Even as a Jew in New York, I know of what it is like to be Muslim in France.
While studying abroad in the French city of Strasbourg in 2007, I decided to grow a bushy beard. Little did I know that in France, only traditional Jewish and Muslim men don anything but the most finely trimmed mustache or goatee. Since I did not wear a yarmulke or other head covering, people who saw me on the street assumed that I was Muslim.
I felt that police officers and passersby treated me with suspicion, and even on the crowded rush hour bus, few chose to sit next to me if they could avoid it. On one occasion someone followed me home and tried to start a fight, only to find that I was a bewildered American, not a French Muslim.
Never before, and never since, have I experienced disdain of this sort. On a daily basis, I was made to feel badly because of my appearance -- and what was presumed to be my corresponding religious affiliation. So when I read of the effort by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his supporters to criminalize the burqa (and other garments that fully cover a woman's body, head, and face) in France, I understood it to be far more than a measure to protect women's rights or preserve the concept of a secular society, on which the modern French state is built.
In my opinion, it is easy to see how the "burqa ban" might be misused as a part of a broader effort to stigmatize a religious population, one that already perceives itself to be on the margins of society.
Admittedly, I am fundamentally opposed to any garment or religious practice -- including those found in my own Jewish tradition -- that suggests that women hold a different or subservient position. But the burqa ban in France will not achieve the aim of gender equality. If anything, it will strengthen religious conservatives in France's Muslim population by convincing members of the moderate majority of Muslims that the rest of French society will never accept them.
http://newageislam.com/a-jewish-voice-against-the-burqa-ban/interfaith-dialogue/d/2751
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5:54 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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