Is wearing the full Islamic veil compatible with state values of equality between the sexes? Is it possible to embrace both the values of a modern Western democracy and those religious beliefs that say women should not appear in public unless covered from head to toe?
These questions are currently being hotly debated in France, after the issue of dress and national identity was raised by President Nicolas Sarkozy. His Minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Solidarity, Eric Besson, organised a recent ‘great debate’ to discuss the issue, and for three months from November 2009 there was a series of community conferences and town hall meetings throughout France, supplemented by an online site on which more than 58,000 people left comments. The objective of the ‘great debate’ was, according to Besson, ‘to engage all our fellow citizens in a profound discussion of what it means, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to be French’.
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