A French liberty, anyone?

DEAR Muslimah, beware, France is about to embark on yet another "campaign" to liberate you.

Speaking after a group of MPs requested an inquiry into the "degrading" use of the burka and niqab, government spokesman Luc Chatel said recently it was important to establish to what extent women's rights were being compromised by the garments. "If it were determined that wearing the burka is a submissive act, and that it is contrary to republican principles, naturally parliament would have to draw the necessary conclusions," he said. When asked by the media whether that could mean bringing in legislation to ensure an outright ban, Chatel answered, "Why not?"

Several thousand women are believed to wear the full veil in France, where approximately seven million Muslims are largely ignored in public decision making even as many of them struggle against poverty and unemployment. The Guardian reported that last year a Moroccan woman was refused French citizenship after social services found she wore a burka and was "living in total submission" to her husband.

The Communist MP who led the call this week for an inquiry, André Gerin, denounced the garments as "walking prisons". In his request, backed by 57 other MPs, mostly from Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party, he said, "The sight of these imprisoned women is already intolerable to us when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia ... It is totally unacceptable on French soil."

For a ban to be implemented, an investigation would first have to be opened and its results studied for any sign of incompatibility between secular values and the use of the full veil. Sarkozy, who recently defended France's division between the state and religion during a press conference with Barack Obama, is understood to be in favour of the issue being explored, The Guardian said.

Sarkozy's left-wing urban policies secretary, Fadela Armara, herself a Muslim and former president of a women's rights group, gave her support to a total ban on the burka. "I am for the banning of this coffin which kills basic freedoms," Amara told Le Parisien newspaper. "This debate has to clear the way to a law which protects women."

What ulterior motives had been present when France suddenly decided to pick up where it has left off in its promotion of Islamophobia such as this? Surely it can't have been simply because Sarkozy (or his people) is caught in an imaginary race for fame with Obama — while the latter is reportedly gaining popularity for cosying up to the Muslims, the former is apparently seeking to win the Islamophobia award.

Or may be some people in France had indeed benefited politically — both internally and internationally — when five years ago Jacques Chirac introduced a law that forbids children from wearing the headscarf or any other "conspicuous" religious symbol in schools, that now its inspired to create another furor.

Veil. Burka. Niqab. Women's rights. Those might be the keywords that cause the kneejerk (mental, physical, social and political) response towards a piece of cloth covering the whole body of Muslim women.

Among the excuses for threatening the Muslim women's rights to cover up whichever part of their bodies that they deem to be private, however, this one won the prize for utter idiocy: wearing burka is a submissive act.

Of course. Wearing bikinis and skimpy clothes for the sake of attracting and maintaining men's sexual interests is an act of freedom on the part of French women, isn't it?

An argument such as this, however, would be useless against a country whose concept of "liberty, equality and fraternity" over the centuries had been skewed and expanded at will by whoever is in power.

Could the real keyword be simply this: Islam?

So Muslim women and anything else Islamic that France thinks needs to be rescued and "liberated" should simply be wary, and take a look at its real history of wars of liberation over the centuries, ancient and recent.