With France's Senate approving a ban on the full Islamic veil, (which covers the face too) the focus is on Nicolas Sarkozy's nation.

Burqa breeze sweeps world

With France's Senate approving a ban on the full Islamic veil, (which covers the face too) the focus is on Nicolas Sarkozy's nation.

Yet, the burqa has become a political battlefield elsewhere too, with debates cleaving people and politicians using the piece of cloth as a dais from which to score points, polarise, pander or simply spout platitudes.

Burqa hysteria is sweeping the globe and though Europe seems the epicentre of the burqa storm, it has touched other countries too. Some time ago, Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi lashed out in an article which was published on a website called The Drum, saying the burqa "needs to be banned".

Bernardi added that Australia needs to move towards a full ban and that migrating Muslims need to adopt Australian values.

In Belgium, the lower house of parliament has voted for a law that would ban women from wearing the full Islamic face veil in public. The law would ban any clothing that obscures the identity of the wearer in places like parks and on the street.

Nobody voted against it. A local media official says MPs backed the legislation on the grounds of security, to allow police to identify people.

It is evident that we have not heard the last of the burqa battles and they will not be confined within French borders

Germany jumped on to the "ban wagon" with Silvana Koch-Mehrin, head of the Free Democrats in Strasbourg, in an opinion piece in the German tabloid, Bild am Sonntag, which stated that, "I would like to see the wearing of all forms of the burqa banned in Germany and in all of Europe." Koch-Mehrin declared that she welcomed the Belgian parliament's decision "quite explicitly" and went on, "The burqa is an enormous attack on the rights of women. It is a mobile prison."u00a0
Even before France's Senate voted on the ban, a 31-year-old woman was fined for driving while wearing a burqa in Nantes, France. The woman was pulled over by police and told that her face veil "reduced her field of vision" behind the wheel. In May this year, the Italian police fined a Muslim woman for wearing a full Islamic veil in a street in the northern city of Novara.

While the pro-burqa ban lobby cites examples of security concerns (detailing a number of crimes committed by people concealing their face in a burqa) and oppression, the anti-burqa ban faction says it is a violation of human rights and freedom.

The subject continues to simmer, it is evident that we have not heard the last of the burqa battles and they would not be confined within French borders.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

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