First the Swiss ban minarets. Now the French parliament wants to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places. The hijab, the headscarf that some Muslim women wear, is already banned in French public schools, where the "ostentatious" display of any religious symbolism is forbidden. The burqa, however, is worn far more rarely in France by about 1,900 of nearly six million Muslims, almost none of them from a traditional burqa-wearing country.
The reason why French parliamentarians, ranging from communists to conservatives, support this ban is a general consensus that wearing the burqa is "contrary to the values of the Republic". As the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, famously said, the burqa is "not welcome in France".
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