When Faiza Silmi applied for French citizenship she was worried that her fluent French was not quite perfect enough or that her Moroccan upbringing would pose a problem.
“I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Silmi said, her hazel eyes looking out of the narrow slit in her niqab, an Islamic facial veil that is among three flowing layers of turquoise, blue and black that cover her body from head to toe.
But last month, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny Silmi, 32, citizenship on the ground that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values like equality of the sexes.
It was the first time that a French court had judged somebody’s capacity to be assimilated into France based on private religious practice, taking laïcité – the country’s strict concept of secularism – from the public sphere into the home.
The case has sharpened the focus on the delicate balance between the tradition of Republican secularism and the freedom of religion guaranteed under the French Constitution – and how that balance might be shifting. It comes four years after a law banning religious garb in public schools was reinforced. And it comes only weeks after a court in Lille annulled a marriage on request of a Muslim husband whose wife had lied about being a virgin. (The government subsequently demanded a review of the court decision.)
So far, citizenship has only been denied on religious grounds in France when applicants were believed to be close to fundamentalist groups.
The ruling has received almost unequivocal support across the political spectrum, including among many Muslims. Fadela Amara, the French minister for urban affairs, called Silmi’s niqab “a prison” and a “straitjacket.” …
Read the rest of “A Muslim woman too orthodox for France”
2 Comments
July 20, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I think this is once more demonstrating Europe’s highly inflexible immigration policies. They are finding themselves unable to compete with Australia, Canada, and the US in attracting highly qualified immigrants, and are instead trying to prohibit non-skilled workers from entering the region, which seems to not be working thus far.
Furthermore regarding the logic of denying someone citizenship based on their religious beliefs is not only highly hypocritical and but also naive. It is hypocritical as France’s reason is that her radical practice of religion is not compatible with the French ideal of toleration and freedom of expression, which they themselves seem to be violating by rejecting her application. Additionally to think that someone will change their practices or beliefs in making themselves more compatible with a political institution or culture in order to merely gain citizenship is naive. I would argue that if this change is desired or promoted by a political institution, it would probably be more likely to occur AFTER citizenship had been acquired.
July 20, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for your comments, I agree completely. Not to mention, as is often the case with similar attempts to fend off Muslims, Muslim identity, or manifestations of any of the various Eastern cultures many Muslims identify with, it’s Muslim women that get the short end of the stick. A Muslim man sharing the same values as Faiza Silmi could likely get by the citizenship thing even with a big beard or what-have-you. Even if his wife wore such a veil, which in the opinion of those who ruled on Silmi’s case would equate to oppressing/dominating a woman, it wouldn’t bear an effect on his citizenship application. So in addition to all the other kinds of unfair it is, it’s also gender discrimination. I wonder what the result would be if a niqab-wearing woman from the US applied for French citizenship. Would they be able to hold the same culture argument for someone born and raised in the West who, say, attended university and worked as a professional in America?