Woman in face veil detained as France enforces ban
Kenza Drider said she was carrying out her citizen's rightsA woman has been detained in France for wearing an Islamic veil across her face, after a law banning the garment in public came into force.
Police said she was held not because of her veil but for taking part in an unauthorised protest against the ban.
France is the first country in Europe to ban publicly a form of dress some Muslims regard as a religious duty.
Anyone caught breaking the law will be liable to a fine of 150 euros (£133, $217) and a citizenship course.
People forcing women to wear the veil face a much larger fine and a prison sentence of up to two years.
Under the law, any woman - French or foreign - walking on the street or in a park in France and wearing a face-concealing veil such as the niqab or burka can be stopped by police and given a fine.
It is a small fine, but symbolically this is a huge change, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris.
Guidelines issued to police say they should not ask women to remove their veils in the street, but should escort them to a police station where they would be asked to uncover their faces for identification.
The French government says the face-covering veil undermines the basic standards required for living in a shared society and also relegates its wearers to an inferior status incompatible with French notions of equality.
The new law has angered some Muslims and libertarians.
A French Muslim property dealer, Rachid Nekkaz, said he was creating a fund to pay women's fines.
"The street is the universal home of freedom," he said in a statement.
"I am calling on all free women who so wish to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience."
In the southern city of Avignon a woman boarded a train wearing a niqab - as she had long declared she would - unchallenged by police.
"It's not an act of provocation," said the woman, Kenza Drider.
"I'm only carrying out my citizens' rights, I'm not committing a crime... If they ask me for identity papers I'll show them, no problem."
But opposition protests by Islamists and libertarians are unlikely to make much of an impression, our correspondent says.
What is more open to question, he says, is whether an out-and-out legal ban is necessary when, on most estimates, only 2,000-or-so women in France actually wear the niqab or burka.
Critics of French President Nicolas Sarkozy say it suits him to play up the Muslim question because he is an unpopular president in need of an easy vote-winner.
Muslim headscarves
- The word hijab comes from the Arabic for veil and is used to describe the headscarves worn by Muslim women. These scarves come in myriad styles and colours. The type most commonly worn in the West is a square scarf that covers the head and neck but leaves the face clear.
Are you in France? What is your reaction to the ban? Does a face-covering veil undermine the basic the standards required for living in a shared society, as the French government claims? You can send us your views and experiences using the form below.
