French niqab ban: Beneath the veil

Guardian 

The lower house of the French parliament passed a law on Tuesday which, according to the interior ministry, would directly affect fewer than 2,000 people out of a population of 64 million. This alone is worth digesting before considering that the people concerned are Muslim women who wear a full-face veil, or niqab. The authors of the legislation banning the wearing of the niqab in public directed their grandiloquent claims at this tiny target group. The French justice minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said on the eve of Bastille Day that the vote was a success for the Republic. France, she went on, is never so great, never so respected as when it is united around its values.