The lower house of the French parliament passed a law on Tuesday which, according to the interior ministry, would directly effect fewer than 2,000 people out of a population of 64 million. This alone is worth digesting before considering that the people concerned are Muslim women who wear a full-face veil, or niqab. The authors of the legislation banning the wearing of the niqab in public directed their grandiloquent claims at this tiny target group. The French justice minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said on the eve of Bastille Day that the vote was a success for the Republic. France, she went on, is never so great, never so respected as when it is united around its values.

Set to one side legal doubts about whether this law is compatible with guarantees of religious freedom and equality, as interpreted by France’s constitutional council. In principle – and, indeed, in the forum of the European court of human rights – the twin test must be whether the measure, first, has a legitimate aim (public security or promotion of gender equality, perhaps) and, second, whether it shows proportionality. Is the measure proportionate to the aim being achieved? This, say legal experts, presents the sticking point.   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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