Why the French don’t like the burqa: Laïcité, National Identity and Religious Freedom

When?

Wednesday 9 May 2012, 12:00 to 13:00

Where?

32MS01, School of Management Building

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Myriam Hunter-Henin (UCL)

In this paper, I will analyze the 2010 French ban on the covering of the face and the old conceptual divides it has reignited between multiculturalism and secularism, between the public and the private spheres, between a British and a French legal tradition. The claim that the ban embodies a form of “secularism à la française” will be contested.

On the contrary, it will be shown that the ban goes against entrenched French legal traditions. This paper will in turn consider and reject all of the potential justifications put forward (explicitly or implicitly) in support of the 2010 ban: laïcité, dignity, gender equality  and public policy.

It will further argue that these aims, however legitimate, would not qualify as justifications for a general ban before the European Court on Human Rights  and if they did, would fail the test of proportionately when confronted with the interferences they cause in concrete cases to individual religious freedoms protected under article 9 of the European Convention.