Burqa Ban in Belgium to Take Some More Time

The lower house of Belgium’s parliament has banned burqa-type Islamic dress in public, however, the step is poised to face a challenge in the Senate which will delay early enactment of the law, said media reports.

Christian Democrats and Liberals in the Senate questioned the phrasing of the law, which holds that no one can appear in public ‘with the face fully or partly covered so as to render them no longer recognizable’, reports said.

After the fall of Premier Yves Leterme’s government April 22, early elections are necessitated in Belgium that may delay passage of anti-burqa ban, first in Europe, by many months.

For ban to be forceful, both the houses of the parliament have to approve the bill. The lower house approved the bill unanimously.

Belgium currently struggles with apprehensions that visible signs of Islam wear away national identity and that women wearing traditional Islamic dress like the burqa, the chador and the niqab, indicate a refusal to mingle with western society.

Daniel Bacquelaine, the author of the law, said that a burqa is incompatible with basic security as everyone in public must be recognizable and clashes with the principles of an emancipated society that respects the rights of all, reports said.

Burqa-type Islamic dress that fully covers a woman and most or all of her face is not common in Europe.

In January, Denmark’s center-right government called the burqa and the niqab out of step with Danish values. It held off on a ban after finding that only two or three women in Denmark, a nation of 5.5 million people, wear burqas and perhaps 200 wear niqabs.

In France, a nation of 65 million people, the government estimates 1,900 women cover their faces with niqabs, a scarf that exposes only the eyes, or sitars, a filmy veiled cloth thrown over the head to cover the entire face.

France banned Muslim head scarves as well as Jewish skullcaps and Christian crosses from schools in 2004.

(Based on internet reports)