Burqa ban erodes Western values

The French cabinet has approved a bill making it a criminal offence to conceal one's face in public. Even if the full body veil goes against the Western social model that does not justify interfering with the personal freedoms of women, writes Ines Zöttl in the daily Financial Times Deutschland: "Such interference can be justified neither by the need for security nor by the violation of other people's rights. Consequently all that remains is the view that these women must be protected from themselves because they still haven't understood that they live like prisoners. Unfortunately that puts us on very thin ice. Until now I'd thought that putting grown women on a par with children in need of protection or the certifiably insane was a characteristic of Islamic societies. Stripping the veils from women's faces is not going to do much to advance integration. ... Because with the burqa ban we are destroying the best things our society has to offer: rationality, freedom, individuality, tolerance."

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