Belgium Bans the Burqa

Belgium Bans the Burqa, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

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news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100429/ap_on_re_eu/eu_belgium_burqa...

By ROBERT WIELAARD, Associated Press Writer Robert Wielaard, Associated Press Writer – Thu Apr 29, 6:01 pm ET

BRUSSELS – Belgium's lower house of parliament on Thursday banned burqa-type Islamic dress in public, but the measure faces a challenge in the Senate which will delay early enactment of the law.

Christian Democrats and Liberals in the Senate questioned the phrasing of the law, which holds no one can appear in public "with the face fully or partly covered so as to render them no longer recognizable."

Following the fall of Premier Yves Leterme's government April 22, Belgium faces early elections that may delay passage of the Belgian anti-burqa ban — Europe's first — by several months. Both houses of parliament must approve the bill.

Approval in the lower house was almost unanimous.

Like elsewhere in Europe, Belgium struggles with anxieties that visible signs of Islam erode national identity and that women in traditional conservative Islamic dress, such as the burqa, the chador and the niqab, signal a refusal to assimilate in western society.

The law's author, Daniel Bacquelaine, a Liberal, said a burqa is incompatible with basic security as everyone in public must be recognizable and clashes with the principles of an emancipated society that respects the rights of all.

Burqa-type Islamic dress that fully covers a woman and most or all of her face is not common in Europe.

Last year, the city of Brussels fined only 29 women — down from 33 in 2008 — for wearing a burqa-type dress. In Belgium, local rules ban the burqa, but enforcement is spotty and the new law would outlaw it on a national level.

In January, Denmark's center-right government called the burqa and the niqab out of step with Danish values. It held off on a ban after finding that only two or three women in Denmark, a nation of 5.5 million people, wear burqas and perhaps 200 wear niqabs.

In France, a nation of 65 million people, the government estimates 1,900 women cover their faces with niqabs, a scarf that exposes only the eyes, or sitars, a filmy veiled cloth thrown over the head to cover the entire face.

France banned Muslim head scarves as well as Jewish skullcaps and Christian crosses from schools in 2004.

President Nicolas Sarkozy says the burqa "is not welcome" in France, but questions have been raised about the constitutionality of a ban.

Although their ranks are growing, Muslims make up only small minorities in Western Europe.

France has the largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million, or 7.5 percent of the population, followed by the Netherlands with 6 percent, Germany with 5 percent, Austria with 4.2 percent, Belgium with 3 percent and Britain with 2.7 percent, according to a 2009 study of the Pew Research Center in Washington.


My Poem

Burqa
The mysterious
garment
that mystifies
to keep it alive
since time
immemorial
they pay a price
burqa fits all
just one size
adding beauty
to hidden eyes
mesmerizing
a moment
a spiritually
enhancing
religious
disguise
said
someone
the angel of
death wears it too
is just drawing
attention
a pack of lies
burqa
is a Muslim
womans
garment
of modesty
the bewildered
dumbfounded
Muslim woman
in Belgium cries
Ban the Burqa
the racist replies
the Arab world
kowtowing to the Goras
looks up at heaven
in the skies
caught
in a cross fire
by surprise
the burqa
fleshed
to a woman
a scriptural
thought
no one buys
fleeting time
in Europe
shedding tears
for its demise
banning the burqa
a conspiracy
of a world order
to surmise
women in burqa
look more beautiful
more sartorially styled
sweet and nice
even the virgins
it is alleged
not known for a fact
wear burqas
in paradise
a thought
a poetic
brain supplied
a brain
that runs anti
clockwise