France's opposition Socialists have come out against a law banning the burka - even though they remain firmly opposed to the garment.
The announcement comes ahead of a parliamentary report on the issue that is due out later this month.
Last summer, French MPs held hearings on whether to ban the Muslim veil, which covers the body from head to toe.
President Nicolas Sarkozy had said the burka was "not welcome" in France, home to Europe's largest Muslim population. Mr Sarkozy has left open the idea of introducing legislation to ban the burka.
While the Socialist Party opposes the wearing of the burka, it was "not favourable" to a legal ban, said party spokesman Benoit Hamon.
"We are totally opposed to the burka," he told French radio. "The burka is a prison for women and has no place in the French Republic. But an ad-hoc law would not have the anticipated effect."
| I suppose that make sense if you're a socia1ist ... |
I've had a couple beers, so please forgive me if I ramble. But I've often wondered about the sympathy ostensible leftists have for violent terrorists like Palestinians and their ilk. I recently had an epiphany that explains the apparent contradiction of such views. If you are a terrorist-sympathizing liberal, in your view all people are inherently good. And thus, the only reason for good people to do terrible things is if they are "oppressed" by far more terrible opponents. No matter the reality of any situation, terrorists -- whether they be Palestinian suicide-bombers, Al-Queda-aligned hijackers, or French Islamo-supremacist sympathizers -- can only be explained in their mindset by far worse behavior on the part of their opponents. It matters nothing how generous Israel, France, the USA, or anyone else actually is to the aggrieved group, in their view the more powerful "other" is the true monster generating evil in their innocent "victims" by sheer necessity, for no one could do the things they do without compulsion from an outside source. And the outside source is not an inherently good individual, but a group, a government, to which their twisted mindset can easily assign blame. The solution to this quandary? I have no idea. The only thing that comes to my somewhat inebriated mind is a quote from the nineteenth-century painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters."
Jean-Francois Cope, the parliamentary leader of Mr Sarkozy's party, has said he would put forward a bill this month banning the wearing of the veil in public, as a means of defending France against "extremists".
In 2004, France controversially banned Muslim headscarves and other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools and by public employees. |