changes such as increasing the number of clergy in prisons and the military and streamlining the approval of slaughterhouses to provide meat that adheres to Islamic law, according to Laurence.
So while France goes out of its way to stay out of peoples religious business while they're at home or in a place of worship, it has decided, by overwhelming margin (82% of French polled support it) that in public, the burqa and niqab had to go:
"Given the damage it (wearing the forbidden clothing) produces on those rules which allow the life in community, ensure the dignity of the person and equality between sexes, this practice, even if it is voluntary, cannot be tolerated in any public place," the French government said when it sent the measure to parliament in May of last year.