European Court of Human Rights: French Facial Veil Ban Isn’t Discriminatory Against Muslims

As Americans are arguing over Christian
corporations and birth control, Europeans are grappling with their
own contentious case concerning religious freedom. Today, the
European Court of Human Rights
ruled to uphold France’s ban on facial veils, which was
instituted under Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011. Since then, hundreds of
women have been fined up to 150 euros for defying the ban,
according to The New York Times.

French Muslims protest that women wearing the full-face veil,
known as the niqab, is a part of the Muslim faith. An unnamed
24-year-old French woman brought the case against her government,
saying the law was discriminatory and, as a practicing Muslim, it
violated her freedom of conscience rights. 

French officials said the ban was needed because facial veils
presented a security risk by hiding a wearer’s identity. They also
fretted that without it, “Islamic separatism” would erode French
culture. 

The European Court of Human Rights didn’t buy the security-risk
rationale. In
a statement (PDF), it said that the government’s objective
“could be attained by a mere obligation to show their face and
to identify themselves where a risk for the safety of persons and
property was established, or where particular circumstances
prompted a suspicion of identity fraud.” 

However, the court also didn’t take to the plaintiff’s claim
that the ban violated her religious freedom. Because “the ban was
not expressly based on the religious connotation of the clothing in
question but solely on the fact that it concealed the face,” the
ban couldn’t be characterized as discriminatory against Muslims,
the court said.

Rather, the niqab ban constituted “a choice of society,” and
thus banning them could be “regarded as proportionate to
the aim pursued, namely the preservation of the conditions of
‘living together’.” This is apparently what passes for “objective
and reasonable justification” in the E.U.

Since France passed the niqab ban, only Belgium has followed
suit, though numerous countries—including the U.K.,
Germany, the Netherlands,
and Switzerland—have debated it and/or banned it in certain
situations. These bans are sold as secularist, progressive, and
feminist. But—as Shikha
Dalma wrote here in 2010—they rely on the same principles
driving religious fanaticism, conservatism, and patriarchal
societies: A desire to force one’s beliefs and practices on others
and an idea that women shouldn’t be allowed to make their own
choices.

Burqas and facial veils “are certainly a tool of female
oppression in Islamic theocracies where sharia law sanctions
violence against women who violate its strictures,” wrote Dalma.
“But that is not true in liberal democracies where the reason
government exists is to protect personal choices from physical
violence.”