By EUDO CITIZENSHIP expert Christophe Bertossi

 

The French minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Solidarity Development, Eric Besson, has made public his decision of refusing by decree the naturalisation of a man married to a woman who is wearing an Islamic veil covering her entire body. Eric Besson argued that the police inquiry and the naturalisation interview had demonstrated that ‘this man imposes on his wife the wearing of the “full Islamic veil”, prevents her from circulating freely without covering her face, and rejects the principles of laïcité and of gender equality’. According to the national daily newspaper Le Figaro, this is a Moroccan national married to a French woman and is affiliated to the Tabligh movement.

 

After the publication on 26 Januray 2010 of the final report of the parliamentary information commission on the full Islamic veil in France, leading politicians have advocated the idea of refusing French nationality to women wearing such a veil. This debate about the “burqa” (i.e. the full body veil, which is usually not a burqa but a niqab) fits a broader public debate on French national identity, launched by the Ministry of Immigration at the end of 2009 and which has mostly focused on the relationship between Islam, gender equality, and religious symbols in the public sphere.

 

There is earlier jurisprudence on this matter: the naturalisation of a woman wearing the niqab was refused in 2008 (Conseil d’Etat, 27 June 2008, Mme Mabchour, n°286798). However, the Conseil d’Etat had decided earlier that the naturalisation of a man whose wife wore an Islamic veil could not be refused because this did not constitute a “lack of assimilation” (Conseil d’Etat, 19 November 1997, Ben Halima, n°169368).

Read the BBC report “France refuses a citizenship over full Islamic veil” (February 3, 2010)

Read the article “France Denies Citizenship to Man With Veiled Wife” by The New York Times (February 4, 2010)