Poor France. On Tuesday, just in time for Bastille Day, the lower house of the French Parliament overwhelmingly passed a measure aimed at changing the offensive sartorial habits of 2,000 Muslim women who critics say are a threat to French values and identity.
The offending garments? The burka and the niqab, which cover the faces of a miniscule percentage of Muslim women in France (a quarter of whom are thought to have converted to Islam) and are at the center of a national debate over what it means to be French. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who championed the legislation, has said that such veils are "not welcome in France," and characterized them as fundamentally incompatible with French values.
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