The French Unveiled

The latest news from our Paris correspondent is that the upper house of the French parliament has also approved the legislation that makes wearing a face veil illegal.

To many of us, this must all seem rather inexplicable. Apparently, a woman found in public wearing a garment that covers the face will face (har har) a fine. And a man found to be forcing a woman to do so will also face the wrath of the law.

There are, of course, imbecilities in this. Covering up your face is illegal. The government defines what clothing you can and can't wear. But only if you're a woman. What if you were a man wearing a face veil? I don't know how many cross-dressing Islamic traditionalists exist, but surely there is a loophole here. How comfortable will it be for French police to stop and fine women in the streets for choosing to uphold their traditions and beliefs?

Oh, for sure, there will be many Muslim women who are expected to wear veils by their significant others. And by their male-dominated community values too. But what we seem to have here is a piece of painfully discriminatory legislation designed to combat.... discrimination? Well, maybe, but that argument has been weakly put. In truth, this is all about integration French-style.

We hear that word applied here on the same issues. We want immigrants to integrate. What that actually means is entirely open to interpretation, but in the UK we seem to feel, nutters excepted, that this means mutual respect. So we're not so bothered if a woman wants to maintain their traditional garb and religious views, but we are bothered if they never learn English, or are found to be treated as slaves in their community. And we understand that anyone can wear pretty much what they want, just as they can say pretty much what they want, inside a broad limit of decency. By and large, we seem in the UK to be willing to enjoy the rainbow effect that such immigration brings. Just so long as there aren't very many of them.

In France, the interpretation of liberty, egality and fraternity is somewhat different. Looking at what happened to the North Africans is a good viewpoint. The idea is that anyone can come to France (if they're allowed), but once there, it is expected that any cultural differences will be abandoned in favour of La Belle France, on the philosophical basis that France, embodied by those three words and a republican constitution, is a place of 'egal': "people should be treated as equals on certain dimensions, such as religiously, politically, economically, socially, or culturally..." (Wiki). And that translates as: 'we won't let you be different'.

This has already backfired spectacularly - just look at the Paris Banlieue. You can't let people from utterly different traditions and cultures come and live in your place and expect them to be exactly the same as someone from Nantes (or expect the same from them in contribution). The end result was that these people were disadvantaged from the start. And hence the riots.

It is evident that the French have learned nothing. Or perhaps it is the reactionary knee jerk of a society under tremendous pressure to change. As Joseph Maila of the French Foreign Ministry said 'To hide behind the veil is to barricade oneself against society.'

Right. So you're legally not allowed to be antisocial?

What makes me laugh is that the French Constitutional Council, which does all the oversight for legislation, has repeatedly said that it will almost certainly have to strike down the bill as unconstitutional.

Idiots.