Muslim woman refused French citizenship for her 'submissive' views

Muslim woman refused French citizenship for her 'submissive' views



Saturday, 12 July 2008
Telegraph
France has refused to grant citizenship to a burqa-wearing Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" interpretation of Islam is incompatible with its values.
The legal ruling, which has just been published, is the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected by France due to their religious practices. The unnamed 32-year-old woman is married to a French national. She arrived in the country in 2000, speaks good French and her three children were born in the country. She wears a black burqa that covers all her body except her eyes, which are visible through a narrow slit, and lives in "total submission" to her husband and male relatives, according to reports by social services. The case will reignite debate about how to reconcile freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the French constitution, and other fundamental rights which many in France feel are being challenged by the way of life of some Muslims. "She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes," said a ruling by the Council of State seen by Le Monde newspaper. The Council of State is a judicial body which has the final say on disputes between individuals and the public administration. The woman's application for French nationality was rejected in 2005 on grounds of "insufficient assimilation". She appealed to the Council of State, which last month approved the rejection. In the past, nationality was denied to Muslims who were known to have links with extremist circles or who had publicly advocated radicalism, which is not the case in this instance. The ruling comes weeks after a heated debate over whether traditional Muslim views were creeping into French law, prompted by a court's annulment of the marriage of two Muslims because the husband said the wife was not a virgin as she had claimed to be. In the case of the Moroccan woman, Le Monde suggested the Council of State had gone to the opposite extreme by rejecting the woman's beliefs and way of life rather than accommodating them. Emmanuelle Prada-Bordenave, the legal expert who provided a report on the case to the Council of State, wrote that the woman's interviews with social services revealed that "she lives almost as a recluse, isolated from French society". "She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind," she wrote.