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UN slams French ‘burqa ban’ for ‘violating’ rights

The UN Human Rights Committee on Tuesday criticised France's so-called burqa ban, saying the law "violated" the rights of two women who were fined for wearing full-face veils in public.

UN slams French 'burqa ban' for 'violating' rights
Photo: AFP
The committee called for the women to be compensated and for a review of the 2010 law that forbids people from publicly wearing clothing that conceals 
their face.
   
“The French law disproportionately harmed the petitioners' right to manifest their religious beliefs,” the committee said in a statement.
 
It added that it was not convinced by France's claim that the ban was necessary for security and social reasons.
   
The two French women were convicted in 2012 for wearing the niqab, a veil with an opening for the eyes.
   
“The ban, rather than protecting fully veiled women, could have the opposite effect of confining them to their homes, impeding their access to public services and marginalising them,” the committee said.
 
READ ALSO:
UN set to lambast France for its 'discriminatory' 2010 burqa ban
Photo: AFP
   
The UN Human Rights Committee, made up of independent experts, ensures countries stick to their human rights commitments but it does not have enforcement powers.
   
It said the French ban was “too sweeping” but that governments could still make people show their faces in specific circumstances.
 
'Violated' human rights
 
The committee's decision reignites a debate that has raged in France for years over Muslim headwear and other religious clothing.
   
The debate has regularly pitted supporters of the country's secular constitution against those who argue for religious freedoms.
   
The 2010 law had strong public support when brought in under former president Nicolas Sarkozy. But many said it targeted the tiny minority of Muslim women in France who wear Islamic veils.
   
Condemned by critics for pandering to far-right voters but backed by many women rights activists, the law made France the first European country to ban 
garments that cover the face.
   
An estimated five million Muslims live in France and women who ignore the ban can be fined up to 150 euros ($170).
   
“The vast majority of cases where people have been stopped for checks and have been condemned to fines… have been women wearing the niqab,” committee 
member Ilze Brands-Kehris told AFP.
 
Burqa ban five years on - 'We created a monster'
Photo: AFP
   
“In the context of fewer than 2,000 women wearing the full-face veil in France… (the law has) a vast disproportionate effect on those women.”
   
Other EU countries, including Denmark, Austria and Belgium, have also implemented similar full-face veil bans.
   
“France violated the human rights of two women by fining them for wearing the niqab,” the committee said, adding that measures should be taken to prevent similar violations in future, including a review of the law.
   
France, which has ratified UN rights treaties, is “under obligation” to comply with the committee's recommendations and act in good faith, Brands-Kehris said.
 
'Oppression of women'
 
The committee's stance contrasts with a 2014 European Court of Human Rights ruling which upheld the French ban, rejecting claims that it breached religious freedom.
   
The court found that France was justified in introducing the ban in the interests of social cohesion as it was “not expressly based on the religious connotation of the clothing”.
   
Explaining the committee's decision, Committee Chair Yuval Shany said a general criminal ban did not allow a “reasonable” balance between public interests and individual rights.
   
“The decisions are not directed against the notion of secularity, nor are they an endorsement of a custom which many on the committee, including myself, regard as a form of oppression of women,” Shany said.
   
In August, the committee also criticised France over the 2008 sacking of a nursery worker who refused to remove her veil at work, arguing it interfered with her right to manifest her religion.
   
The so-called Baby Loup case, named after the nursery, had already faced multiple legal battles in the French courts.
 
Debate about the effectiveness of the “burqa ban” also made headlines earlier this month after it was revealed that French gangster Redoine Faid, who broke out of jail in July using a helicopter and was recaptured three months later, had at times worn a burqa as a disguise.
   
Police say Faid was caught after officers saw someone wearing a burqa but walking like a man.

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ISLAM

Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday

The mayor of Cologne has announced a two-year pilot project that will allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer on the Muslim day of rest each week.

Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday
The DITIP mosque in Cologne. Photo: dpa | Henning Kaiser

Mosques in the city of the banks of the Rhine will be allowed to call worshippers to prayer on Fridays for five minutes between midday and 3pm.

“Many residents of Cologne are Muslims. In my view it is a mark of respect to allow the muezzin’s call,” city mayor Henriette Reker wrote on Twitter.

In Muslim-majority countries, a muezzin calls worshippers to prayer five times a day to remind people that one of the daily prayers is about to take place.

Traditionally the muezzins would call out from the minaret of the mosque but these days the call is generally broadcast over loudspeakers.

Cologne’s pilot project would permit such broadcasts to coincide with the main weekly prayer, which takes place on a Friday afternoon.

Reker pointed out that Christian calls to prayer were already a central feature of a city famous for its medieval cathedral.

“Whoever arrives at Cologne central station is welcomed by the cathedral and the sound of its church bells,” she said.

Reker said that the call of a muezzin filling the skies alongside church bells “shows that diversity is both appreciated and enacted in Cologne”.

Mosques that are interested in taking part will have to conform to guidelines on sound volume that are set depending on where the building is situated. Local residents will also be informed beforehand.

The pilot project has come in for criticism from some quarters.

Bild journalist Daniel Kremer said that several of the mosques in Cologne were financed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “a man who opposes the liberal values of our democracy”, he said.

Kremer added that “it’s wrong to equate church bells with the call to prayer. The bells are a signal without words that also helps tell the time. But the muezzin calls out ‘Allah is great!’ and ‘I testify that there is no God but Allah.’ That is a big difference.”

Cologne is not the first city in North Rhine-Westphalia to allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer.

In a region with a large Turkish immigrant community, mosques in Gelsenkirchen and Düren have been broadcasting the religious call since as long ago as the 1990s.

SEE ALSO: Imams ‘made in Germany’: country’s first Islamic training college opens its doors

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